うみべの女の子

UMIBE NO ONNANOKO

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
2
RELEASE
January 8, 2013
CHAPTERS
20

DESCRIPTION

Koume Sato and Keisuke Isobe are two teenagers living in a sleepy seaside town. After getting used and dumped by her crush, the emotionally damaged Koume decides to start a sexual relationship with Keisuke, without any emotions involved. However, they both soon discover that sex with no strings attached leads to unexpected complications, not just for themselves but also the people surrounding them.

CAST

Keisuke Isobe
Koume Satou
Keiko Kobayashi
Shouta Kashima
Sanzaki Misaki

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

BloomReviews
80/100
Inio Asano brings us a story of adolescent love, sex, and mental illness between two middle school friends.
From the creator of Oyasumi Punpun, Inio Asano brings us a story of adolescent love, sex, and mental illness between two middle school friends. Originally published in Manga Erotics F, it was picked up for western publication by Vertical where they released all 20 chapters in one omnibus version. I honestly haven’t had to chance to check out Punpun for myself yet, but if it’s anything like A Girl on the Shore, I’m excited to see what kind of story Asano crafts and what kind of art he presents us with. After reading this manga, I almost want to say that this was what I was looking for when I went into Scum’s Wish, a gritty story about casual sex between two people who have a relationship complicated by fear and mental illness. And, while it doesn’t hold back on its displays of sex and exploration, I never felt like these scenes were there purely for our titillation rather they acted as a key component in our understanding of these two juvenile’s relationship to themselves and each other.

A Girl on the Shore follows the lives of two middle school students, Koume and Keisuke, as they develop a relationship based around casual sex and the need for something more. Koume looks to Keisuke as a rebound companion after the playboy Misaki loses interest in her, but soon finds herself enjoying their time together. Keisuke has confessed his love for Koume multiple times before, and agrees to help her get over the self-involved Misaki, but things quickly become clouded as the anniversary of his brother’s suicide fast approaches.

One of the best things about this manga is definitely the art. I was looking back over some information about Inio Asano and his art style, and there was some talk about him editing photographs in order to make more detailed backgrounds. I’m not sure if he used the same technique here, but almost all of the backgrounds I saw in this manga were highly detailed to the point where a few did make me question if they were actually photographs. The amount of detail and the almost photographic quality of the backgrounds add to the realistic feeling of the whole manga, supporting the impression that this is a story about real teenagers in the real world. In contrast, the character designs can be fairly simple especially when it comes to faces, yet I don’t think Asano really skimps out on his facial expressions. Koume and Keisuke go through many moments of high emotion and Asano manages to capture that fairly well in how much detail he chooses to add to a face.
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atomx
100/100
Inio Asano's controversial masterpiece
Review contains spoilers.

"Wanna see if I can fit my arm up your pussy?" 
"...what?" 
"I want to drink your pee." 
"or eat your shit, I don't care but I'm serious"

In 2009 Inio Asano would start publishing what would become his most controversial manga in Manga Erotics F, a magazine for "artsy sex comics" where authors such as Jiro Matsumoto and Usamaru Furuya had previously published their works.

Reading reviews of it, one will instantly note how dividing this work is. Reviews ranging from "I gave this manga a 10/10 across the board because I believe that the story is excellent" to "Umibe No Onnanoko is quite possibly the worst piece of literature" left me intrigued by what possibly could be so amazing/terrible about this manga.

Failed relationships, shitty family members and depression aren't new themes for Asano but the plot for Girl on the Shore takes us to a new setting that isn't a crowded modern city full of people.

Koume and Isobe are 15 year old teenagers who live in a seaside town in the middle of nowhere. School is boring and the only thing that seems to distract from it, is having sex with eachother. From the start of the manga it becomes very clear how dependent both teens are on eachother: Koume needs Isobe to feel wanted and liked after her relationship with a local playboy fails and Isobe desperately needs someone to remind him that he has a right to exist.

Both characters have no goals in life and live purely based on their current feelings without even being able to understand them. Dialogue between Koume and Isobe feels awkward and painful. Isobe spouts about how terrible the world is while sounding like a teenager who just got his first copy of "Thus spoke Zarathrusta" and Koume talks about escaping from their boring life without even really knowing where to go. Both of them are very immature but try their hardest to seem grown up.

“Sex with love is an illusion, y'know!!”

The most striking thing in the whole manga is Isobe and Koume's sexual relationship. Not because both of them are only 15 years old but because it is completely devoid of love. Sex between them is not a romantic act of passion but a way for both of them to explore what is going in their mind and with their bodies. It is a desperate attempt from them to feel anything in this town that is just as empty as they are. 
May it be masturbating in front of someone or eating someones shit, what Asano draws is not made for pleasure but as an attempt to show how these teens cope with their situation and how they manipulate each other. 
Regardless of the fact that these are teens, the sex scenes are simply not erotic: they are awkward and messy, immature and experimental, and most of all they are normal. 
Asano has said in interviews that sex is not a taboo for him. It's normal for him to draw a character eating lunch and them having sex in the next panel. Sex is the most normal thing in the world, so why be surprised that it is in a normal manga.

It is totally fine to dislike the sexual scenes or feel uncomfortable by them but dismissing the whole manga as “hentai” is ignorant and immature.

  "In town, there's a tiny beach that's never busy, not even in the summer... You basically never find what you were expecting to. And maybe you weren't expecting to find anything right from the start..."

Koume and Isobe never end up together, what could have ended in a beautiful relationship with both of them overcoming their issues ends in another broken relationship for Koume and Isobe's childish dream of finally getting to meet the Girl on the Shore.
 What Asano tries to tell us is that life is like a shore. Things come and go, new people come along and with them come new memories and new emotions. But these things don't always stay, some of them get washed away never to be seen again. Everyday we experience new things that we would have never thought of, good and bad. Everything in life is temporary, we change and things come and go just like the storm that severs Isobe and Koume's relationship. 
What's for sure is that the sea does not stop flowing and storms will come and go, don't give up on your dreams, find new ones and make sure not to lose sight of the future, for it is the only thing that is certain.  
__ "In the end there is something bigger than everything else... The Sea!!"__
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NapoJ
80/100
La necesidad de conexión entre dos jóvenes en un pueblo costero (reseña en ESP y ENG)
La siguiente reseña está en Español e Inglés (traducida con el apoyo de DeepL).

La versión leída es la traducción al español por “Clockwise Fansub”

Es otro de los trabajos publicados mientras Asano tenía como proyecto principal a Oyasumi Punpun, y en cierto modo puede verse como un abordaje de diferentes ideas mencionadas en aquel, a su vez tiene similitud con múltiples características de sus trabajos previos. Sea el intento de conexión entre personas, la sensación de angustia ante un futuro que no da espera y el esfuerzo en la superación de un pasado todavía vigente.

Los dos personajes principales construyen una relación basada en complementarse sus carencias lo cuál no implica armonía, únicamente es conexión en instancias de necesidad, el chico necesita de afirmación y la encuentra en alguien que reconozca su existencia, la chica en establecer una relación que le permita superar a la anterior, olvidar provisionalmente la sensación de vacío e incertidumbre.

Como centro narrativo y de la relación está el amanecer sexual entre ambos, se establece en ser la forma de conexión entre los dos que no implique un establecimiento ni compromiso más profundo, aún cuando en el pasar de los capítulos es cada vez más patente en las expresiones, crédito del talento de dibujante de Asano, de las ansias de la construcción de una relación sentimental sea en miradas furtivas, de palabras a decir más no dichas por lo que implicaría el cambio, y de suceder sería demasiado tarde para cada uno.

Inio nunca ha rehuido de la presencia sexual en sus historias cada vez que lo considere necesario, la diferencia de esta obra respecto a las anteriores es tener centralmente ese elemento. Aparte de las intenciones mencionadas, el acto sexual es una presentación sincera del descubrimiento personal y del otro, lejos de connotaciones eróticas, es decir, el posicionamiento, dibujo y detalle del actor no es para el disfrute del lector (separándolo del manga Hentai) sino en la presentación cruda de dos jóvenes en un entendimiento corporal.

Ni tampoco se pueden reducir únicamente sus metáforas a este elemento, la historia tiene otros elementos que utiliza para representación, como los mensajes de texto para enmascarar intenciones o en cambio, ser más sinceros, en la misma vena el blog para adquirir un papel que dé significado a la existencia, o el mar, de precisamente la idea contraria al hilo narrativo principal de la historia, sin importar los vaivenes de la vida, existe un elemento constante superior al resto, anterior a la narrativa y posterior a la misma.

Sin embargo, las similitudes con trabajos previos también se presenta en sus defectos, su representación realista se adentra una que otra vez en lo cínico y críptico sin poca gracia, presente en los diálogos que destacan desfavorablemente al compararlos con similares dentro del mismo capítulo, usualmente en personajes secundarios que despojados de ese protagonismo, irónicamente se comportan y expresan con ese realismo aspirado por Inio.

No obstante, sí hay un sentimiento intrínseco que alivia esa dureza y es la genuidad en varios de sus paneles. No sólo aquellos de una realidad cotidiana, en los mismos momentos dramáticos se encuentran expresiones que sin necesidad de tener alguna frase pretendidamente interesante, demuestran excelsamente el entresijo de sentimientos del personaje. Y es ahí cuando mejor se absorbe la visión artística de la historia que conduce su narrativa.

A nivel de dibujo es de sus mejores trabajos considerando su brevedad y presentación en consideración de la temática, el posicionamiento de los personajes es perfecto sea en la cotidianidad, momentos dramáticos y sexuales. Los fondos están llenos de detalle para la construcción de una pueblo costero cuya característica principal es ser tan común como cualquier otro similar, reforzando la intencionalidad de representar una historia cualquiera, capaz de suceder en cualquier parte.

Porque esencialmente esa es la mejor característica de la historia, aún pese a mis crítica respecto a su diálogo en según que partes, y un poco en las acciones de los personajes en la fase final, su representación cruda consigue precisamente la empatía de la narrativa porque aún si se está carente de las actitudes o circunstancias de los personajes, el descubrimiento sexual crudo y de exploración si tiene la capacidad (casi universal) de conectar con el lector, como todavía más lo son las ansías de seguir descubriendo que somos nosotros y que aspiramos conseguir.

English

It is another of the works published while Asano had as main project Oyasumi Punpun, and in a way can be seen as an approach to different ideas mentioned in that one, in turn has similarities with multiple features of his previous works. Be it the attempt of connection between people, the feeling of anguish in the face of a future that cannot wait and the effort to overcome a past that is still in force.

The two main characters build a relationship based on complementing their shortcomings, which does not imply harmony, it is only connection in instances of need, the boy needs affirmation and finds it in someone who recognizes his existence, the girl in establishing a relationship that allows her to overcome the previous one, to temporarily forget the feeling of emptiness and uncertainty.

As the narrative and relationship center is the sexual dawn between the two, it is established as the form of connection between the two that does not imply a deeper establishment or commitment, even though in the passing of the chapters it is increasingly evident in the expressions, credit to Asano's talent, of the longing for the construction of a sentimental relationship in furtive glances, of words to say but not said because of what the change would imply, and if it happened it would be too late for each one of them.

Inio has never shied away from the sexual presence in his stories whenever he deems it necessary, the difference of this work with respect to the previous ones is to have centrally that element. Apart from the aforementioned intentions, the sexual act is a sincere presentation of personal discovery and of the other, far from erotic connotations, that is, the positioning, drawing and detail is not for the enjoyment of the reader (separating it from Hentai manga) but in the raw presentation of two young people in a bodily understanding.

Nor can its metaphors be reduced only to this element, the story has other elements that it uses for representation, such as text messages to mask intentions or instead, be more sincere, in the same vein the blog to acquire a role that gives meaning to existence, or the sea, of precisely the opposite idea to the main narrative thread of the story, regardless of the ups and downs of life, there is a constant element superior to the rest, prior to the narrative and subsequent to it.

However, the similarities with previous works are also presented in its flaws, its realistic representation goes once in a while into the cynical and cryptic without little grace, present in the dialogues that stand out unfavorably when compared to similar ones within the same chapter, usually in secondary characters that stripped of that protagonism, ironically behave and express themselves with that realism aspired by Inio.

However, there is an intrinsic feeling that alleviates this harshness and it is the genuineness in several of its panels. Not only those of an everyday reality, in the same dramatic moments there are expressions that, without the need of having some pretentiously interesting phrase, excellently demonstrate the interweaving of the character's feelings. And that is when the artistic vision of the story that drives his narrative is best absorbed.

In terms of drawing, it is one of his best works considering its brevity and presentation in consideration of the theme, the positioning of the characters is perfect whether in everyday life, dramatic and sexual moments. The backgrounds are full of detail for the construction of a coastal town whose main characteristic is to be as common as any other similar, reinforcing the intentionality of representing any story, capable of happening anywhere.

Because essentially that is the best feature of the story, despite my criticisms of its dialogue in some parts, and a bit in the actions of the characters in the final phase, its raw representation achieves precisely the empathy of the narrative because even if it is devoid of the attitudes or circumstances of the characters, the raw sexual discovery and exploration does have the capacity (almost universal) to connect with the reader, as even more so are the yearnings to continue discovering who we are and what we aspire to achieve.

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