Himawari-san

I’ve recently been rereading Himawari-san which is one of my all time favourite manga series. It’s a gentle yuri series (though not heavily focused on romance) with really cute art, fun characters, and very heart warming moments. This is actually one of the series I’ve probably reread the most, it’s a personal comfort series of mine and whenever I’m feeling down I like picking it up and rereading it. It’s gotten to the point where despite my poor memory I still remember a lot of chapters just based on how they start haha.

As to what inspired this reread of all rereads to make me write down some thoughts, there is a chapter in which the main character (Himawari-san) finds a strange bookshop. The seller offers her a book that always adapts to what she wants to read and is essentially a book that she’ll never not find interesting. However, Himawari-san declines the book. Her reason being that she wants to choose her own books, and how it’s wonderful that someone is able to make you think that the book is interesting. The book that she chooses then becomes one of a kind in the world. A book that changes to your preferences isn’t like that.

I was in another server and we had a pretty long discussion on whether this book was something good or not. My personal outlook on the subject is aligned with Himawari-san, in that I believe that there’s something special in picking up not just a book, but anything, and wondering if it’ll be something that’ll grab you. I also think that there’s values in experiencing things that you might not consider good, or interesting, because to a degree I think that it’ll always expand your horizons in a certain way. Now granted, I’m not suggesting people actively search out things they don’t like, but to me I think there’s value in trying something new and not knowing whether you’re going to like it or not. If you don’t like it, there’s value to that.

It also amplifies the excitement (at least to me) when you find something that really surprises you with how much you like it. A very recent example of that for me was Touhou Fearless Frogslayer where I mostly picked it up on a whim but really fell in love with the game. I’ve also played a lot of games recently that I’ve dropped and thought “oh they’re not for me” but even those games help me realize what I seek out in games, and thinking about dropping them almost forces me to articulate exactly what about the game that I didn’t like and whether it’s something I thought the game did poorly or something that I just don’t like in general. If every game I picked up was always something I liked, I think it would lead me to ironically know less about myself as a person in addition to making those games that do grab me feel not as special.

In more modern times I find this one specific chapter also applicable to most AI generated content. In the future (or even now to some degree), AI and algorithms may exist to the point where we’re fed content that we (or I suppose the algorithm) deems the most interesting, and this concept feels similar to the book that Himawari-san rejects. So every time I reread this chapter I find it interesting how close we are to get to the point where this dream book might actually exist.

Anyways this is all to say that I think Himawari-san is not only a gentle and heartwarming read, I think it talks about interesting topics. It also got me back into reading books! It’s not a super exciting read, but in return it offers a lot of chill and gentle moments that are soothing (and some bittersweet ones too). I love it a lot and will continue to reread it likely for many years to come!