Towards the end of Hana Kimi's second volume, Hisaya Nakajo wrote that before Hana Kimi's success, she never penned a story that went beyond six chapters. She might not have expected her manga to achieve such international popularity either, even as she hastily drew through her manga's first thirty pages in just three days as if her life depended on it. Three decades, twenty-three volumes, some odd number of live-action remakes, and an anime adaptation later, Hana Kimi is as popular among its diehard fans as ever before.

Readers can revisit the story's initial chapters in its three-volume omnibus. So it goes that the young Mizuki Ashiya disguises herself as a boy to join an all-boys school and get with Izumi Sano, an all-star high-jumping athlete, and the guy of her dreams. The escapist romance reads like a fairy tale romance, and coupled with artwork that's as rosy as it is detailed, it's no small wonder why it became such a massive hit to begin with. Nakajo is no slouch on the pen as she conjures flowery panel after flowery panel with her brand of intimate melodrama that feels quaint despite the usual high school teen rom-com setting.

The characters are certainly nice, although Mizuki feels like an audience surrogate insert character in every regard. Her desire to be Sano's friend colors Izumi's entire personality here without going much further beyond that. Sano serves as Mizuki's objet petit a, and in the initial chapters of Hana Kimi, he's burdened by the loss of his motivation to pull off the high jump that set Mizuki's heart ablaze to begin with. Of course, Sano manages to perform his high jump at the end of volume two during the big track meet, although I do think that it takes a few chapters too long to reach its inevitable conclusion.

There's a lot in Hana Kimi that drags for me, although this slow simmer of a story is not too huge a flaw. These slower moments give way to a wide range of other characters who are neatly built up, as well as some neat slice-of-lifery. We get to know the school a little bit more, from its cute dog Yujiro, whose fondness towards girls almost blows Izumi's cover, to its school nurse Dr. Umeda, whose homosexuality has him being one of the more somber characters here. The foundations of Nakatsu's complex, if not problematic, feelings towards Mitsuki are here, building up the quasi-love triangle between him, Sano, and Mizuki that starts coming into fruition a few volumes later. Some minor characters are introduced here and there, although some of their scenes serve to put the story on pause rather than progress it. Practically all of Hana Kimi's characters don't leap out of the pages and grab us like that, but again, this is escapist romance aimed at a younger demographic. I'm reading Hana Kimi, not a novel by E. L. Doctorow.

Still, Sano's character seems the most built up here, since he finds out Mizuki's genderbending secrets early on and develops feelings for her that feel genuine enough for the manga's melodramatic romance to hold sway. His relationship with her goes through its highs and lows, with one moment causing Mizuki to cry, and then having Nakatsu scold him for it. The teenage melodrama is cheesier than a slice of New York City pizza, yet nonetheless believable thanks to the slow pacing leading to tender scenes of intimacy. Add into the mix a fiery, bullying rival character who does his damndest to ensure that Sano will never make that high jump, and you've got a neat, dramatic backbone to Sano's opening arc. Sano's chemistry with Mizuki continues to build up when the two, plus Nakatsu, work at Dr. Umeda's family's inn, coming complete with a beach trip and some more melodrama and characters entering the fray. I might have preferred it if the story utilized fewer characters here and instead solely focused on Mizuki's relationship with Sano and Nakatsu, but that just might be me.

There are some other obvious flaws. Umeda finds out that Mizuki's actually a girl, and then later on, Sano finds out, too. Sano doesn't reveal this as Umeda does. Why he refuses to utter even a single peep defies logic, especially since I'm sure that the two could keep it as much of a secret as Umeda does. But then again, we wouldn't have that much of a story if Sano and Mizuki dropped the act of maintaining appearances, would we? Mitsuki's cover is almost blown by other characters accidentally, sometimes at the end of some chapters as a cliff-hanger that gets repetitive after the second or third time around. There's also the very problematic way it depicts homosexuality and gender roles that date it quite a bit; the good folks at Anime Feminist have done a better job explaining this than I ever could.

In my report for the Anime NYC premiere of Hana Kimi's first episode, I labelled it generic and boring. I cringe at a lot of the wording I used in my piece, but do I still stand by what I said? Yes and no. Hana Kimi and its high school romance is not the most immersive thing in the world for me, and I still stand by the fact that the episode is a bit too slow. Personally, I would have liked it better if the moment Umeda found out that Mizuki was a girl had happened midway through the episode instead of at the end. There were also a few moments where Mizuki tried to awaken a sleeping Sano that could have been trimmed down, maybe even had one of them cut out entirely. But that flaw was in the manga's opening chapter, which, to the anime's credit, was adapted precisely. To blame the anime for being so faithful to the manga is faulty criticism. I do, however, admire the way the story and its characters start enough to recommend the manga, and understand why its fans have been excitedly waiting for its anime for so long. Hana Kimi remains an enchanting light read for anybody who wants to leap back in time into shoujo manga's past.