By Banri Hidaka. Released in Japan as “Hitsuji no Namida” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by CMX.

I’ve always felt a bit guilty when I think of Tears Of A Lamb. I’m a giant fan of everything Banri Hidaka does, but I spend most of my time trumpeting either I Hate You More Than Anyone!, the work she created before this, or V.B. Rose, the one she wrote afterward. I enjoy TOAL, but I’m not over the moon about it.

For one thing, it’s not a love story. There’s a love story *in* it, and this volume sees Kei and Kanzaki declare their love for each other (I’d call this a spoiler, but in a shoujo manga, is the hero and heroine admitting love ever a surprise?), but it’s not the point of the manga. IHYMTA! and VBR are about the couples and their travails in love. But TOAL is a mystery, and is at heart about how memories trap us and keep us from moving forward – even if you can’t remember anything.

This is the final volume of TOAL, so all the various plot threads that have been scattered are woven together here. Kei regains her memories, and meets Suwa. Everyone finally starts to talk about what happened before, with the accident that led to Kei and Suwa’s memory loss. And Kei finally learns that focusing on her goal to the exclusion of all else doesn’t work. She’s told herself this before – a lot – but telling yourself something and actually understanding it are two different things.

This manga is very subtle and sedate, with little of the frantic mood swings that characterize IHYMTA!. The ‘villain’ of the piece is simply a petulant teen who’s frustrated at Kei’s cluelessness about his own feelings. Kei being Kei, when she finds out he was behind the whole thing (well, the ring part, at least), manages to forgive him.

I kind of which we’d had a couple of punches thrown, though. Not that I hated Shinogu or anything, but this manga is sooooo talky. Yes, you can argue that’s true of a lot of shoujo, and especially true of Hidaka’s other works, but it’s more noticeable here. IHYMTA! and VBR both have their cartoon violence to fall back on (the former more than the latter), and IHYMTA! also has its frenetic pace. The pace here is glacial, so it’s simply a matter of sitting back and waiting for Kanzaki to slowly discover what most everyone else already knows. Which involves finding the right questions to ask.

The other main flaw of this manga is, of course, that after you find out what happened you want to throttle everyone involved for keeping quiet. Seriously, the sheer amount of “I didn’t say anything as it would hurt her” and “we thought we already knew what you were thinking” involved in this series can drive you insane. For a manga where everyone keeps telling each other bits of the plot, they’re very good at justifying not saying the right things. Even the smarter characters, like Choko-sensei, fall prey to this.

(And a quick note to CMX’s editorial department: I get that you have different translators/adaptors on your series, but at least get them to know the names of your other works. Page 160 talks about “I Hate You More Than AnyTHING”.)

However, it all works out in the end (even if it could have worked out a whole lot faster), and at 7 volumes this is a smaller investment in the world of Banri Hidaka than IHYMTA! (13 volumes) and VBR (14 volumes). The ending with Kei and Kanzaki is very sweet. And the final postscript, with Suwa’s text message, puts a happy lump in your throat. For those who want a nice sedate angsty shoujo, and don’t mind a lot of people not telling important things to other people, this is a great series to pick up.

And Suwa’s book is trememdously cute.