Akebi's Sailor Uniform

Akebi's Sailor Uniform (明日ちゃんのセーラー服) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Hiro. It has been serialized online via Shueisha's Tonari no Young Jump website since August 2016, with the chapters collected in fifteen volumes. An anime television series adaptation produced by CloverWorks aired from January to March 2022.

Plot

Throughout her young life, Komichi Akebi has always loved sailor attire—being inspired by her idol Miki Fukumoto—even going so far as to allow her mother Yuwa make a sailor school uniform for her when she enters middle school. When Komichi gets accepted to her mother's old private school Roubai Girls' Academy, she is delighted that she will wear her homemade uniform; once arriving at her new school, she is surprised to find out that Roubai's dress code no longer uses sailor uniforms and have been replaced with blazers instead. Despite the circumstances, the school's headmistress happily makes an exception and allows her to wear the traditional sailor uniform. As she goes through her years of early adolescence, even experiencing some struggles along the way, she meets and befriends many of her school peers and enjoys her school life.

Characters

Production

Akebi's Sailor Uniform is author Hiro's first work published by Shueisha. Around half year before the end of his previous work, Yumekuri, he was reached out to by the editorial department of Weekly Young Jump. He knew that it would be impossible for him to carry out a weekly serialization and therefore had little interest in working with Young Jump. He however still had a meeting with them and surprisingly found out they could provide options other than weekly serialization.[3][4]

Hiro and Young Jump entered in talks about crafting a school story after showing them school-themed artwork, which included prototypes of several characters.[5] He intended to set the story in high school, but changed it to middle school, finding it a better setting for making discoveries about life.[3][5] Komichi Akebi was not planned to be the main character of the series, whose focus would instead go randomly from a character to another in an anthology of stories, but Hiro decided ultimately to make her the protagonist and give her a social personality to share the focus with the rest.[3] Hiro created her character arc by inspiration of his mother, who once told him how Japanese school uniforms like her own used to be home made.[5] He and his editor Hachi Okuma later came up with the plot point of her wearing a different school uniform from the rest of her class.[3]

Hiro writes the story without fixed plans, wanting it to develop naturally.[4] He took inspiration from own experiences in his freshman year in college, which were reflected in Komichi meeting classmates from all over Japan from the first time.[4] Hiro also read many shōjo manga in preparation, but consciously tried to avoid usual tropes and motifs of the genre.[6] In order to draw the detailed artwork of the characters' movements, he studied videos of gymnastics and ballet, counting on his previous experience as an animator.[3] He also studied Japanese idol MVs, including one by singer and voice actress Manatsu Murakami, who would voice the main character in the anime series.[4]

Hiro helped choose the main character's voice actress during the production of the anime, deeming Manatsu Murakami ideal. Murakami, who described herself as strikingly similar to Komichi in personality and interests, although not in background, strongly identified with the character after reading the manga, to the point of crying in joy when she was confirmed for the role.[4] She also became close to Sora Amamiya and Akari Kitō, who played Komichi's main two friends, and to Hiro himself, who coached her briefly on how to play the character.[4][7] Both Hiro and Murakami described the experience working in the production as similar to Komichi knowing her classmates within the story.[4] Aside from Murakami, several other members of the cast, like Kitō, Amamiya, Shion Wakayama and Shuka Saitō, became fans of the manga.[6][8][9][10]

Media

Reception

Mercedez Clewis from Anime News Network called the series, which her described as "a coming-of-age story about a teenager just being passionate", her favorite show of the season. Clewis revealed she wept of joy with the series' final episode, which she give five stars out of five.[40] Allen Moody from THEM Anime Reviews gave the series 4/5 stars, praising its energetic, pleasant story, which he considered an "affirming show", although he felt a lack of comic relief. Regarding popular accusations that the show contained foot fetishism, he found the series' visual fixation on feet mild and non-sexual.[41] Gracie Qu from Anitrendz gave the series an 82/100, calling it a "gorgeously rendered anime that depicts girls' friendships in a way that I haven't yet experienced in an anime". She praised its high-quality animation, visual storytelling, character development and interactions, finding them particularly authentic, as well as an exploration of "light and dark of puberty". Qu also noted the series' usage of feet as a narrative resource rather than fetish.[42] By March 2023, the manga has over one million copies in circulation.[43]

See also

• Super Cub, a light novel series also illustrated by Hiro

External links