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A Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow Vol 1: Volume 1

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Story-wise, although its definitely slower-paced, its very much character-driven and if your looking for a soft, SAPPHIC slow-burn romance, READ THIS SERIES! The writing is also just so good and there were definitely many beautiful lines that show the feelings that Konatsu and Koyuki have for eachother. A Tropical Fish Yearns For Snow is a manga that can be best described as slowburn, aquarium sapphics!! As a new school year starts, they continue to figure out their feelings amid new school events.

Koyuki reflects on how they can keep up their friendship via text when Konatsu can't always be there in person and with aquarium club priorities to attend to, there's hope they'll have more time together. (Koyuki even starts dreaming about Konatsu!?) Konatsu and Koyuki are similar in many ways. They both feel an acute sense of loneliness, are kind and thoughtful, and yet are also reserved and stubborn. The latter qualities make the girls hesitant to share their feelings, leading to complications in their friendship. To move forward, the girls will have to figure out what they mean to each other and how to navigate their emotions. Will loneliness remain their sole companion, or will Konatsu and Koyuki find the courage to face themselves and each other?

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While all stories have layers to one degree or another, Makoto Hagino's quiet yuri tale A Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow may be covering up more than we might at first think. This possibility comes from the fact that one of the protagonists, Konatsu, keeps relating her relationship with the other, Koyuki, to Masuji Ibuse's 1919 short story “Salamander.” The base plot of Ibuse's piece is that a salamander, having grown too large to leave its hole, eventually traps a small frog with it to soothe its loneliness. Unfortunately, the frog eventually dies from its entrapment, once again leaving the salamander all alone. While there is undoubtedly symbolism of its own in Ibuse's story, Hagino's fairly consistent referencing of the text maybe should give us some pause, especially since Konatsu casts herself as the frog to Koyuki's salamander, a theme that is once again brought to the fore in volume four. Even if we don't view their relationship as a budding romance, however, it's really just a joy to watch. They're both feeling their way through things as best they can, and both have moments of total confidence and utter panic that balance each other out and provide just enough tension to really invest us in their relationship. Konatsu's classmate Kaede also provides someone for Koyuki to worry about even though it's very clear that there's nothing remotely romantic in Konatsu and Kaede's friendship, while the existence of boys in both the school and the story's world help to keep things grounded and to make the girls' attraction feel more like part of who they are rather than the author's attempt to throw them together in a fabricated world. There's a slow pace to this series that may not be for everyone, but I love it because there's lots of inner thoughts that Konatsu and Koyuki have in the moment that really build across the steady, personal moments of the story. The overall story doesn't have a satisfying conclusion. The two protagonists walk away from each other like they didn't spend the entire year falling in love with each other and we're supposed to be okay with that? There's no fallout, there's no getting together, there's nothing!

This section of the story also forces the girls to confront their burgeoning feelings, even if they don't have the words to fully explain them yet – Konatsu asks Koyuki what she thinks of her, and the other girl isn't able to answer. That's equally because she can't even vocalize her attraction even to herself yet, but also born of the fear that the wrong answer will somehow cost her the relationship she's coming to depend on. While both girls are champion overthinkers, Koyuki's worries have a darker edge to them, indicative of the social strata of high school as well as her own insecurities about who she is and who she's attracted to. Volume three helps this along to the next level in the inevitable school festival arcs, which force Koyuki to begin confronting her own passivity on the subject of how others treat her, something that carries over into the school trip storyline in volume four. It's contrasted very well with Konatsu listening to a classmate neatly trap Koyuki in the box of her reputation, declaring that she “doesn't want to see” Koyuki as anything but the idealized version the school has created. It takes Konatsu a bit to work up to it, but she does manage to tell her classmate not to do that, something Koyuki isn't yet capable of, as her interactions with the other girls on her trip clearly show.This story is super sweet, and the shy affection the girls have towards each other whispers of a more serious relationship in future volumes. Kaeda is a pretty shallow character, so hopefully her air-headedness gets developed more as well. The main thing this story has on other romances is the setting being in a high school aquarium (which is apparently a real aquarium in Japan).

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