Futari Dake is my
favorite type of manga for all that it is not a typical manga, and I’m not even
talking about the dark-and-edgy bullshit. For one, Futari Dake is technically a doujinshi; for another, Futari Dake is
a thirty-page one-shot. Compact, quiet, dramatic, and intimate, Futari Dake unravels bullying with deep,
understated empathy.
Title: Futari Dake
Author & Artist: Mountain Pukuichi
High school girl Saki becomes interested in her classmate,
Ogata Ayumi. Saki eventually breaks off from her group of friends—who bully
Ogata—to befriend Ogata. The story is very simple, very simply told, and it has
been told some hundreds of thousands times before but I have never seen it told
quite like this. Ogata is a devastatingly realistic combination of distressed
and dealing with it. She is bullied not because she is fat or “plain-looking,”
not because a popular boy likes her and that doesn’t jive with the other girls,
not because she is special or different or any combination thereof. Futari
Dake directly comments on it: “Because we all kind of had a similar look,”
thinks Saki, “I ended up hanging out with these girls right from the start.
They’re probably picking on [Ogata] for some equally meaningless reason.”
Saki is no stereotype herself. She is not the kind of loud,
aggressive, sociable, best-friend-to-the-heroine character; she’s just really
self-assured and really interested in
Ogata. (The homoerotic undertone here is barely noticeable, but perhaps it
plays a huge part in not allowing Saki and Ogata to slot into stereotypical
roles.) Saki doesn’t hotly confront her former friends when they bully Ogata
either. The confrontation is in a girls’ bathroom, members only because that’s
how we take care of our business, pun intended. Later, the leader of the group
finds Saki and warns her of the bullying to come, but the meeting is quiet and
perfectly amiable. It’s not personal, you see, it’s just high school politics.
And because Futari
Dake deals in real characters with real human depth, it handles the
bullying realistically in a way few coming-of-age stories have been able to.
Ogata doesn’t stand up to anyone, and the bullies never repent or reap
appropriate comeuppance. Ogata just has a friend to weather the bullying with
her now and that’s more cathartic and moving than any kind of retribution arc. In
the first turning point of Futari Dake,
Saki goes up to Ogata and apologizes.
Not just says that she’s sorry. Saki apologizes. Even though she’s never
directly, physically hurt Ogata or badmouthed her. Saki is not the savior,
doesn’t task herself with breaking Ogata out of her shell because Saki is
simply here to make amends and to get to know Ogata.
Because Saki doesn’t understand Ogata, instead of alienating
her, Saki embarks on a quest to know her.
It’s a story about empathy. That’s not just my favorite kind
of manga; that’s my favorite kind of story, period.
It doesn’t hurt that for two subjects I hold very dear to my
heart—bullying and female friendship—Futari
Dake has portrayed both with stunning nuance. Earlier I mentioned Futari Dake’s homoerotic subtext, which
never quite culminates in anything and hell, is less blatant than half of the
shows airing on television, but is perhaps the crucial underpinnings of this
story. Here, a heterosexual romance does not take precedence over the
relationship—by all appearances a friendship—between two women. Another manga
(Tomodachi no Hanashi) in this ilk belabors the point—the attractive friend
does not desire to date any guy who doesn’t want to spend all of their dates
with her best friend too. Yet by simply introducing the possibility of a
lesbian relationship, Futari Dake mutes
the strange absence of any male presence in the story to something barely
noticeable. It lets two people come to each other free of assumptions and
merely wanting to understand. This is the subversive power of yuri.
