‘Sakura Namiki’ is a manga with beautiful vintage art in a proto-shoujo art style with a cherry blossom (sakura) motif. The introductory colour pages are framed like a storybook with beautiful framing and bright colours. The characters are full of movement, especially in the table tennis scenes. Crowds are not detailed, but similarly full of movement. Shading is used to focus the reader’s attention, including blacked out backgrounds to contrast with the white faces. Experimental framing and shading is used to represent the story events in a non-literal way with a focus on emotion, for example when the character’s thoughts are depicted in the stars,and when the ballet ‘The Dying Swan’ is used to represent the protagonist’s struggle.

Despite the beautiful use of the art and visual storytelling, the story itself is simple and contains arbitrary character misunderstandings for the sake of progressing the plot. It is a ‘Class S’ / ‘Romantic Friendship’ story, so the payoff to the yearning is lacklustre, ending up essentially where it started.