YMC #14: Pure Water Adolescence

Having discussed age-gap yuri in this post, I figured my next manga review would be about that subject. Let’s take a gander at Pure Water Adolescence.

Genres: Age-gap, yuri, romance, drama, school life, student-teacher.

Number of Volumes: 0. The main story is 5 chapters long and the rest are bonus chapters; some of them are about our protagonists and others about side-characters.

Check out the below Dynasty-Scans link to read the story in the correct order, along with the extras.

http://dynasty-scans.com/series/pure_water_adolescence

Plot Summary: This is the love story of Dr Ritsuko Matsumoto, a recently divorced school doctor, and her younger high school girlfriend, Nanao Okumura. The tale focuses on their “forbidden” love and the difficulty both have in achieving harmony not just because of society’s norms, but their own insecurities as well.

This is the first age-gap romance manga I’ve ever read and it also showed me that this kind of romance can work when told well.

The above summary pretty much tells you all you need to know about the story. Nanao has the misfortune of being born with a grouchy expression, meaning she often looks angry when she’s not. There are some anime characters that are intentionally drawn that way for different reasons. Anyway, since the main story is only 5 chapters long, it only scratches the surface of what challenges Nanao and The Doc will face in the path they have chosen as not only lovers with a moderately large age difference, but also the taboo of a teacher dating a student. That being said, the majority of the story centers around Nanao and The Doc’s personal insecurities and lack of trust with one another. You see, Nanao is still an immature teenage girl  behind that tough exterior (Type-B tsundere to be exact), thus showing inexperience in how to handle falling in love, especially with a teacher much older than her. She’s both selfish and possessive while barely hiding her attachment to The Doc from others, aside from the few with sharp eyes.The Doc, while having a better understanding of the pickle she’s in, also makes mistakes because not only does she want to maintain an adult image for her beloved, but also tries too hard to control her inner passion, coming off as being evasive of Nanao. Outside interference also doesn’t help ease the dilemma.

While PWA is not the best interpretation of this kind of romance, it is by no means a lousy one. It gives viewers a basic view with some added fluff and fun moments to ease the tension, especially once the main story ends. Give it a go if you’re looking for a story concerning this subject that is neither too harsh or too tame.