青春18x2：重返最初的悸動

[halfcactus]

This is an anthology of comics about first loves, with accompanying words by Taiwanese novelist Chen Yu... Tbh I just skimmed all the prose segments because I don't think they really added to the experience ajskd;afa (and anyway I'm not literate enough to appreciate the writing).

The stories:

青春紙箱 by 吳宇實


Very cute opener with sweet high school shoujo manga vibes, and hints of enemies-to-friends then friends-to-lovers. 🫶 Storytelling is efficient, focused, and brimming with 青春, and you can easily see why the MC loves the love interest.

PLOT: Because of her friendly relationship with the strangely popular delinquent boy, the MC has become the personal deliverer of love letters from his swarm of admirers. On graduation day, she delivers one last love letter.



不見花期 by 韋蘺若名


A sort of teacher/student romance that opens with the line, “Teacher likes me, doesn’t he?” 😂

PLOT: A student crushes on her 36-year-old math teacher and promises to confess if she does well in the college exams. She achieves her goal, but the teacher quits before she can confess.

Eighteen years later, she finds the teacher on social media—he’s fifty-four now but his pfp is still of himself when he was thirty-six. They meet up at her request. He explains that he quit because his feelings for her made him feel guilty. She reveals that she’s married and just wants to fulfill the promise that she made all those years ago; he listens to her confession.

My main takeaway is that 死當 means to flunk.


堤防 by 曾耀慶


A break from all the het: at first you think the PoV character is the woman who wryly talks about the “masculine” features that she embraces, but it’s actually the PoV of the man who sees in her another man—the man that his twin sister dated when they were younger.

I found this kinda navel-gaze-y, but stylistically it worked—I loved the liminality of sexual awakenings made hazy by liquor, the hyperawareness of bodies, the adolescent self-absorption, the one-sided yearning that’s all the more potent and more tangible when it remains unfulfilled.

Also enjoyed the meditativeness and sense of closure in this comic, ie. here is the kiss that was promised to you all those years ago and that you thought was the final piece of a puzzle… only for you to find out that human sexuality and emotions never fit so neatly.

Easily the most interesting story in the anthology.


擅自寫下你的青春 by 楊基政


THE CHARACTERS: Quiet tsundere writer girl + extrovert photographer sunshine boy

THE SETUP: Attending a class reunion

THE LOOSE THREAD: A conversation that was left hanging, all these years

THE ENDING: What you would expect from the title ("An unauthorized chronicle of you in your prime")

The ML being framed in the MC's PoV, made alive by her words, and memorialized in his own photos was wrenching… not to mention seeing how much time has passed in the way that the MC now writes by typing on her phone when she used to fill up notebooks by hand... But personally I dislike this type of plot (character A getting into a fatal accident on their way to see character B)... If I wanted pain, I’d just rewatch Soul Mate (2016)!!! I also wanted to know more about the FL and see a meatier development of her feelings for the ML… and did her writing change, after her trauma?

That said, the story does work well enough in the context of a collection.


制服與陽傘 by 星期一回收日


The last and definitely the least... This story felt so pointless!?

The MC is a poor girl who starts dating a rich mama's boy. The boyfriend's mother then hires her as a maid, partly because the MC is in need of a job, and partly because she wants to test if the MC is worthy of her son. There appear to be inklings of class differences, mommy issues (with the MC lacking a parental figure), and lesbian attraction, but the story never leans in any direction.

We end with the boyfriend cheating on the MC and the MC being unaffected with the subsequent breakup because she and the boyfriend's mom hang out all the time now so she's effectively stolen his mom... But I don't even know why she started dating the boy in the first place since she never seemed interested in him??? Like if they'd made this a Stacy's Mom situation I would have gotten it... Or even if she just wanted to experience dating a rich kid, idk. There were no discernible personalities or motives to drive the story or get you to the catharsis so this was a very dissatisfying note to close with.