ONE WEEK SQUANDERED

RAHM JETHANI - Writer, 3rd Year, English

The character design is good though.

SPOILERS FOR SEVEN DAYS!

Time is a difficult tool to make good use of, especially when it is at the forefront of a story’s concept. Certain shorter series - take for example slice-of-life anime like Angel Beats! and K-On! - use time to accentuate the emotions associated with brief windows of opportunity; for example, one’s precious few years in high school, or one’s conflicted and compartmentalized past. Often, this methodology is employed to show character growth, which is important for shorter stories to get correct due to the limited page or episode count. Many succeed, and many more fail. Unfortunately, the manga Seven Days fails in this regard, and does so by quite a large margin.

Seven Days has a very simple premise: one boy, Yuzuru Shino, must try his best to win the heart of another boy, Touji Seryou, within the span of one week. And to be clear, simplicity in this case is a good thing; Seven Days is only 13 chapters long, and as such should communicate its concept fairly transparently to its readers. The premise itself is not what I take issue with, but rather the means Seven Days uses in attempting to create and resolve tension. Going back to what I said earlier about short stories making the most of their time, Seven Days admittedly gets some crucial elements right. Firstly, it immediately introduces the mystery about why Seryou only dates people for a week. This allows for readers to more easily put themselves in Shino’s shoes, given both the audience’s and Shino’s own lack of information. As the story progresses and the mystery unravels, this theoretically should create a better connection between the readers and Shino as well. Secondly, Seven Days’s pacing is crafted very well. Regardless of whether or not this is the byproduct of its shorter scope and narrative, there were never moments of unnecessary or useless story beats getting in the way of the central relationship between Shino and Seryou.

However, Seven Days fails in arguably more crucial ways than it succeeds. For example, the “one week” premise is very arbitrary, even within the story itself. At the beginning of the story, and throughout the rest of it, time is always being counted down, creating a rising sense of tension that ultimately gets no payoff. The ending inadvertently emphasizes this especially, with Shino immediately asking Seryou out again once the week’s time limit has passed, and readers are expected to believe that no one else has tried to do the same thing. This makes Shino’s relationship with Seryou less impactful, because it retroactively demeans the allure Seryou is supposed to have at the start. Granted, this allure is due to most people not knowing him for who he truly is, but the ending of the story doesn’t give any clearer answer to who he is than the beginning does.

This is another big problem I have with Seven Days: although they have a good enough dynamic, Shino and Seryou are not interesting characters. In fact, they are quite boring, and trying to create a character drama with boring characters has the effect of being grating. With Shino, I can forgive his inoffensive lack-of-character due to likely being meant to serve as an audience insert. However, Seryou is a different story. He is painted as a character with messy and inconsistent morals predicated upon his inner turmoil, which should set up well for development, even in a shorter story like this. But, the writing messes up on giving a reasonable justification for why Shino was able to connect with him, leaving this important plot point to be arbitrary as well. Regardless of Shino’s kindness or his pettiness, no explanation is given as to why he and Seryou become closer than normal, apart from one very specific point: Seryou had an ex who was also named “Shino.” Seryou’s mention and maintained contact with his “Shino” makes our Shino angry, due to it going against Seryou’s own arbitrary rules about contacting his exes. This then leads to two feelings: firstly, that Shino’s outbursts are childish and unwarranted, given the fact that he’s already aware of Seryou’s conflicting ideologies. Secondly, it makes Seryou seem apathetic about Shino, despite the entirety of the manga trying to redeem him as a character. As a result, the resolution and ending have no resonating impact, because there doesn’t seem to be any lesson learned, apart from Seryou deciding to cut off contact with his “Shino” because he’s moved on to our Shino.

Ultimately, Seven Days is a conflicting manga. One one hand, it’s a short story about two boys falling in love, made with good art and good pacing. On the other hand, its lack of character development or commitment to making things emotionally impactful leaves a lot to be desired. Seven Days’s mangaka, Venio Tachibana, does not have many writing credits, so perhaps the manga’s mix of quality can be attributed to this. Nevertheless, I can’t deny feeling disappointment towards this manga, especially considering what it could have been.