Title: The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t a Guy at All (Note: Fans of this series also call it Green Yuri)

Volume: 1

Mangaka: Sumiko Arai

Translator: Ajani Oloye

US Publisher: Yen Press

Age Relevance: Middle School & Up

How Essential Is It?: Essential

Curricular Connections?: Music, SEL, Identity

Reader’s Advisory Tags: Romance, Music Fandom, Bands, LGBTQ+ Relationships, Gender Identity, Yuri, GL

Anime: N/A

Content Warnings: So adorable you might collapse. But seriously, romance is primarily fluffy and cute.

Publisher Synopsis:

Fashionable and upbeat high schooler Aya loves listening to rock, but no one else seems to share her interest…until she meets a cool, stylish employee at a CD shop. Dressed in black from head to toe, he has this air of mystery about him, and his taste in music is impeccable. Aya falls hard for him—not knowing her crush is actually her female classmate Mitsuki! For her part, Mitsuki generally keeps to herself and avoids standing out at school. But given that she sits right next to Aya, Mitsuki’s all too aware of the other girl’s feelings, and she’s afraid to reveal the truth. So why does she find herself talking with Aya more and more…?

Review:

This title has been nominated for Best New Manga for the American Manga Awards, for which I am a judge. The other judges for this award are Shige (CJ) Suzuki, Katy Castillo (Yatta-Tachi), Lynzee Loveridge (Anime News Network), and Varun Gupta (Manga Mavericks).

I’ve been reading this manga for years in Japanese, so when it finally got an English release, I’m not going to deny that I was extremely excited. Sumiko Arai’s illustration style is just so evocative and charged with electric chemistry, it brings you right back to being an awkward teen with your heart pounding.

Arai utilizes green to make this manga pop, and it just works. The lime color makes every image bounce with an electricity that seems perfectly in tandem with the rock theme.

The plot of the manga is essentially in the title. Aya is a teen who loves classic rock, and she’s developed a crush on the super hot music store employee at her local shop. Drawn in by the employee’s mysterious looks dark looks and cool demeanor, Aya is crushing hard… without realizing that this hottie in a hoodie is her classmate, Mitsuki.

There’s a delightful comedy as Mitsuki, who is shy and withdrawn at school, has to listen to Aya rhapsodize about “the guy at the record shop” with her friends. This comedy of errors does eventually lend itself to a path of meaningful connection, and perhaps something more.

What impressed me most, as someone who has worked with teens most of my life, is how authentic this manga is to the way teens act. They’re awkward, unsure of themselves, and the connections between them have a world-defining gravity in their lives. Aya and Mitsuki’s shared passion for rock is such a reflection of how teenagers form community over the things they value.

This title is one I feel is absolutely essential because of how it sees teen love and connection. It’s a model for healthy relationships built on mutual interest and friendship, and a fantastic window, mirror, and sliding glass door.