Takane & Hana: Volume 13 manga review

Takane & Hana Graphic Novel Volume 13 cover image

At the behest of her father, 16-year-old Hana Nonomura takes her 23-year-old sister, Yukari's place when she refuses to go to an arranged marriage meeting.  That is how Hana meets 26-year-old Takane Saibara, the heir to a vast business fortune.  Hana and Yukari's father works for the company owned by Takane's family, and he fears that Yukari's refusal will cost him his job.  After they meet, Takane, the heir, and Hana, the high school girl, start to fall in love.

As Takane & Hana, Vol. 13 (Chapters 69 to 74) opens, Hana gets some girl talk from Toshiyuki “Rino” Inokuma, a friend of Takane's, about her relationship with him.  Meanwhile, Takane and Okamon, Hana's longtime friend who is also in love with her, engage in a standoff over conveyor belt sushi at the restaurant “Kuru Sushi.”  Who will win and who will lose in these love showdowns?  And what will happen when Takane and Hana become a real couple?

[This volume includes the bonus manga, a four-panel comics section entitled “Okamon and Luciano.”]

THE LOWDOWN:  The Takane & Hana manga is the atypical typical shojo romance manga.  This shojo manga about a romance between a high school girl and a man a decade older than her rolls on.

Takane & Hana Graphic Novel Volume 13 is a pivotal volume, as was Vols. 11 and 12.  Creator Yuki Shiwasu knows that there are points in the narrative when it is time to make Takane and Hana's romance just a bit more serious.  The new state in which the couple enters introduces a new level of confusion and conflict – all the better for fans of the series.

JN Productions' translation and Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane's English adaptation convey the new levels of complications that the dialogue reveals.  Annaliese Christman's lettering captures the change in mood – more serious talk and less cacophony – for now.

I READS YOU RECOMMENDS:  Fans of teen shojo manga will want to read the Shojo Beat title, Takane & Hana.

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7.5 out of 10