Latest novelty from the Yuri collection from Taifu Comics editions for this year 2024, Love at first sight! saw its first volume published in France at the end of November. Pre-published in Japan under the title “Watashi no Kobushi wo Uketomete!” (which can be literally translated as “Accept my fist!”), between January 2018 and October 2020, on the site categorized seinen Young Ace Up from Kadokawa editions, this work in four volumes was the first (and still unique, at present where these lines are written) professional series by Murata, mangaka who is indeed a fan of stories based on female homosexual relationships since, in the amateur world, we also owe him several doujinshi around series Love Live! and BanG Dream!, among others. Enjoying a fairly solid popularity among fans of this type of story, Thunderbolt in Your Face! was also published in English by Yen Press in 2022-2023, under the name “Catch These Hands!”.
This series begins by immersing us with Takebe, who was, at the time of high school, a thief, and even the most feared delinquent in her establishment… and even with the other thugs in the surrounding establishments, since she got into trouble often with her in the company of her gang. But four years later, now that they have all become young adults, the girls in the group have gone off on a tangent, started living together, or even are already married and have or are expecting a child… In short, they returned in the mold, to the great displeasure of Takebe who has the impression of not really changing. Not that she's still a breaker: she simply kept her eternally bad/sullen appearance and her character capable of leaving at a moment's notice.
However, Takebe feels it: she too is just asking to change. Rather than locking herself into her routine made up of odd jobs and idleness, where she hardly sees her friends anymore and where she completely ignores the fashions of recent years, she would like to evolve, or even get married herself and have a child one day, if anyone really wants her. So, by going to a clothing store to try to catch the trends of the moment which she understands nothing about, and by finding Soramori there, her old rival from another high school with whom she always clashed, that she didn't never beaten or even able to frame, Takebe probably did not expect what will happen to him. Indeed, Soramori challenges her to a duel, like in the good old days, but with a surprising stake: if she wins, Takebe will have to go out with her!
What is the deeper reason for this request from Soramori? We will discover this soon enough, in an amusing way since Murata effectively evokes the reasons why this girl always came to meet Takebe in the past, and skillfully diverts the clichés that made Soramori a thug in spite of herself. And what will happen if the two women actually start dating? Well, this is precisely what makes this first volume so exciting, in which Murata plays rather very well on the foundations he has laid.
First of all, it's Takebe's way of being that delights the most: in addition to constantly having her excellent dark looks even when she doesn't mean anything bad (it's not her fault, she's always been like that) as well as her mood swings and other desires to wear a few mandals, the young woman easily amuses by her discrepancy with the fashions of the moment, whether in terms of clothing where she has never evolved , or social networks for which it has no interest, which even earned Murata a funny chapter where he gently hits on certain absurd Instagram trends. And these moments of difference, Soramori sometimes willingly accompanies him!
Then, there is, precisely, the nature of the relationship between our two heroines, with on one side a Soramori who has always wanted to get closer to Takebe, and on the other side a Takebe who, until then, had always considered this girl his biggest rival and only saw her as someone to beat. Suffice to say that it will take time for their relationship to evolve, if it evolves at all of course. And in the meantime, Murata already offers some opportunities to see what these two women can bring to each other: we will appreciate what Soramori expresses by affirming that Takebe does not need to fully fit into the mold and that she loves him as he is. that she is, and we will like to observe the moments where Takebe shows her good nature behind her desire to hit, like the passage with Maria where she worries about Soramori, perhaps not out of affection but out of righteousness.
Murata accompanies all of this with a fairly adequate visual rendering: far from offering great graphic richness, his drawing mainly plays on a simplicity bringing out the expressive designs of his characters and especially their faces which are generally very effective, especially in the case of Takebe who , inevitably, accentuates the offbeat side well.
We will now have to see how the series evolves, but for the immediate future Love at first sight! leaves on very sympathetic bases. The story will not necessarily look very far in its developments for the moment, but there is already plenty to be seduced by this slice of life, rather original in its basic principle and quite amusing, where the shift and even the absurd impulses are effectively born from these two somewhat marginalized heroines and from the unusual relationship that is created between them.
On the French edition side, finally, Taifu delivers a careful copy: the dust jacket carefully, faithfully and soberly adapts the Japanese original right down to the typography of the title logo, the first color page on glossy paper is appreciable, the paper is supple and quite opaque allows for very good printing quality, the translation provided by Karen Guirado is overall very well in keeping with the tone of the work, and the graphic adaptation and lettering work carried out by Jean-François Leyssène is clean.
