The Ocean Brings With It Countless Possibilities!

Today, it is our pleasure to present the first chapter of our second pick up of the year, Nettaigyo wa Yuki ni Kogareru (A Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow) by Makoto Hagino. Although it is a slight departure from our usual repertoire as it is not gender bender related whatsoever, it is a very cute story that frankly we find it hard to believe no one scanlated before us. The story is as follows:

Konatsu Amano is a high school girl who has just moved to a seaside town in Ehime Prefecture after her father is transferred overseas for his job. Lonely and unsure of her new surroundings, Konatsu finds herself gravitating towards Koyuki Honami, an older girl at her school who is popular but is seen as out of reach by her peers who view her as too perfect. Koyuki is also the sole member of the Aquarium Club, which in turn makes her feel cut off from others. In an attempt to help ease Koyuki’s and her own feelings of loneliness, Konatsu befriends Koyuki and the two gradually grow closer together.

Although it probably can't technically be called a shoujo ai/yuri manga, there's a lot of subtext, so you don't even need to put on your yuri goggles for this one. It's just basically a very cute story about two girls who find solace in their loneliness with each other, and from the beginning, it's been billed as a "girl-ship story", short for girls friendship.

That said, the title itself plays up their relationship as possibly something more. To understand this, realize that the natsu (夏) in Konatsu means summer, and by extension, is reminiscent of tropical regions, and the yuki (雪) in Koyuki means snow. So the translated title as A Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow could be interpreted as "Konatsu yearns for Koyuki". And what's more, kogareru (焦がれる) in the title which is translated as "yearns" is taken from the word kogeru (焦げる) meaning to burn, so it's a kind of intense yearning for something or someone, and is used in words such as koikogareru (恋い焦がれる), meaning to be deeply in love.

Another interesting aspect of this series is that the main location is based on a real place, which the author talks about on the inside cover. Makoto Hagino, who is originally from Ehime Prefecture, based the Aquarium Club in the story on a real Aquarium Club at a high school in Ozu, Ehime, which just like in the story, is opened up to the public once a month, and they also have their own website.

In regards to the author, this is Hagino's debut series, but she previously won the Gold Prize in ASCII Media Works' annual Dengeki Taisho competition in 2016 at the age of 24 for a one-shot called Kaiyoubu e Youkoso! (Welcome to the Ocean Club!). And then she started serializing Nettaigyo a little bit later in June 2017 in Dengeki Maoh, so although only the first volume is currently out, volume 2 is being released later this month. Hagino also announced at the end of March on her Twitter account that the first volume is getting a second printing, so we're glad to see the series is doing well in Japan.

So if you think that it's something you'd find interesting, please check it out.

Nettaigyo wa Yuki ni Kogareru ch. 1: Mediafire, Dropbox

Edit: Typos fixed and reuploaded.