I Cannot Reach You, Vol. 5

“I'm sure one day, you'll meet someone who notices your compassion and loneliness. That person will surely be your lifelong friend.”

3,5 ⭐️
Always very sweet and comforting, even if this volume lost a few points this time around.

So, the word I would use for this one is uneven. The first chapter threw me off completely. We start off the volume in Mikoto's perspective. And while it was nice to get to know her better, the exploration of her feelings for her brother was a little wonky. The feelings are not clear, and can definitely be read as incestuous. While I commend the author for exploring the complications of these (quite unwarranted) feelings Mikoto has to contend with, the vagueness of them left too many things up in the air. It felt like a half-assumed attempt at giving more depth to Mikoto, all the while tackling a very difficult topic in this manga. There was definitely not enough time to do it in the span of the first chapter only. Not to mention the fact that casualness was definitely not something I wanted to see associated with this topic.

On the other hand, the middle chapters were an absolute delight! We are back to pining Yamato who is agonizing over what Kakeru is feeling and thinking in regards to their relationship. He's also dealing with how heightened his romantic feelings for Kakeru have become since he told him he was going to leave the door open and see how he feels about dating. Kakeru is a mess of emotions, he doesn't understand how he's feeling at all, the only thing he knows is that he's slowly realizing how Yamato has always been very important to him. We also see Kakeru dealing with crushingly low self-estime, which was another strong exploration of emotions done in this volume. Yamato does cross Kakeru's physical boundaries in this one, and Kakeru rightly tells him off about it. Both of them work things out after, which gives us one of the most heartwarming moment between them yet. We end the volume with a flashback chapter about how Kakeru and Yamato became friends, and yeah, it's no wonder Yamato is holding onto Kakeru for dear life. And, my goodness, that slow burn will be the end of me.......