The Fall 2022 Manga Guide

Hirano and Kagiura

What's It About? 

Basketball players. Bad boys who aren't really bad boys. Roommates. Senpai-kouhai BL romance. It all started when Kagiura moved into the school dorms with what seemed to be a bad-boy upperclassman. But after he's left in the tender care of his mother hen of a roommate, Hirano, it's too much to ask for Kagiura not to fall in love…right?!

Hirano and Kagiura is a spinoff of Shō Harusono's Sasaki and Miyano manga, with English translation by Leighann Harvey and lettering by DK, and Yen Press will release its first volume both digitally and physically on November 22.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Jean-Karlo Lemus

Rating:

I feel bad for not having much to say about Hirano and Kagiura. It's a perfectly serviceable BL title with a cute main couple and a slow-burn romance. It doesn't make any particularly egregious mistakes, it just doesn't do anything particularly stand-out either. Hirano is the bad-boy-with-a-heart-of-gold that dotes on his underclassman, and Kagiura is the basketball-loving little scamp (who's taller than his upperclassman) that depends on his help. The two have a very cute domestic life together, and there's evidence that there's a lot more emotion that goes on between them than just friends—but the volume ends right before there would be anything more than a misinterpreted confession on Kagiura's behalf. While it would have been nice to see some kind of twist on this romance, for what it is it's perfectly functional. The artwork is adequate, the writing is solid if a bit workmanlike. The emotion is standout, but not by much. If you've never read a BL story before and would like to enjoy a slow burn, this is as good a place to start as any. Moderately recommended.

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Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Spun off from an extra in volume two of Sasaki and Miyano, it's Hirano and Kagiura! Set in the same school and covering the same time, Shō Harusono's second manga to see an English translation follows two of the supporting characters from the first series, Sasaki's classmate Hirano and his younger roommate Kagiura. And really, if you enjoyed the first series, there's no real reason why you won't like this one, too – it has the same gentle pacing and adorable pining/oblivious dynamic that helps to make Sasaki and Miyano so nice.

It does, however, pick up after the light novel of the same title, which hasn't been released in English yet. That means that while we're still on the same timeline as Harusono's other series, we're kind of arriving at the middle of this story. That's not a huge detriment, because we already know the guys from their appearances in Sasaki and Mya-chan's story, but it does feel a little bit like we're missing a bit of context. More specifically, we don't get to see Kagiura fall in love with Hirano; when we join them in their dorm room, he's already got a crush on his roommate and is working out how to break through his own reticence in admitting it and Hirano's patented Manga Romance Protagonist Oblivion.

That obliviousness means that we can see much more clearly than Hirano that he's got a thing for his roommate. He does have an inkling, though – during his class trip to Hokkaido, he's mulling over a gift for Kagiura and starts to realize that the earrings he was given are maybe just a bit much for a roommate gift. He manages to convince himself otherwise, but we can see the wheels beginning to turn, and the care with which he picks out a birthday present for Kagiura reveals what his true feelings are likely to be. It's a very similar dynamic to Sasaki and Miyano, but this may be a case of “if it ain't broke, don't fix it,” and it's hard to find fault with such a gentle story outside of maybe the brevity of the volume.

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Christopher Farris

Rating:

From the creator of Sasaki and Miyano comes…another series set in that same universe which sells itself on pretty much the same kinds of vibes. Hirano and Kagiura are a pair of cute high school boys figuring out their feelings for each other which results in plenty of slow-burn pining and uncertainly-interpreted romantic gestures. In this case, instead of bonding over the institution of BL manga itself, the particular pair fall into the somewhat simpler setup of "Oh my god, they were roommates!", which is a fair enough way to get your two adorable leading lads close enough to keep us reading in the hopes that they might smooch. At least the spin-off genesis and familiarity with her other work means Shō Harusono doesn't have to play with how canon these caught feelings are going to be; Kagiura makes clear by the first chapter just how romantically interested he is in Hirano, and the rest of his arc seems to simply be about how he's going to get senpai to notice him.

Trying to make it official is the only real hurdle to overcome in this case, and the story, per Harusono's established style, isn't really in a hurry to get there. Most of Hirano and Kagiura is filled up with detailings of the pair's delightfully domestic little existence together, Hirano waking Kagiura up in the morning or taking care of him while he's sick. There's a mild dramatic impetus on account of the time-limit their cohabitation is on, what with being in a school dorm and all, but even that's undercut by suppositions from Hirano that they'd probably keep in touch afterwards anyway. So instead we spend time on complex characteristic crystallizations like…Kagiura really wanting to win at basketball. Or the chapter where we idly follow Hirano on his class trip completely apart from Kagiura. That section does end up reinforcing one of the appealing ideas of this story, the charm of watching people as they just kind of miss each other.

So it's fluffy, but is it entertaining fluff? Cute as the boys are, I admit Hirano and Kagiura could feel a little too light for my tastes through much of it, even as that padded class-trip story did eventually deliver on cuddly catharsis. The second half of this short first volume picks up conceptually later, touching on Kagiura's concerns about his potential dependency on Hirano versus genuinely caring for him, or figuring out what the boundaries in their developing relationship are. The story here has an appreciation, as Kagiura does, for relationships founded on understanding friendship, and it's nice to see him knowingly strive for that ideal with Hirano. Their volume-ending date delivers on that kind of chemistry-communicating cuteness, really selling Hirano as basically the coolest most caring dude in the world to go out with, and finally clinching me as invested in seeing where these two go from here. And those are just within my persnickety pacing preferences, since I'm sure Harusono's established audience are already down in advance to snuggle in for more slow-burn sweetness.

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MrAJCosplay

Rating:

Hirano and Kagiura is definitely a romance story that takes its time; in fact, for a good third of the book, you almost wouldn't think that this was a romance, as any hint of romantic tension or intrigue between our leads is quickly downplayed. However, this is not a knock against the book, because I actually found that approach rather refreshing. A lot of romance stories these days jump right into establishing the status quo that the two potential lovers need to break, but very rarely do we see a story actually go into what the previous status quo looks like. The fact that Hirano and Kagiura spends most of this first volume focusing on the genuinely sweet friendship between its two leads deserves a lot of credit in my opinion.

With its languid pacing, Hirano and Kagiura is able to establish the chemistry between these two, what role they play in each other's lives, why one would be so enamored with the other and most importantly, what could potentially be at stake when certain feelings begin to develop. There's this real sense of purity to the whole book, as if it feels confident that it doesn't need to try any cheap tricks or exaggerated drama for the sake of hooking in its audience. That is a sense of confidence that I can really appreciate and I hope more people do as well.