tw: step-incest, partial male nudity, cocaine, tiddies
jokes I will avoid: "what are you doing stepbro", threesomes, the ending (bc it's a joke) jokes I will not avoid: eggplants, KissxSis, Sasuga Kei, fish cakes, [Drugs.]
I've had a weird three years.
Well, I doubt weird is the right word, if the metaphysical turbulence of my past 38 months could even be encapsulated in just a word. Pathetic, maybe? But, because one word is never enough:
I ended my relationship with the love of my life hoping to refocus on my own development and better myself after realizing how bitter and shallow a person I had become using my love as an excuse. Sequestered from talking to her or contacting her at all, and instead of bettering myself as I had intended, I gave in to all of my worst fears and anxieties, became bitterer and shallower, stopped writing, passively dropped out of school and shut myself in with escapism. Which is a fancy way of saying that until the pandemic, I had been shamelessly (shamefully? shamefulessly?) binging anime, movies, and manga with no balancing influences – aside from weed, gacha, and watching baseball, which are not balancing influences – since October 2018.
Pathetic is definitely the right word.
Putting all that aside, we are gathered here today to dive 8,298 words deep into the manga that consumed the largest chunk of my life: Sasuga Kei's Domestic na Kanojo (eng: Domestic Girlfriend) -> DomeKano -> DomeGirl. Even though dome is only given TWICE in the entire manga. (alright, alright: two and a half times. Fuck Mi-a-i.)
If you haven't heard of it... well, I won't tell you to go read it. You don't deserve that.
tl;dr: DomeGirl follows highschooler Fujii Natsuo, who finds himself in a new stepfamily with the teacher he's been crushing on (Hina) and the random girl he just lost his virginity to (Rui). Triangle ensues.
Aanyways, as long as you don't detest three-sided polygons, DomeGirl has one of the most gripping love triangles ever written — KissxSis comparisons notwithstanding. It's not Gamers!' love hexagram, or even its pentagram, but both hexagrams and pentagrams have lots of lines, and lots of lines make my head hurt. Author Sasuga Kei has a strange proclivity towards panty shots, and shoves in telenovela plot points and harem tropes like speed bumps in the Palisades, but her instincts are polished and truly shine in the manga's bright spots. Let's not mince words, though: the ending to this story is utter garbage. It's the most bullshit manga ending I've seen since Usagi Drop, which ends by kinda giving a thumbs up to pedophilia. Yes, worse than Shingeki. Yes, worse than Shokugeki. Worse than Demon Slayer. Worse than Neverland. Those are just regular rushed endings; this one is maybe the most spectacular rushjob of them all. —Okay, obviously not quite the total weirdness of Usagi Drop's cutback drop turn, but it's still one of the sharpest and most confounding left turns I have ever seen a story make. No pun intended.
If that sounds like a dumpster fire to you, you ain't the first. If that particular brand of suffering is your thing, well, I still won't tell you to go read it, but you'll probably give it a shot if you're at all interested. I can wait – but then, I spoil literally everything of value. So if you are a normal and healthy person, you may continue uninterrupted. I'm not sure why you're here, but hey! Come on in.
So for you normal healthy people, the setup goes like this: high schooler Fujii Natsuo, aspiring novelist, lives alone with his dad after his mom passed away when he was a kid. He's crushing hard on his English teacher, Tachibana Hina, but knows his feelings can never be realized, so he goes to a mixer with his two popular friends in order to move on. At the mixer he meets Rui, an introverted yet self-assured girl from another school, who asks him to have sex so she can understand what all the hype is about. Satisfied, they go their separate ways, never to meet again – until a couple days later, when Natsuo's dad (Akihito) invites over the woman he's been seeing (Tsukiko) and her two daughters — who you already know are Hina and Rui. The families move in together by chapter two because melodrama, and we have liftoff. Rui transfers to Natsuo's school, and after a bumpy start they grow comfortable and even bond over their shared love of reading, joining the defunct literature club and its lone member Miu, along with club advisor/secret famous author Kiriya. They are later joined in the club by promiscuous classmate Momo and American exchange student Al. After a handful of chapters Rui realizes she truly cares for Natsuo, and wants his attention to herself. Triangle ensues.
I initially picked up DomeGirl as a joke (hell, my nickname for it is a joke), and I was a Hina fan right away. I mean, Hikasa Youko. Come on. But outside my daily refill of Hikasa sounds, I was only really in it for shits and gigs. It was as much of a meme to me as it was to everyone else. The Gigguk videos wrote themselves. After episode one I dropped the show, because it was an anime in 2019, and switched over to the manga – mostly for the memes.
The memes persisted. But then a funny thing started to happen: Rui toiled through loneliness and confusion as her feelings evolved, and Hina fought her existing feelings for Shuu as new ones bloomed for Natsuo. Natsuo, meanwhile, faced familiar setbacks in pursuit of his dream, and his frog-in-the-well journey as a writer and as a waffle resonated intensely. The writing remained clunky and inconsistent; still, I had bought in a bit.
Speaking of, one of the first things that got buy in from me was Sasuga's bits. The caba club bit in chapter two between Natsuo and Rui is a little overdone but feels authentic to the characters, as does the affair bit with Fumiya and Mari in chapter five. But then it just kinda disappears despite him joining the literature club, and is nowhere to be found even after he joins the fucking theater club. It would go a long way to still have these organically funny moments throughout the whole of the manga, but if they were going to be shallow and reach-y then I'll take what we got.
When Natty broke his leg in chapter 42, I sold my left kidney to become a majority stakeholder. Relatability is a hell of a drug. (It's his calcaneus in my headcanon, ok?)
Said relatability was entirely lost when he got his cast off and immediately just like, spent a week walking all over Okinawa pain-free. Whatever. I sold most of my stake.
But by the time the cast (the other kind) had graduated high school and started college around 138, I was 100% bought in. The first half is super easy to breeze through with a streamlined plot structure and well-integrated supporting characters, and I almost venture to call it good - and then the story follows Natsuo through graduation and into university. Keep in mind, this was the first manga I read that actually followed the characters through high school and meaningfully into college without skipping. That was a huge deal for college dropout Jon, reminiscing on the past seven years. Even if it distracted me from the train derailment happening before my eyes (both with the manga and with my mental health), it's still a big fucking deal, and one of the few truly worthwhile elements of this manga.
But the main thrust of DomeGirl is Natsuo's long term development. Rui and Hina grow too, but they almost take turns growing, and plenty of it happens off-screen. Natsuo, of course, is the main character and primary thematic vehicle of the story. We have no choice then but to watch our waffle batter do his best to solidify over the course of almost four years.
Natsuo's defining characteristic is that of liquid. Extremely sensitive to the people around him, our leading man is the final boss of over-thinking. The only things he's sure of when the manga begins are his desire to write and his desire to be with Hina. After finally confessing to her and being denied, he tries to suffocate said feelings and force himself to move on with Momo. Once Momo becomes an object of sympathy for him, he completely forgets about getting with her and tries to re-affirm his feelings for Hina... by... kissing Rui. A real role model.
He again opens himself to the possibility of killing his feelings and moving on with Miu, because Boy Scout motto, right? Then Hina clings to him in her underwear and we're back to square one, then he almost dies and Rui confesses to him for real — so he accepts her proposal to start kissing in secret. He turns right around and tries to set her up with Al immediately after meeting him, and when he apologizes she kisses him again, only for Hina to walk in on them. When Hina voices confusion and asks about his feelings, he says he feels the same as the day he confessed. All in the first thirty chapters! One hell of a guy, huh?
A lot of development happens at the festival, and Natsuo starts to maybe take steps towards potentially becoming a slightly more viscous liquid, perhaps. For once he has a moment of actual emotional clarity with regards to Hina, and they start seeing each other. Secure in his and Hina's feelings, he starts actually rejecting Rui. He tells Hina he wouldn't mind dying if he can be with her. Commitment! Finally! When the Lecherous Kiriya arc is faxed in, Natsuo's development takes a backseat for the first time. Then all of a sudden he breaks his foot. Now he's in the driver's seat going pedal to the metal — well not exactly, because you can't drive with a cast on your right foot, but you get it. He lets Rui kiss him. He gets hard when she helps him bathe. (seriously, just use the goddamned stool. it's not that difficult.) Going to Hina's even on crutches, he lies to Rui, yet can't be bothered to cover his tracks. When she pokes through said lie, he simply cooks up a new one that's even harder to back up, then immediately reverts back to the old lie. Liar Natsuo is a liar. But once Rui catches him red-handed and passes the tipping point, he has another rare moment of emotional clarity, finally noticing something other than his own anxieties.
Even after that seminal moment in the park he quickly returns to normal, acting with the density of a true harem lead, and while he stops lying to Rui he keeps on lying to himself. He constantly spouts clichés and platitudes with Hina and rarely gets down to the heart of his darkness, instead blindly indulging himself while brushing off Momo's advances and Rui's burgeoning affection. The dream at his very core takes a backseat, and worse, becomes the means to an end. When he overhears Hina expressing doubts about their future together, he responds by effectively proposing with no planning or forethought — which somehow works! After her mom reignites Hina's guilt, they flail in immaturity before finally opening up to each other and committing to the future - and then the school finds out about their relationship. To save him from future repercussions Hina is transferred to Izu Ōshima, and Natsuo crumbles.
Even after Rui pulls him back together (the power of food!), he lets his guilt and fear suppress his growing affection for her. When his feelings pass the point of suppression, he decides to bottle them up and avoid her like the Justinian Plague. That goes about as poorly as any reasonable person would expect, and when he finally sees how much he means to her, he pleads for her not to tear his heart any more. Then they kiss, but this time with extra-dramatic lighting and a full page panel.
Waffle.
That night Natsuo puts his nose to the grindstone, sorting through his feelings the only way he knows how: writing. Grinding to the point of collapsing, he finally comes to somewhat of a resolution! With his waffle batter soul properly mixed, Natsuo finally cements Rui in his heart... as... important family. — nevermind all the kissing. Rui, sure in her affection, continues coming on to him. On Izu Ōshima he hears that Hina was crying about the past so he abandons Rui to go have his big reunion, only to be totally shut down. His uncertainty rages. Rui makes her heart crystal clear, but he's still too afraid of losing her to fully let her in. When she asks out Al to quell the resulting emptiness in her heart, Natsuo resigns himself to the fruits of his failures, sinking into self-pity and shame. After brushing up against writer's block and thus meeting acclaimed novelist Shigemitsu Tougen, he is shown a whole new world, and is thrust face-to-face with Juri, but also with his limitations as a person. The actress-turned-hostess-turned-actress gives him perspective, but also guidance — it's her advice that pushes Natsuo to stop bottling everything up and wear his feelings proudly. This is the biggest impetus for his subsequent growth spurt, even if it doesn't show right away. His waffle ass gets called out on the eve of the cultural festival and he melts briefly back into batter, but when confronted by Rui's steadfast love (in the form of a hairpin), the batter firms. He stops shaming his heart for wanting what it wants, but most importantly he recognizes his fear of loss and the self-defense mechanisms built around it. With Rui accepting his long-overdue confession, Natsuo resolves to walk forward with his feelings – and Rui's hand – firmly in hand.
Now, if you're this far in I can only assume you're already familiar with the story, but in case you've somehow gotten through 2000+ words of this without reading the manga: well before the cultural festival, Natsuo wins a newcomer award in a literary contest with the melancholic short story he wrote entirely from personal experience after Hina's transfer. As a result, he begins working with an editor for a well-known publisher, and is sent to be an assistant for Tougen, the renowned novelist known for turning away wannabe apprentices. Tougen, though, takes our waffle under his wing, and becomes his rock in the world of writing. Around this time Natsuo enters college at Meiji University and is basically forced into joining the drama club Forester, of which Kiriya was once a member. His earnest passion gains him the respect of club president/noted masochist Nara Ryuichi and the admiration of lead actress Serizawa Miyabi. Over time Natsuo grows as a storyteller, until he has a published novel by the midpoint of the second half, while putting together scripts under the club's genius playwright Hana. Partway through his first year Hina, drowning in loneliness, quits teaching to move back home, and boom: triangle re-formed.
Our waffle's sisyphean character arc is inextricable from DomeGirl's thematic discussion on writing, and his uphill climb to writerdom is both relatable (there it is) and believable. If you've ever been deeply interested in literature, or ever thought about becoming a writer, I'd have a hard time not recommending this manga, if only the first 200 chapters. It just has a lot to say. Mostly, Tougen has a lot to say - but every nugget that comes out of his mouth is gold. Some examples:
struggle, struggle, and then struggle some more
style and subject are a matter of individualism. expression is where a writer hones themselves to the finest edge
writing, even more so than most fields, rewards those who put the most time in. no matter your inherent talent or imagination, it all means diddly-squat if you don't hone your expression, and the only way to really do that is to spend loads of time writing
to connect with readers, you need to be able to create worlds full of detail both familiar and real, and in order to do that you need to constantly explore the world and the people around you, both through in-person research and reference material
literature is almost necessarily a solitary art, just as theater is necessarily a collaborative one. each requires different strengths and toolsets to convey emotion and meaning, but at the core of each are empathy and observation
write for yourself, or sell out: life would be infinitely easier if we could simply commit to one or the other
There is something to be said of the second half's straightforwardness, and Tougen's role as a wisdom vending machine. I do wish the discussion around writing was more purposeful, but the interspersed nuggets are meaningful enough on their own to draw in people passionate about writing. There's the bookworm with natural talent who just isn't interested in devoting her life to writing, the wishy-washy waffle who gives his all to writing because he has nothing else, the prolific established star, the uber-talented gimmick purveyor and trend surfer, and the tragic romantic slaving away to memorialize all the life he can. Natsuo struggles with writing the way he struggles with life: getting hung up on the same problem over and over, and stumbling backwards into maturation.
This is part of what makes his time at Meiji so compelling - he steps out of his comfort zone and into the collaborative world of theater, and grows exponentially alongside other like-minded creators. Even when he loses his writing around 205 and switches to acting he's forced to flex his creative muscles and toil both physically and mentally to keep moving forward. With Tougen and Forester driving him, for the first time it feels as if Natsuo has purpose and direction, and a clear blueprint to follow said direction. In this environment his storytelling abilities improve leaps and bounds, but most of all he becomes a better and more empathetic boyfriend, brother, friend, and even waffle.
But we're not here for a thematic exploration of literary creation. We're here for the waifus. Namely, the triangle. And boy, had I gotten myself invested in this one.
As Natsuo's long-standing crush, Hina is enigmatic at first. But once we get past her relationship with Shuu and her well-kept facade of constant charm, she is really hard not to root for and even more charming. Not to mention, like, Hikasa fucking Youko. But while I found myself on S.S. Hika– err, Hina – at first, the truth quickly became clear. Hina and Natsuo's relationship is rooted in immaturity and childishness; Hina gives in to her inner girlishness, getting from him the unwavering dedication she always desired from Shuu, while Natsuo gets the green light to indulge in all his teenage desires. She rebels against this immaturity quickly and often, flailing in guilt and shame for doing something most adults look down on, and pushing him away to feel more mature. She projects onto Natsuo her own regrets, namely focusing on a relationship over a career passion (while ironically re-enacting said regret). Our waffle, meanwhile, uses her as his wellspring of validation, leaning on her for emotional and physical solidity every time he melts. Natsuo clings to Hina, and Hina shores up her own strength by gently encouraging Natsuo towards his dream. While there's nothing inherently wrong with that, at the end of the day, Hina and Natsuo huddle and squeeze each other for warmth as the blizzard rages around them. Rui and Natsuo put their arms around each other and trudge through the blizzard together, supporting and enduring in equal measure -except, y'know, when he collapses and she carries him. Which ship you're aboard comes down to personal preference. Still, in the face of doubt, depression, discrimination, an accidental pregnancy, and Serizawa Miyabi, it is Natsuo and Rui who complete each other. Even as they repeatedly stumble and fall, they share their strength and pull each other through. There's even a carry here or there.
My OTP builds slow despite them, you know, having sex before chapter one. Rui for her part is impossible not to like right off the bat, unless you're a born-again Christian (soo much premarital sex. oh, and incest). Her stubborn self-awareness and matter-of-fact bluntness serve as the perfect core for everything she becomes. Falling for Natsuo just feels right for her given his unique mixture of headstrong thoughtfulness. Once she has a handle on her own heart, her self-assured and sometimes inconsiderate pursuit of Natsuo cements her as the main heroine, even before Hina transfers. After Hina is exiled to a distant island, Rui defaults into her position as Natsuo's support. But it's clear the dynamic is different. Unlike her sister, Rui is outright bad at bottling her emotions, and struggles with jealousy in addition to her confusing new feelings for Natsuo. She wants to be there for him, as her heart repeatedly makes clear, but she only really knows how to feed him – a huge fucking deal don't get me wrong – and more importantly she doesn't even understand how to support herself. They fumble through camping trips and various love polyhedra and romcom manga tropes all before they even confirm their places in each others' hearts. Even after they do, Natsuo still remains mired in uncertainty, held down by his ever-present self-doubt and fear of loss. After the bonfire when he can no longer ignore his heart he finally says the words, and with the most cathartic hug of all time, they realize one of my favorite relationships ever.
But even after they work through some of their worries in Aomori before graduation, they struggle to communicate properly and stumble through their feelings and shortcomings. Natsuo then swallows his bullshit for once and places his trust in Rui, inspiring her to do the same. Hina's drunken confession, though – combined with Natsuo's continued failure to be open – throws a wrench into their flowering dynamic, and sends Rui into a spiral. She resolves to walk on her own alongside Natsuo rather than leaning on him, but then he gets stabbed protecting Hina from the stalker Tanabe, and Rui starts to fear that she's stolen happiness away from her only sibling. Hina, meanwhile, realizes she can no longer lie to herself that her ballooning devotion is only that of a sister. And then their dad invites Rui to her dream internship in New York City for a year. With Rui in New York, Hina embraces her role as Natsuo's sister-mom. Her devotion to Natsuo becomes her entire raison d'être. Then his psyche is twin torpedoed by the online response to the promotion of his book and Miyabi's kiss. Even with the hull damage from each repaired, he discovers he can no longer write, and S.S. Natsuo sinks. His sense of self-worth nosedives, and he avoids confiding in Rui (or any of his support network) for fear of being abandoned, but mostly for fear of letting her down after all of her love and support. He trudges on alone. Her surprise return briefly buoys him, but he goes right back to pushing her away and hiding his troubles, until she finds out in the worst way possible (thanks Miyabi, very cool). With her self-doubt thus set ablaze, and with Natsuo's future squarely in mind, Rui abruptly breaks things off in chapter 216.
The week that I started reading Domestic na Kanojo,
was the week that 216 dropped. I had caught up quick, binging all 216 chapters in 36 hours without sleeping.
I don't even remember the week after. It was both empty and a blur. I think I posted a low effort meme in /r/DomesticGirlfriend and got banned (excuse me what the fuck). The thinking wouldn't stop. DomeGirl was fun and games for me, and then it was a lighthearted but heartwarming romance, and then it stuck an ice pick into my left ventricle. Seeing Rui and Natsuo break up, especially the way they did, brought things to my front doorstep quicker than you could say KissxSis.
I mean—
how many times had I failed to ask her for help when I needed it, thinking I had to be the one to solve my own problems?
how many times had I selfishly hid my personal struggles from her so she wouldn't see my weakness? and how many times had I covered it up by telling myself I just didn't want her to worry?
how many times had I felt like she was getting further and further away, and felt powerless to stop it?
how many times had I lost faith in myself, knowing that anyone else would support her better?
how many times had I felt the exact emotions Rui felt?
hell, how many times had I felt the exact emotions Natsuo felt?
You would likely say at this point that I was projecting my own relationship onto Rui and Natsuo. And you would be entirely right. Again, relatability is a hell of a drug. But it felt truly uncanny. I was in month five of a thirty-month-long writers' block - a mental block tied directly to my dead relationship. Then along comes Sasuga Kei with an anecdotal account of my emotions, calcaneal fracture and all (la la la can't hear you over the sound of my headcanon), while also stealing the core conceit of my developing story idea. Oh, and she had somehow recreated almost to a T the breakup that ground my psyche into dust. So, yeah. Shit had gotten intensely personal.
The next thirty-ish chapters felt like three hundred. I was hooked, scouring the internet for scans. Rui rapidly took on religious significance. When she turned down Kajita with "Do you realize who made me the girl you like? It was Natsuo" I screamed, and cried, and screamed, and cried some more. And when Natsuo finally flew out to see her and they made all the way up, well, my reactions are predictable by this point. It didn't matter to me that the love of my life was never coming back, or that I was spiraling as a result. Rui and Natsuo became my everything. Vicarious would be understating my investment.
Then: with about twelve chapters to go, I woke up.
I had stopped reading religiously, rabidly checking reddit and scan sites every five minutes, somewhere around 242. It was mostly to skip being dangled off a cliff every week and allow for more chapters per sitting, but detached from my weekly relapses, I finally started to see DomeGirl with a more objective eye. Not that I had been totally blind to the manga's many faults for 250 chapters, but with my personal itch sufficiently scratched I began seeing things I hadn't. I wish I could say it was a me thing, that I overcame my own heavy regrets and let go of the burdens that kept me coming back to KissxSis 2: Baby Mama Boogaloo. Well, I'm still saddled with regret, but at least I had finally opened my eyes.
A shotgun reread around 246 gave me needed perspective. The first half is far from perfect in a lot of ways, but before Arisu shows up it's at least completely integrated. Once Natsuo enters college and the main high school cast go their own ways, Sasuga starts cramming entire thematic arcs into bite-sized bursts without truly heating them and giving them time to mix. What we get, then, is a stew of disparate and undercooked theme ideas poured over Natsuo - y'know, the liquid waffle.
Obviously the intent was to humanize non-traditional characters, while using their stories to enrich Natsuo as a writer by tangibly connecting him to people's experiences – à la Tougen – but without proper exploration or integration these characters are reduced to caricatures, and even worse, objects for Natsuo to consume and then discard. Juri is a blast, and one of the few side characters who we don't entirely abandon, but she gets totally pigeonholed and serves as little more than a plot device outside her own story. In retrospect, the introduction of Arisu before Natsuo goes to college is a huge red flag for what was to come. Bogged down in needless allegory and flashback, her chapters end up feeling like low-effort filler despite dispensing some of the most important core information of the manga's middle third. Kasumi's mini arc gleefully ignores the stories of actual sex workers in favor of a sugar-coated, rose-tinted view, in an arc ostensibly about empathy and walking in others' shoes. Then Misaki manages to lack even more nuance in even fewer chapters – a recurring trend. Aside from the underexplored theme idea of addiction, her arc exists only in service of Hina's white knight complex – another recurring trend – and a badass yakuza scene which isn't even that badass. Oh, and:
Miyabi and Yuka's situation, meanwhile, could've used soo much more nuance, not to mention like, more than three chapters. And don't even talk to me about Mao and Leo. And that isn't even everyone! Remember Yuji? Remember Nene before she morphed into a romcom trope? Remember Saki? Remember Shuu? With the most interesting characters waylaid one after the other, Sasuga dives over and over into new human intermezzi — only crossing over where extremely obvious, as with Mari in Misaki's arc. I would have accepted any excuse to bring Fumiya back for extended pagetime, but at least she doesn't try to build some barely-explored theme idea around any of the other Forester members or Kuwana. It's fine to add fresh faces as you go, but in the back half Sasuga treats many of those new faces like condoms: introduce, use, discard, introduce, use, discard. If all these piecemeal characters are meant to illustrate that people are multitudinous and learning about their lives is the best way to gain experience as a storyteller, fine. But that is their only purpose and it's irritatingly transparent. It never stands out too badly in any individual side story, but take a step back and the manga begins taking on a utilitarian view of humanity.
While we're listing flaws: an infuriating number of chapters end with cliffhanger twists. Neither cliffhangers nor twists are bad in moderation, but when they are not only your primary mode of exposition, but you end every other chapter with one, our journey begins to feel like the season-to-season win totals of the Carolina Panthers. Playing with expectations, on its own, is mostly fine. But having my emotions toyed with for 277 chapters just gets tiring. Plus, almost every use of extended metaphor, allegory, flashbacking, and narration is poorly done on top of being unnecessary. It's surely a planning thing. Arisu, Yuka, and Serizawa's introductory arc stand out in particular.
In addition, DomeGirl depends way too often on having people coincidentally overhear information to move the plot forward. Once or twice or three times is one thing, but in the back half it's happening in every story arc large or small, and as a mode of exposition it's just... boring. It's a fucking melodrama for god's sake, at least make it juicier than someone standing around a hallway corner!
(When Natsuo tells Al he spent the last of his book royalties on the flight to NYC but then they have a full course meal at a literal 3 Michelin star hotel restaurant in Manhattan, I laughed for over ten minutes. Somewhere, Tougen is monologuing about researching and going outside.)
Still: it's not that it's a dumpster fire. It's not that it's not, either. I've just come to see the manga as a Rorschach test. There is relatability (read: drugs) all over the place. Someone who is looking purely to laugh at something will find plenty to laugh at – just as a lost, hopeless romantic will find purpose and resonance in the story's themes and relationships. People who force themselves to be strong and bottle up their feelings will identify with almost every Hina chapter, and every moment of tension in Natsuo and Rui's relationship. People consumed by their own self-doubt will find plenty in second half Rui. The same people will relate to Natsuo's constant uncertainty, if not his continued density.
Don't do relatability, kids.
So, the art. Sasuga does a wonderful job of evolving the designs of the two kids, Rui and Natsuo (Momo, Al, and Miu too), as they grow from little 17-year-old babyfaces into twentysomething babyfaces over the course of 250ish chapters. Her designs overall are distinct – even if their expressions often look the same – and her visual shorthand and chibi expressions are a delight. There exist genuinely great, if sparse, visual ideas — Natsuo's liquefaction, all his hair falling out at once, cubism. Before she starts rushing through the last couple volumes, panels have room to breathe, and she takes advantage with more detail per panel. The paneling itself is fine, with a couple sublime sequences, but often veers too far towards feeling soulless, especially towards the end. Too many key moments are delivered with a montage of faces, and she uses crisscrossing lines to add stress to panels a lot in the first third or so. Ditto for sleepy characters with one eye exactly 56% open. Still, the designs are clean and sharp, and spacier paneling allows her to draw both chibi and regular designs in equally full detail across hundreds of chapters.
By the time Rui and Natsuo made up around chapter 250 (and also made something else) I was riding the purest high imaginable. I had fully re-embraced the manga, flaws and all, in pursuit of personal closure.
My high crashed within barely fifteen chapters. I read an announcement that the manga was ending, then that week a wild Tanabe appeared! Thinking I had read a fake announcement, I left again to allow more chapters to build up. Two months later, I saw the manga was ending in that week's issue. I began experiencing withdrawals. Don't do drugs, kids.
All jokes aside, don't do drugs.
All drugs aside, don't do jokes. I've spent the better part of a year trying to insert enough humor into this post to keep it out of a damn academic journal, and it has not turned out too well. Trying to be funny is like trying to get an orgasm – it either happens or it doesn't, and nothing I do is going to make any difference.
All asides aside, fuck it: let's talk about the ending. I tried to promise myself I wouldn't, but it's so incredible it's impossible not to address. (and I bet you got curious when I said it was worse than all those other bad manga endings.)
First: I don't think Rui and Natsuo necessarily had to end up together. Their bond is so strong and their dynamic so purposeful that they work almost as well as close friends (or as siblings) as they do romantic partners. But taking a closer look at the last couple volumes makes it painfully obvious that Sasuga does not do the legwork required (because timeskips are not legwork) to get them from point A – madly in love, baby on the way, engaged to be married – to point B — siblings/close friends raising a baby and a vegetable, seemingly without even a Platonic relationship.
Now, the ending is many things, all bad. But above all it's SO. RUSHED. Even if I've gotten used to the feeling of being strapped into a burning car careening towards a cliff, it doesn't make it fun. With twelve chapters to go in the run-up to Rui and Natsuo's big day, S.S. NatRui is all ready to sail into the sunset. Suddenly, a wild Okunugi appears! He meets Tanabe and commits all his crimes in a single chapter, then Hina gets to stand center stage for a few chapters. Putting the pedal to the metal (don't drink and drive kids), Okunugi veggifies Hina — in a single chapter, then Rui and Natsuo come to the most momentous decision in the entire fucking manga — in a single chapter, then 5 whole years get skipped also in a single chapter, and THEN they skip ANOTHER THREE YEARS IN THE FINAL CHAPTER! For those scoring at home, that's seven chapters (plus five chapters of stalling and Hina back-patting) for S.S. NatRui to do a fucking barrel roll, splinter into bits and pieces, and sink to the ocean floor, eight fucking years later. Now, this is the easiest way to just write off the ending as poorly thought-out garbage. But do you think I'll take the easy way out when it comes to complaining?
All in all, I've written over 9000 words about DomeGirl. Fucking guess.
For all the transparent thoughtlessness, the ending at least builds the bridge: Hina in the back half devotes her entire being to Natsuo's future after he gets stabbed, and that devotion stands as the base for Rui's defeatism and Natsuo's immense gratitude. But just building the bridge doesn't mean you can parade a herd of elephants over it. When they agree that Natsuo should marry Hina – when, by the way, she's still a vegetable – Natsuo insists, "It's not for her sake. And not because I think it's the responsible thing to do. I just want to do it, myself" (c275p09). Yet, in the hospital Rui says, "Hina-nee has lost almost everything. I can't take you from her, too" (c273p02). In the same scene, from Natsuo: "I've been thinking ... What I should be doing for her. What I can do for her" (c273p03). All together now! "We both want to give our support to Hina. I don't know how much we can do, but we think that maybe if we totally dedicate ourselves to helping her..." (c273p06). Granted, translations, but in that light, it's really hard to be on board with their clearly guilt-ridden decision. And I'm not saying guilt is never allowed to be a motivating factor, but then what was the hellscape of 216-250 for? What did Rui overhear Kiko and Hito for when Natsuo was in the hospital? The guilt in those situations gets worked through over multiple chapters, often whole arcs, while the decision to call off their wedding and devote themselves to Hina happens in barely a third of a chapter, and primarily in one single page without dialogue.
It's as if Hina won the "Bottle Up Your Feelings" competition, and the prize is Natsuo. I get that it's compelling to discover that your ex had thrown away her happiness to devote her everything to supporting you, and it clearly surprises Natsuo and Rui — so what did he think when Shuu dropped in after over a hundred chapters to inform Natsuo that Hina never stopped loving him for one second? What about her drunken confession? What about her declaring war on Rui in Central Park? Rui feeling defeated, undeserving, and guilty in the immediate aftermath of the accident and revelation of Hina's feelings is more than understandable. Rui seemingly holding onto that exact same viewpoint for EIGHT FUCKING YEARS is just Sasuga giving up on putting any further time and effort into her writing (as Tougen turns in his fictional grave).
Now, the elephant in the room. Corona. Don't care! Plenty of mangaka got their stories through the first year of the pandemic without managing to smash them into millions of tiny fragments. If she felt rushed or didn't have the planning down, she could have just gone on hiatus. It would not have been a popular move given they announced the manga's finale in April 2020, but plenty of other manga got through pandemic hiatuses. Even western audiences would have understood. There's just no way this ending had to happen.
My prevailing theory remains that it's just a giant fuck-you to the whole fandom, but I don't have much proof of that, so I'll keep my tinfoil hat plastered with Rui screenshots in its dedicated drawer for now. And there is something to be said for the idea that this ending might be the closest a Japanese story would ever get to actual polygamy — after the first time skip they all live together, and after the second skip all three of them raise Haruka together. But Rui and Haruka move out, so it's not real polygamy, and it's hard for me to accept something so half-assed — even if there is a cultural explanation behind it.
But here's where I deviate from the audience consensus a bit, or at least the consensus in Disqus and manganelo comments. The ending we got was put into motion by the suddenly conspiring Tanabe, and while the whole vegetable-guilt thing is (again no pun intended) the sharpest left turn I have ever seen a manga make, Sasuga had written herself into a corner long before 270, and before 242, and before 215.
Before the stabbing, melodrama had served as the icing for certain subplots and story arcs. Tanabe's first few scenes mark the shift to melodrama as the cake, with the stabbing being the ice cream on top of the cake. In hindsight it's hard not to laugh — guy takes knife for girl, ends up in hospital, girl unearths dormant romantic feelings for guy, ???, profit. Even before the stabbing, but especially after, the second half frequently lacks sensitive or thoughtful writing – except where it's held up entirely by Tougen. Sasuga spends much of the final fourteen volumes spinning her wheels in one of her many cul-de-sacs, cooking up one-dimensional additions to the supporting cast like bulgogi at Korean barbecue. It's on this foundation that the ending is built, and while the main story doesn't descend directly into a coma over the whole back half, it's hard to imagine the manga finishing the way it did with more planning and direction between 136 and 264, and especially between 184 and 264.
Okay, so, the whole Miyabi writer's block thing. There's a lot to say here, but the first thing is that the writing by then is moving too fast, frequently ignoring logical cause and effect, and often simply stringing plot points together for maximum drama regardless of character progression or theme. So, Sasuga presents a couple of hurried logical threads towards Natsuo's writer's block. The first is the reaction to the belly band and his feeling like a spectacle as a writer. The second is him finally learning of Miyabi's feelings and thus finally seeing himself as the dense (yet simultaneously liquid. like mercury) loaf of bread that he is. The third, unwritten reason – and the one I put most of my stock into – is that while sparked by the worthless feeling brought on by A) idiots on the internet and B) not noticing a friend's romantic feelings for half a year, ultimately his writer's block wasn't a result of either of those specifically but of the overall stress caused by both. Miyabi explaining away her confession as just getting carried away then does nothing to truly help him because the stress is already out of the bag. Not being able to write subsequently fuels his sense of worthlessness to the point where he refuses to talk to his loved ones about it. If this was the idea Sasuga had for what was going on, she does not make it immediately obvious on a first read.
Further, she seems to straight up forget at times what her characters know. Even after brushing off Hina's drunk yet straightforward confession, Natsuo acts shocked when Shuu comes back and tells him about her feelings. Rui tells Hina to her face about her and Natsuo, yet when Hina sees Rui's toothbrush at his apartment she's taken aback (this could totally just be her realizing that she was getting ahead of herself and remembering her guilt, but given all the other times...) Then Natsuo just like, forgets that Miyabi made her feelings for him clear by kissing him, even though that guilt is supposed to be the impetus for his life-altering writer's block in the first place. He's considerably surprised when she confesses to him 40 chapters later, and somehow needs the night to collect his thoughts. Yes, Miyabi plays it off as her being swept up in the moment. But he takes just that one hurried sentence at face value (while comparing it to the first time he kissed Hina, which makes no fucking sense because he was madly crushing on her at the time) and ignores every other single piece of evidence - the kiss, all the people around him coyly calling him dense, her daily behavior, Rui's emphatically clear warnings. We're at chapter 200. Natsuo needs to show some sort of meaningful development on the density front by now. Then! — both him and Rui had been told, Natsuo by the most trustworthy source possible and Rui from the horse's fucking mouth, that Hina still loves Natsuo. (not even mentioning Hina's drunk confession!) WHY IN THE EVER-LOVING FUCK, THEN, DOES FUCKING 274 FUCKING HAPPEN???
Believe it or not, not all of my initial infatuation with DomeGirl was misplaced. Sasuga displays good writing instincts and solid foundations: a consistent desire to round out each character shines through, even when it isn't carried out gracefully. Tougen single-handedly saves the back half from being unreadable, and ties all the writing theme ideas together more perfectly than anyone else could have. His connection with Hana is not only planned out more than two chapters in advance (mm good shit right there), it's planted almost perfectly, with little idiosyncrasies in their behaviors, designs, and dialogue popping up all over the place. The New York scenes are certainly lacking a bit of nuance, but try telling any woman who's worked in a professional kitchen that they're off-base.
When she's not causing nosebleeds and flipping skirts (seriously, it's fucking incessant, even if it's not Kanokari level) her comedy is grounded, and will elicit some belly laughs even if you're not treating the whole thing as parody. I wish there was more of it. She uses melodrama as an excuse to yank you back and forth but rarely jumps the melodramatic shark, putting work into portraying complicated emotions and interpersonal interactions right up to 274. Despite the disjointedness of the second half, the majority of the recurring cast are both believable and enjoyable to watch, which is really not something you can say for most melodramatic romance manga.
While we're praising DomeGirl, sex is had! Yeah, yeah, the actual intercourse doesn't happen in the serialized chapters, but it is nonetheless a significant part of the plot. I won't pretend to be a connoisseur of raunchy teenage romance manga, but DomeGirl is the only officially published manga I've read that meaningfully integrates sex into the story. And the sex scenes themselves, which were bundled with certain volume releases, are surprisingly real and absolutely relatable. Granted, in officially licensed media, my sources of comparison are... well, just Fate/Stay night (I don't really read VNs, and KS doesn't count here), but they're written so infinitely better than a Nasu scene that it just isn't fair. Nasu writes porn; Keiko writes people. If people can be said to get nosebleeds from the sight of tits, anyways.
Even on top of heterosexual intercourse, there is a surprising amount of sexuality on display. From Mari at the bathhouse, to Al kissing Natsuo and Kiriya (more than once), to straight boy Natsuo grabbing Al's dick without hesitation, to the existence of Nara Ryuichi, I have to say I was impressed. It's pretty far from ideal representation on many fronts, and the harem romcom tropes really get in the way, but there's something here, especially compared to the medium as a whole (looking at you, Oda).
If you're looking for a score, you're in the wrong place. That's what my MAL is for. Again, DomeGirl is a Rorschach test. It found me at the low point of my life so far, and look what happened to me. Seriously, 8200 fucking words, and that's after trimming. Yeeeeesh.
If you got here without skimming, mad respect. I appreciate you slogging through my thought process with me – because that's what this is: my thought process laid (mostly) bare over the length of some of my college papers. I'd love to have some distilled, impactful thesis, but at the end of it all I just want to be done with thinking about this damn manga. At times it made me into an empty shell crying for hours, at times it made me boil with anger – at Kei, at dumb commenters, at people who discriminate based on race or gender – and at times it had me chortling at the melodrama of it all. Yet, after two years hammering this post into something readable (having made it here, I'll let you be the judge), I've come full circle:
it's just a fucking manga.
Make of that what you will.
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