#dont get me wrong. there's nothing especially bad about hdigtwmcf. i like it well enough and im keeping up with it.

[yuripoll]

Okayyy propagandising <3 Sakura Namiki is a 1957 kind of... proto-yuri about girls playing ping pong; it's a decade older than the first manga to really be considered yuri, but despite it being Class S, there's no sudden tragedy, no inevitability of the girls separating, no male love interest introduced in the last minute... the romance might not be as explicit as you'd expect from a modern yuri, but for something from the 50s? It's got a good track record!

Plus, while I can't say anything for the significance of this work in particular, the author, Macoto Takahashi, was a pretty influential figure in the development of the shoujo artstyle, popularising the big glittery eyes synonymous with the genre. He did an interview with ANN about his art process that I thougth was interesting! Unfortunately, his family announced his death just this Tuesday :( I didn't intentionally drop this the same week (I've had the bracket post in my drafts for a good while) it just uh. worked out that way.

Very gauche for to say 'vote in his memory' or some shit, which is good because there's a much more compelling reason to vote Sakura Namiki: the artistry of it. More than anything, putting aside story and yuri history and Takahashi's impact on manga, I think that the way this manga approaches visual storytelling is on par with manga known for interesting panelling, like Witch Hat Atelier, and I wish I'd seen more stuff like it!

Like here, for example. I really love how the top panels express the character's feelings and the situation without purely relying on the text or the clarity of the drawings: the way the full panels are taken up by the crowd, almost claustrophobic; the jagged edges giving a sense of instability, like the crowd pushing at the boundary and might spill over; Yukiko small in the centre, giving the feeling of being suffocated; no one in the crowd is drawn with the same darker tones used to draw Yukiko, further visually isolating her at a glance. Just very well done.

Probably my favourites, though, are these pages from pink pong games. For one, that first page with the ping pong balls as text bubbles? Genius. I dont even know what I can say about it. Have you seen it? You get it. I also adore how the movement of the ball is communicated through traces of it, like you're watching the game in slow motion, versus the quickness implied by motion lines - really ramps up the tension.

What impresses me most about these pages in particular is, again, how the framing and composition impacts the storytelling. In the purple pages, Yukiko is playing against her rival. Both pages use symmetrical frames and have symmetry within those frames. To me, it emphasises the match being... well. A match. The clean trajectory of the ball and the pages' symmetry have a feeling of precision to them that expresses a cold professionalism. On the green page, however, she's playing against her crush. The central panel is at an off angle, asymmetrical. There's a wild flurry of balls, the trajectories overlapping in a chaotic mess, impossible to follow. On one hand, it's emphasising the level of skill on display - even if you, the onlooker, can't follow it, the players can - but on the other? The clearest aspect of that central panel are the two girls, even the table falls to the wayside; in stark contrast to the clarity and symmetry of Yukiko's match against her rival, you can feel the passion when she's playing against her crush.

Last thing: there's a point where the girls go to the ballet, and it details the full play, over eleven consecutive pages. Eleven pages of nothing but these two actors, the key motions of this dancem and a line summary of what's happening. Weird fucking place to bring up Chainsaw Man, but this kind of pacing reminds me of Fujimoto, particularly the montage of Fujino working with her back to the camera page after page. IIRC in one of the before CSM anthologies, he mentioned an editor's comment that he does in 16 pages what could be done in 6, and I genuinely think that's a huge strength of his work and a cornerstone of how good his stuff is. Its the same kind of technique on display here, just forcing you to slow down and absorb the ballet.

TL;DR; As much as the story itself doesn't bring anything new to the table, that's becuase Sakura Namiki is almost 70 years old, and there's plenty to appreciate about it aside from that. Let the magic of Takahashi's storybook style illustration into your heart.

UNDERDOGS ROUND 1