Original Title: Sono Yubi Dake ga Shitteiru
Author: Satoru KANNAGI and Hotaru ODAGIRI (illustrator)
Original Publisher/Imprint: Tokuma Shoten
English Publisher/Imprint: Digital Manga Publishing, Yaoi Series
Reviewed by Nora
Ah, high school romance. Is there anything sweeter? (Okay, right, well, lots of things, but bear with me here.) Now add in the spices of apparent predestination, love triangles, school rumors, misunderstanding, clandestine meetings, status/age politics, and really hot boys, and the result is a witches' brew of angst and poignancy that will give every teenaged girl -- and not a few grown women -- heart palpitations. The good kind.
This is not to say that Kannagi and Odagiri's "Only the Ring Finger Knows" is high art. It's classic, indeed cliched, boys' love in the high school romance subgenre. Those of us who've been in the fandom for awhile pretty much know the plot before we open the book, just by looking at the cover art. We've got two pretty boys, one positioned higher on the cover to indicate that he's taller/older/higher in status or otherwise the seme. We've got flowers all around and Vaseline-screening in the background, so we can guess this is a tale of tender romance and not throw-down legs-up sex sex sex. Of course we know the taller one wants the shorter one, and will spend the bulk of the story attempting to seduce him in some way or another. We can guess from the possessive way the tall one grips his companion's hand that he's the more emotionally vulnerable of the two -- perhaps to the point of obsession or even violence, though this isn't Ozaki so he's not likely to become a true nutjob. And of course we know the shorter one will resist his feelings, perhaps because his paramour is male but more likely because otherwise there wouldn't be a plot.
In OtRFK's case, all of these assumptions are more or less correct. The premise is simple: at Wataru Fujii's high school, a popular fad is for dating couples to wear matching rings. Wataru isn't dating anyone, but he wears a ring anyway. So naturally he's a bit put out to discover that someone else in the school wears a ring which matches his: Yuichi Kazuki, a hottie upperclassman. A chance encounter at a water fountain brings the two ring-mates into contact with one another; hijinks ensue. You know what I mean. Yuichi alternately treats Wataru like crap and flirts with him. Wataru alternately curses Yuichi and wonders why his heart goes ba-dump ba-dump whenever Yuichi's around. Meanwhile Wataru's little sister has the hots for Yuichi, and Yuichi keeps making these cryptic statements about his ring having been given to him by a special person, and Wataru sees Yuichi in the company of an attractive young woman and gets the wrong idea, and so on. If you've ever read any high school BL, you've seen all this before.
But just because something is commonplace doesn't mean it can't be good, and OtRFK is definitely that. I found my own heart going ba-dump ba-dump along with Wataru's whenever Yuichi went into seduction mode. There's no sex in the story -- nothing more "serious" than a kiss -- and yet I got the shivers when Yuichi kissed Wataru's ring-finger; it was an unbelievably sensual scene. I'll even admit experiencing a dewy-eyed moment when Wataru finally admitted that he loved Yuichi. I was annoyed when I reached the end of the book and realized that it was a standalone -- Mr. (yes, Mr.) Kannagi has continued the boys' story in a series of novels (on which the manga was based), but that's it for the manga. This is a true shame, since Odagiri's artwork is truly beautiful and a joy to look at. And on top of all that, I actually like the way the story was translated into English. The dialogue is clear, comprehensible, with an easy flow. No inappropriate colloquialisms, no hamhanded Americanizations. Even without honorifics I got a clear sense of Japanese social norms and sempai/kouhai dynamics. For example, Wataru only refers to Yuichi by his last name even though Yuichi quickly jumps to a first-name basis with Wataru; subtle, but effective. This translation is the work of one Sachiko Sato -- prominently credited on the title page, unlike in Be Beautiful's books. I sincerely hope DMP uses her for future works. This is the way Japanese should be translated.
In fact, I liked OtRFK so much that I'm a bit freaked out. Why did I like this story so much when I loathed "Golden Cain" and wasn't too keen on DMP's own "Passion", either? I haven't been able to pin it down. The quality of the art (or lack thereof in GC's case)? The quality of the translation? Or is it something more subtle, like the writing, or the arrangement of the panels, or the pace? Maybe all of the above. Whatever it is, I've been forced to revise my original assessment of English-translated BL: clearly it doesn't all suck. This realization alternately delights and frustrates me -- delight, because it means that BL need not suffer any loss of exoticism or quality through translation. Frustrates, because the Puritanical culture and moronic marketing plans of Western industry will force companies like DMP to bring over only the most tame and lowest-common-denominator BL manga, rather than the best and most interesting. What OtRFK tells me is that if a Western company applied the proper level of quality and respect -- as they did in this case -- my favorite BL works could be imported and translated in a way that does them justice. But because my favorite BL works are ten thousand times more controversial than this one... that will never happen.
::sigh::
Well, anyway. I'm going to keep an eye on the English-translation movement for awhile because this is interesting stuff. I'll report regularly on my findings here. As for OtRFK, I highly recommend it -- it's nothing you haven't seen before, but it's nicely done for all that. Enjoy.