orange by Ichigo Takano

[vassalady]

(Image from the Seven Seas website)

Major warnings for discussion of suicide, if you didn't know that that was what orange is about.

Oh man. How do I even start to tell you about how much I loved orange? It was lovely. It was painful. I cried. I laughed. I cried some more.

It blew me away.

So orange is about a girl who receives a letter from her future self that one of her friends is going to die, and she needs to save him. That is the premise of the book in a sentence. But it's also about so much more than that. Because it is dealing with such a heavy subject (suicide) which is revealed in the second or third chapter, it's a heavy book. But there are also light moments of all the friends making good memories with each other, because that's life. There's happiness and sadness and the dull in between where intrusive thoughts weasel their way in.

Real talk, I've never been at risk like Kakeru, the boy Naho (our lead) is trying to save. But I HAVE dwelt on the idea of suicide far more than the average person, and for far longer than I'd like to admit. I've fantasized. A lot. Because sometimes that has felt like the only solution to not... being me, anymore. I've had to make the phone calls asking for professional help, awkwardly say yes that I've considered suicide, and rush to assure them that I'm at no risk of actually ACTING on it. Which only really makes a horrible cycle in a way. But this isn't about me, at least any more than we can make all fiction about ourselves or its relationship to ourselves.

This is all to say that I got it, to some degree at least. It felt so real, so relatable to me, what Kakeru was going through. How he felt.

I also understood how Naho and her friends felt. How everything you do seems to be the WRONG thing, and you know that your friend is just smiling to smooth things over, and nothing's really RIGHT. Because you can't just MAKE it right with the right word or the right moment. Because it's a constant struggle to help someone and you feel so HELPLESS, because just being there doesn't seem ENOUGH. Especially when you CAN'T be there, because no one can always be there.

I guess all this is to say, it was a deeply emotional read. It's a deeply emotional read for anyone, because it's a deeply emotional story. How we relate to it will be different for everyone, and it IS just a story, so some may think it doesn't relate to their experiences at all. That the idea of "saving" someone may be insulting or the fact that Naho and Kakeru's feelings for one another play a big role. But it's also fiction and fiction doesn't need to relate to everyone in everything. It doesn't have to do things perfectly because it's about people who are imperfect.

orange is a story about connection. It's a story about communication. It's about trust and friendship and love. It's about living your life as best you can, about taking risks, about reaching out, about apologizing. It's about being an awkward teenager, stuck struggling with things they shouldn't have to deal with in an ideal world and struggling with things that are all just a part of growing up, that nearly everyone struggles with at some point in their life. It's about being imperfect and messy and trying to think of others and being selfish.

It's complicated. It's also simple.

This isn't much of a review. It's a rambling mess of nonsense, I know. I'm not skilled at writing reviews yet (if I ever will be), and I probably need to sit with orange longer than the several hours that I did, having finished it first thing this morning.

I think it's a gorgeous comic, in story, in art, in character, in emotion. I borrowed it from the library, but it's one I'll need to pick up, even if I never make it through a reread, just to look at and page through from time to time, perhaps. Probably anyone who is interested has already read it, but if not, and you can handle the subject matter, I absolutely recommend it. The year has only begun, but it's maybe my favorite thing I've read so far. It is among my favorite things if I include everything I've ever read.

I still need to read orange: future, so no spoilers for that, please!

orange is available in the US from Seven Seas