Synopsis
Hirofumi Mizui wakes up ready for yet another day of middle school. The only problem is that he is actually in his second year of high school. Two years have passed since he was involved in a car crash that robbed him of his memories, and while his memories of life before the crash have returned, the memories of the interim period are completely gone.
After visiting his doctor, Hirofumi runs into a frustrated Daigo Furubayashi, who insists that they have been lovers for some time despite Hirofumi not recalling this at all. Shocked that he seemingly is gay, Hirofumi does not know what to do when a letter he wrote to himself confirms his worst fears. Trying to put the pieces of his life back together, Hirofumi has to decide whether to accept Daigo's love or to push him away forever.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
I usually don't read a lot of shouen-ai - somehow I skipped over that stage and went straight to the smut, and find it hard to regress now. 'What, no cupping invisible shafts? How will I get to the end?" The lengths I go to on my quest to read every yaoi manga (Totally realistic goal, right?) It actually did take me ages to finish this one, it kind of dragged at the beginning but picked up a bit at the end (but I mean at least it DID have an end unlike a certain other Eiki book...*cough art of loving cough*) Really if you wereto summarize the plot in words, not a whole lot actually happens. The story was easy enough to follow and might best be described as 'angsty fluff,' but I'm not sure how well those elements mixed here. I like angst, but I found it hard to connect with Daigo or feel much for him or the characters' relationship at all actually, and emotionally he was much more a uke...I mean, he is crying in almost every single panel to the point where it lost impact. He was also drawn inconsistently and in some panels looked like a much different character...if the way Eiki drew his portrait in the Afterword was how she drew him in the rest of the story, I think I would have liked the book a lot more as a whole (maybe that wouldn't matter to some people but for me to really get into a shouen-ai either the story has to be amazing or both boys have to look really super hot ...bonus if both are true). But Hirofumi was a cutie for sure though, and surprisingly funny at times. The art was a bit stiff and definitely secondary to her work in the Art of Loving, in which she both draws very cute characters and develops them compellingly to boot (though I'm highly annoyed she never finished that story). For her debut manga though, Dear Myself was not bad at all, she had some interesting ideas and themes going on in here - to me the best scene hands down was the one that involved the psychological conversation between Hirofumi's selves (best I can describe it without spoilers), I wish she has incorporated that concept more.
One reviewer on Amazon (the reviews for this book are completely across the board there by the way), noted that they didn't like the very end that shows the characters three years later, I actually liked this bit (especially how Daigo turns out) and it added a hint of character development which I found a bit lacking from the main story. It would make me interested to read the sequel if it continued along those same lines - I know there is technically a second part but don't know how much of a true sequel it really is.
Overall, this is a title that will yield different opinions from different people - some will like it and some will hate it but I don't think it's exactly polarizing, there are some like me who just don't have strong feelings about it either way and think it's in the middle of the pack somewhere. You'll just have to read it to see where your thoughts fall on the spectrum! :)
