The Fall 2020 Manga Guide

Hachi/Ritsu

What's It About? 

"This impure feeling should just disappear..." Hachi and Ritsu grew up hanging out together in the countryside despite their stark differences. Ritsu thought their relationship would never change, but Hachi suddenly moved to Tokyo after junior high school graduation without saying anything to Ritsu. Ritsu can't believe he was being neglected, so three years later he decided to go after Hachi in Tokyo... This time he will not let Hachi escapes, even though that means he must prepare for another heartbreak.

Hachi/Ritsu is drawn and scripted by Sanba Maekawa. The manga is being published by TORICO and is available to read on Kadokawa's BookWalker service.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

We only got to read the first two chapters of this series for the Guide, but I'm certainly going to read more. There's definite potential here for a bittersweet BL romance – Hachi (real name Eito – like the NUMBER 8, hence the nickname) and Ritsu were best friends up until middle school, when all of a sudden Hachi started distancing himself from Ritsu, culminating in him leaving their remote mountain town for high school in Tokyo without a word. Ritsu is understandably hurt, because few things are more painful than a friend suddenly deciding that you're not friends anymore, and because Hachi never responds to his texts or comes home for visits, Ritsu never gets any closure.

If you're guessing that he decides to figure out which university in Tokyo Hachi's going to attend and gets in there himself, you aren't wrong. There is a definite well-trodden path that Hachi/Ritsu is following, and if that's your catnip, I think it's going to serve you well. Obviously (because BL romance) Hachi left home because he realized he had a crush on Ritsu and either thought that there was something wrong about being gay or was afraid that Ritsu would just drop him like the proverbial hot potato. He left Ritsu before Ritsu could leave him, never even considering the possibility that Ritsu might not be grossed out or creeped out or any of those things. Certainly the level of hurt Ritsu feels could indicate that – even for a best friend he seems to be going to fairly extraordinary lengths to find him.

The bitter part of this story comes not only from the hurt Ritsu's experienced, but also the fact that Hachi thought he had to purge his personality entirely. He basically rewrites himself – although he expresses it as “emptying” himself – learning not to use his regional accent, going out of his way to avoid being social, essentially hiding everything about who he used to be in an attempt to change the way he feels about Ritsu. That none of it was necessary, either from a relationship standpoint or just a plain old human one because there's nothing wrong with being gay, makes it hurt that much more, both for him and for Ritsu, who is bewildered and angered by Hachi's behavior.

I like reading romance as a genre anyway, but after these two chapters I want things to work out for these two somehow – whether that's as friends or something more.

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Caitlin Moore

Rating: ???

I'll be honest here: I'm really not sure how much I can say about Hachi/Ritsu. For one thing, we only got two chapters to review instead of a full volume – two chapters that are available for free legally online – and that's really just not a lot to go on. For another, the translation is so distractingly bad that it completely took me out of the story in, quite literally, every panel.

I love the English language, and I pay a lot of attention to how all its parts and pieces fit together and flow into one another. I also speak Japanese, which is structured very differently from English. Although I'm not proficient enough in the latter to work in translation myself, my familiarity with both languages makes it possible for me to notice a lot of the classic traps people fall into when going from one language to the other. Clunky, awkward translation stands out to me immediately, and while Hachi/Ritsu isn't the worst supposedly professional one I've seen – that medal still goes to Netflix's release of Fate/Extra: Last Encore – it's definitely top five. Characters say things like, “Hey, isn't his dad one of them? The group that controls this area…” and, “They think ya easy since ya face is too pretty so it looks like ya came from a posh family.” There's just no excuse here. Did an editor even touch this? Companies, pay your translators what they're worth so they can do their job properly!

Okay, rant over. What about the characters or the story or the art? Well, like I said, I have so little to go on with just two chapters, that they just didn't make much of an impression. Hachi and Ritsu were friends in a small town, but one day Hachi went to the city for school and stopped communicating. Now Ritsu is going to the same college as him, but Hachi continues to push him away. Turns out, back in the day, Hachi kissed Ritsu in his sleep and feels guilty for “subconsciously tainting” him (another just fabulous translation choice). Kind of a sucky thing to do there, Hachi? Kiss your friend when he can't say no and then ghost him? And Ritsu, when someone ghosts you, suck it up and move on! Yeah it hurts, but that's life!

Maybe the series will pick up and the characters will get more interesting and make better decisions. Who knows? I won't!