Yuta Takemoto, the nominal protagonist of Honey and Clover, has been battling feelings of insecurity and inferiority for some time. When he finally gets a job offer, only to receive news of the company’s sudden bankruptcy during his celebration party, it suddenly becomes too much and he takes off on a bicycle journey to find himself. Meanwhile, Yamada starts forming a bond with Nomiya, one of Mayama’s former coworkers, and Hagu faces pressure to “make a lasting impact” with her art, when all she wants to do is live a quiet country life financed by the occasional sale of a painting.

Like volume five before it, volume six mixes pivotal moments for several of its characters with moments of over-the-top zaniness. While the series has always blended humor and drama—and, indeed, a chapter in which the gang helps a bakery with its Father’s Day special is very funny—lately it seems that the comedy has become more outlandish, especially where Morita is concerned. It’s hard to completely dislike him, since he can be considerate and insightful when he tries, but his antics just don’t do it for me.

Those pivotal moments, however, are definitely worth the price of admission; Umino is adept at creating endearing characters with whom readers, whether in the midst of youth or thankfully beyond it, can identify and sympathize. Another thing at which she particularly excels is subtle comparison, be it equating Yamada’s unrequited love for Mayama with the broken stem of a plant that she just can’t bring herself to prune, or likening Takemoto’s genius-adjacent situation to that of Professor Hanamoto, who, in his own college days, also had fabulously talented friends whose world he could never fully enter. Even a hilariously unsubtle comparison between Nomiya, who has just shed the baggage of youth, and Mayama, who is wrapped in it like a cocoon, is excellent.

Because of the universality of the characters’ struggles, this is one of those series with the capacity to appeal to anyone—male or female, old or young, suave or awkward—and make them earnestly desire a happy outcome.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.

From the back cover:
Takemoto is nearing graduation, but he doesn’t have a job lined up—he doesn’t even know what he wants to do with his life. His friends try to be supportive, but they have their own dramas to act out. With his health failing and his heart in turmoil, how will Takemoto find the strength to carry on?

Review:
I unreservedly adore the cover of this volume. Colorful whimsy is the way to get me every time, I think. Alas, I don’t have such effusive praise for the actual contents.

There’s nothing overtly bad. In fact, there is quite a bit that is good, including the truly excellent first chapter. Mayama quits waiting for Rika to make a move and, nudged along by his coworkers, manages to reinstate himself in her employ. He refuses to let her push him away and resolves that he’s going to eventually extinguish her wistful thoughts about joining her late husband on the other side. Later, Yamada receives marriage proposals from five childhood friends and finally understands how Mayama felt receiving a love confession from someone he cared about but only on a friend or sibling level. Lastly, Takemoto works himself into exhaustion and comes to some personal realizations—like the fact that through it all, Hagu was close by, watching over him—just in time for Morita to return.

What bothers me is that some of the attempted humor, mostly involving Morita, is just sooo over-the-top that it’s not funny. There are a few times when someone gets injured and a joke is made about calling the ambulance, but it’s hard to tell what’s an actual injury and when it’s only in jest. There’s a nurse who enforces hospital rules violently. There’s Morita’s surprising appearance at the Mocademy Awards and his subsequent acceptance speech/rant. It’s all just really… crazed. Even Morita gets some nice moments, though, like when he takes care of his drunken advisor after finally managing to graduate.

One humorous episode, though, was truly amusing. Takemoto’s graduation piece, a somewhat lopsided tower, confuses the judges until Professor Hanamoto gives it a title—Tower of Youth—and then suddenly the judges are teary-eyed, going on about youthful ambitions and vulnerabilities. Although the title wasn’t Takemoto’s idea, he does later decide that the tower represents himself and his aimless state, and destroys it, beginning anew on a new tower that represents his decision to stay in school one more year and find out what it is he really wants to do with his life.

All in all, definitely not a bad volume. Just a rather hyper one.

From the back cover:
Morita has disappeared, leaving his friends bereft and confused. Hagu and Takemoto turn to their art, while Mayama and Yamada cling to their unrequited loves. When his coworker begins to romance Yamada, Mayama can’t help interfering. But what does he care, when he’s nursing a flame for a woman he hasn’t seen in a year?

Review:
After a chapter in which the gang reacts to Morita’s sudden departure and Takemoto receives a troubling answer when he asks Hagu whether she wants Morita to come back, the pendulum swings back to the Mayama-Yamada-Rika triangle. We learn more about how Mayama met Rika as well as more about his current job and coworkers. One of these coworkers, Nomiya, is a bit of a playboy and when Mayama objects a little too much to Nomiya meeting Yamada to talk about some pottery she’d helped them with, that only makes Nomiya all the more determined to meet her. Mayama goes a bit nuts trying to “protect” Yamada from Nomiya, with various people urging him to question his motives. Does he, after all, just want to keep Yamada in reserve in case things don’t work out with Rika?

One thing I particularly liked about this volume was the use of metaphors to illustrate Yamada’s and Mayama’s feelings. In a chapter from Yamada’s perspective, in which she spends hours getting gussied up for a festival just so Mayama will tell her she looks nice and maybe begin to want her just a little, a plant that she’s been growing has been damaged by a storm. Her mother advises her to snip off a bit of broken stem and allow new growth, but she just can’t give up on it and delays too long, condemning the plant to a slow, withering death. This exactly parallels her situation with Mayama—she just can’t let go of her feelings for him, and persists in holding out hope that romance will bloom. In the next chapter, Mayama’s dogged yet fruitless pursuit of Rika is juxtaposed with the way cicadas spend their brief lives.

It’s okay to spin around and around in the same place. Just so long as you’re singing your heart out.

The comparison is subtlely done, with Umino trusting to readers’ intelligence to make the connection.

I’d also like to commend how well Yamada has been fleshed out as a character. Originally, it seemed like she was just going to be the violent girl who pummels the boys occasionally, but she has really evolved beyond that. Too, I’m liking Mayama a lot more than I’d originally expected to. He’s a pretty complex guy—very aware of his own flaws and yet still driven to do things he doesn’t completely understand. I love how his dislike of being left out of social gatherings comes into play in this volume. Hooray for consistent characterization and continuity (as also exemplified by Yamada’s dad wearing his tea-cozy-as-hat in one panel).

From the back cover:
Professor Hanamoto is off in Mongolia on a research trip and Hagu is having a hard time coping. The gang do their best to help her out, especially Takemoto. But as graduation threatens to alter their friendships forever, Hagu begins to turn toward Morita…

Review:
Time moves very quickly in Honey and Clover—already two years have passed since Takemoto met and fell in love with Hagu. While the days pass quickly and those still in school make progress with their studies (except for Morita, the terminal senior), relationships within the group remain at a standstill. In volume two, the focus was more on the triangle consisting of Mayama, Rika (the boss he loves unrequitedly), and Yamada (the classmate who loves him unrequitedly). This time the story revolves around Takemoto’s feelings for Hagu and how he begins to realize that she and Morita are attracted to each other.

One thing I really like about this series is how the guys genuinely try to help each other out with their romantic entanglements. Morita, ever the enigma, turns out to be quite perceptive to Yamada’s feelings and thrusts her (quite literally) into Mayama’s path more than once. Mayama, meanwhile, though incapable of extricating himself from his love woes, dispenses advice to Takemoto, encouraging him to fight for Hagu while Takemoto is inclined to simply step back and accept the situation. I find Takemoto’s attitude here to be pretty fascinating and realistic. He’s a gentle boy whose uncertainties of his own self-worth are well documented and not only that, he’s been a great friend to Hagu and primarily wants whatever will make her happy. I sympathize with him a lot and find his internal monologues—especially the scene when he compares Hagu’s flustered behavior around Morita to her complete relaxation in his presence and concludes that she doesn’t love him—exquisitely painful.

Morita also demonstrates some new layers in this volume. In addition to his perceptiveness, he also betrays that he is rather freaked out by his feelings for Hagu. After a random encounter during which he impulsively kisses her, he flees and ends up going on an extended trip to America on one of those mysterious jobs he does every so often. Takemoto is astounded by this, thinking that Morita has everything Takemoto wants and is just going to run away from it. We don’t see Morita between the kiss and the departure, but he is pretty notorious for his lack of seriousness, so his reaction to run from genuine emotion feels perfectly in character.

The main flaw in this series remains Hagu. She has definitely changed a great deal since arriving at the art school and is learning to be more independent now that Hanamoto is out of the country. Still, though, I feel like I don’t really have a handle on her personality just yet. Another thing that bugs me is that we see the characters working on projects but seldom their outcome. Did Takemoto ever finish that armoire thing he was building to house Hagu’s dolls’ clothes? Did Hagu finish the project for the art exhibition that she was stressing over in the beginning of this volume? I’ve got no idea.

Despite my small complaints, Honey and Clover offers a charming blend of humor and nostalgia that pleases me very much. Could any other series make a bonus story about tea cozies so fun to read? I think not.