The title of the yuri one-shot is Haru Ni by Huyou Satoyoshi:
I will start out by saying that the scantalations group translated a short intro on the author at the beginning of the manga, and being female myself, I always find it surprising how male authors can do yuri mangas (converse is true too, how female authors could articulate yaoi mangas).
The manga depicts a conversation between 2 childhood friends, on the day of their high school graduation. It somehow reminds me a little of the movie, Before Sunrise, where much of the movie's plot is told through conversations between the 2 protagonists. You actually don't get much of an introduction to the 2 protagonists in the manga (hell I have read the manga twice over the last hour and I still cannot remember the names of the 2 protagonists), but that's not important because not much character development takes place in the one-shot.
The plot revolves strongly around the theme of "farewell" and "crushed dreams", dramatising how the realities of life destroys dreams and hopes of teens. As the 2 teens reminiscence how life throws them lemons, honestly, as an adult female reader out in the working world, I find it hard to empathise with the 2 protagonists. Perhaps today I am in a bad mood, or perhaps I just simply do not understand the point of the author centering the story around crushed dreams. I somehow find that the whole manga felt like 2 spoilt teenage girls complaining that they did not get all they wanted in life.
When life throws you lemons, make lemonades! Girls, be ambitious!!
Honestly the only part of the one-shot that resonated with me was when 1 of the protagonist gambled everything and suddenly confessed, out of the blue. However, there were no nuances in the story previously to suggest that they had any special kind of relationship aside from being childhood friends. But seeing as one of the theme of the manga is "crushed dream", you could probably guess what happened next.
The art is not too bad, but not fantastic. I didn't like the way the protagonists were drawn as I personally prefer traditional moe-look for manga characters, but I have to say the author drew the sakura trees and some of the background splendidly. Therefore, no particular complains in that department.
Overall, I wouldn't recommend this manga, unless you are really bored and need to look for some SFW yuri to kill 10 minutes of your time. Otherwise, don't bother, they are much better manga out there (hint, my previous 6 blog posts). I would rate this manga a 3/10.
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