Catching up on Now That We Draw

I enjoyed the first two volumes of Kyu Takahata and Yuwji Kaba's Now That We Draw (reviewed in this column and this one) enough that I wanted to keep reading it. 

The premise is quite fun. High school classmates Uehara Yuuki and Miyamoto Niina are both aspiring manga artists trying to break into the industry, and their shared dream seems to be the only thing they have in common. Uehara is quiet, friendless, socially anxious and at the absolute bottom of the social hierarchy, the kind of person one might expect of wanting to be a comics artist, I guess. Meanwhile, Miyamoto is bubbly, outgoing and gorgeous, the kind of girl all the boys at school have crushes on. 

Both of them are told by the editors they submit their work to that they have the same problem: Neither seems to know much about romance or relationships, despite trying to make comics on the subject, and it shows in their work. So, Miyamoto proposes a solution. They will pretend to date one another in order to gain experience. Remarkably, Uehara is extremely reluctant, despite how hot Miyamoto obviously is, in large part because he's so shy as to be terrified, and partially because he doesn't want to hurt Miyamoto's social standing at school with their classmates.

Naturally, as they pretend to date (mostly when no one's looking), they begin to develop feelings for one another, but the creators quickly move from Miyamoto pushing Uehara into rapidly playing out a series of rom-com cliches to the two diligently working on their manga and cheering one another on. By the end of the second volume, both get jobs as assistants...for attractive artists of the opposite sex. Takahata and Kaba have to throw up some roadblocks to keep the protagonists achieving a happily ever after too soon, right? 

I placed a hold on the third volume of the series, which was actually released in October of last year, when it was still on order by one of the libraries in the consortium my home library belongs to (I think I've mentioned before that the consortium consists of 40 libraries throughout northeast Ohio; only a single one of them had ordered a copy of volume 3, though). Then I forgot about it, assuming it would show up when the book was released.

Well, last month I noticed that not only had volume 3 come out, but so too had volume 4, and volume 5 was due in the summer. (Meanwhile, that third volume I had placed a hold on is still showing up as "on order" on the library's website.) So, I gave up and decided to simply buy the next two volumes rather than borrowing them. (This is, by the way, why I almost never have a complete series of any manga; like, if I stick with Now That We Draw through its conclusion, I'll be missing the first two volumes...unless I go back and buy them before they go out of print, I guess.)

Perhaps it's just as well. While I'd obviously rather read a comic for free rather than pay for it, and, as you've seen for yourselves, it's not like I need any more comics filling up my house, this series has a tendency to highlight Miyamoto's chest on the covers (see the one below, for example) and, now approaching 50, I feel a little weird being seen in public carrying or reading books prominently featuring a school girl's breasts on the cover, you know? 

As the fourth volume opens, the kids are finishing up their submissions to a newcomer manga contest—which involves a scene where they meet in an empty classroom over the summer to take photo reference together, of things like unbuttoning one another's shirts or leaning in for kisses and suchlike. 

As they ready for a school festival, in which their class will be putting on a cosplay cafe (which gives Kaba plenty of opportunities to draw fan service of Miyamoto in various skimpy costumes that she tries on in front of Uehara at a store), they hear the results of the contest. Uehara's manga has been accepted, while Miyamoto's has been rejected. 

Throughout the festival, she puts on a brave face, but Uehara, who at this point seems to know her better than anyone, realizes she's really hurting and he ultimately manages to get through to her. At the climax of the second chapter (or "plot" as they are labeled here), they both say very dramatic things about their feelings for one another. "I like you!" Uehara declares...and then immediately backtracks, amending it to, "No...Um...!! I...I like your manga!! That's what I meant!!" A few pages later, she very seriously tells him that she doesn't mind if everyone at school sees them together at the festival and thinks they're boyfriend and girlfriend...and then, after a few silent panels, decides to add, "Just kidding!!"

The night seems to awaken something in Miyamoto, though, as she has a romantic dream about Uehara, and finds herself confused, even baffled by the fact that she realizes that she actually seems to, like, like-like him. 

There's a very funny scene where a friend of hers shows her a copy of the latest issue of Loveteen magazine, featuring some handsome boy celebrity on the cover, and she thinks, "My type...I go for guys like this!!" 

She then looks back and forth between the idol on the cover and Uehara in the back of the room, secretly reading manga behind a textbook, and realizes, "They're totally nothing alike!! There's, like, not a single thing they have in common!!"

Much of the rest of the volume then switches focus to Uehara and the popular, professional manga artist he's working as an assistant to, a gifted teenager who is extremely quiet and detached, to the point that she barely talks to, or even makes eye contact with, her editors. In fact, Uehara seems to be the only one she will communicate with at all.

Here, we find out why. It turns out the artist, Shioiri Ren, is actually a friend that Uehara had met way back when he was still in daycare. He was super-enthusiastic about manga back then, to the exclusion of all else, which is where we get this great panel from Takahata and Kaba:

Ren is a quiet little girl who doesn't own a TV, and the other kids don't play with her. Little Uehara tries to convince all the other kids to read his manga, but no one seems interested, until Ren takes him up on it (She points to the word "love" in a panel of the manga they're reading, and says that's her name; a footnote says that the kanji for "love" can also be read as "Ren"; at any rate, little Uehara takes to calling her "Love-chan.")

So, it turns out Uehara had actually introduced his current sensei to manga all those years ago! (As to why he didn't recognize her, she moved away suddenly, and only just recently returned to town...now with darker skin, short, dyed blonde hair and an accent).

After Uehara helps her out with meeting a tough deadline (which involves him skipping school for an all-nighter and all-dayer) and with dealing with the aftereffects of her watching a very scary movie, we get an extended flashback sequence, after which Uehara finally recognizes Ren as his long-lost friend from childhood.

So, Miyamoto now seems to have a rival for Uehara's attention and affection...! Not that Miyamoto knows for sure that she even wants his attention and affection, of course. But still! Ren and Uehara seem like...like destiny, don't they...?! (Also, though technically a year older than Uehara and Miyamoto, Ren is very small and petite, and actually looks like she "fits" with Uehara in a way that the tall and leggy Miyamoto does not; in fact, in the next volume, someone will see Uehara and Miyamoto on a fake date together and ask her if Uehara is her little brother). 

In the fourth volume, the leads start interacting more with their senpai in the field of manga...and their rivals in the field of romance. 

In the opening chapter, Miyamoto invites Uehara on another date—another fake date, for their manga—this time to a theme park, hoping that doing so will help her discover once and for all if she really likes him or not. 

To her chagrin—and my amusement and thus, I assume, that of many readers—she finds him frustratingly cute and attractive throughout. At the beginning of the outting, he tries on a pair of novelty cat ears that a park worker hands them (the name of the park is Yomineko Land), and she finds him so freaking adorable that she gets extremely pissed off about it (This sequence reminded me a bit of Manbagi's earlier reactions to Tadano in Komi Can't Communicate, where her attraction to him would manifest in bursts of anger at him). 

Later, she visits the Newcomer Awards ceremony, where Uehara is being feted among the other young manga artists...as does Yumemei Gasaki, the handsome young man who Miyamoto is working as an assistant for, and Ren/Love-chan. At one point, the four all end up talking to one another briefly (I think I got Miyamoto's senpai's name right there; he is usually referred to in this volume as either Yume-kun or Yume-sensei, depending on who is talking to him).

Then, Ren decides she needs to update her wardrobe, which consists of an oversized hoodie, and, at the mall, she runs into Miyamoto, who delights in finding new outfits for the doll-like manga-artist; she takes her under her wing and shows her a good time, seemingly unaware that the whole reason Ren wants to find a cute new outfit is to impress Uehara.

And then, finally, all four of them end up going on a road trip together, ostensibly so Yumemei can do location research for his manga (He seems to have ulterior motives too, though; for example, he has actually read Uehara's manga, and thus knows something Miyamoto does not, specifically that Uehara has based his heroine so much on Miyamoto that he's basically made her his protagonist). 

There, they visit a temple and, in another manga trope, they visit a hot spring together, where we learn that Yume-sensei is much more well-endowed than Uehara. Though nothing is drawn on the page of course, there's a panel of Uehara peeking at him, followed by one of him freaking out, thinking "Are you kidding me?!", with an image of a wooly mammoth in the background. Then Uehara glances under his own towel, and there's a cute image of a cartoony baby elephant trumpeting "Barrooom". (Oddly, I read this manga about the same time that I had read the last volume of Komi Can't Communicate, where an entire chapter is devoted to ranking Tadano and some of the other male characters by penis size.)

As for the girls, their bath and hot spring scenes are pretty fan service-y, probably the most fan service-y of any part of the series so far, and when Miyamoto notices Ren checking out her breasts, she says, "I trust you Ren-Chan-Sensei. You can touch them." This leads to about a page and a half of Ren groping Miyamoto with a look of intense concentration on her face. 

It's not all horniness, though, as the girls get to talking, and the book ends with an intense cliffhanger. Ren asks Miyamoto point blank how she feels about Uehara, neither of them aware that Uehara is just on the other side of a fence from them, and can apparently hear their conversation!

Now That We Draw Vol. 5 comes out in July, and Vol. 6 in December. It looks like neither of these two are overly boob-focused on their cover images, and Ren makes her first cover appearance on volume 6.