april showers bring may flowers by roku sakura romance manga from yen press cover with the main characters hana, ueno, and uguisudani with hana holding flowersApril Showers Bring May Flowers Volume 1

Writer and Artist: Roku Sakura
Publisher: Yen Press (print & digital)
Translation: Leighann Harvey
Lettering: Bianca Pistillo
Publication Date: Dec 3, 2024
Rating: Teen
Genre: Manga (JPN), Comedy, Romance, Slice-of-Life

Roku Sakura‘s April Showers Bring May Flowers is another December addition to Yen Press‘ ever-growing library. It’s a completed romantic comedy manga with 12 volumes in total and took 5th place in the Tsugi ni Kuru Manga Awards’ print category in 2019. Currently, there’s only the first volume in English, however, the next volume will hit the shelves in March and there’s an anime adaptation to look forward to! Let’s take a sneak peek at April Showers Bring May Flowers‘s first volume.

april showers bring may flowers by ruko sakura from yen press hana tabata shocked
©Yen Press, 2024

Flowers and sparkles. Fated meetings and romantic confessions. Hana Tabata is no stranger to the world of shojo manga, but at the same time is a total outsider. She believes she’s too ugly to experience the kind of romance she reads and is doomed to be a background character all her life. She has no friends at school and is on the committee that deals with keeping the building and the yard clean and orderly.

Her duties also include refreshing the flower vase in the classroom and she comes to school before anyone else to keep a low profile. Hana feels especially playful one particular morning, tucking a flower behind her ear and imagining herself as her favorite manga protagonist. However, the fateful meetings she’d been reading all this time didn’t prepare her for Yousuke Ueno, the hottest, kindest boy in the class, to catch her off guard. Hana’s knee-jerk reaction is to scream and run away, but this unexpected meeting opens the door to a surprising friendship.

April Showers Bring May Flowers is a seinen manga. This demography primarily targets adult men and you can see the difference between shojo manga, where works mainly targeted towards young women or girls. This first volume balances comedy, which often arises from Hana’s internal self-deprecating monologues or misinterpretations of a given situation, with the budding friendship between her and Ueno. And Hana isn’t the only one we meet on a deeper level.

We are given the context of two more characters. First Uguisudani, the other female student on the cover and the pretty ‘girly’ girl who’s liked by everyone. The other is Shinbashi, who is also on the heavier side like Hana and after leading an isolated, friend-less junior high life, he’s determined to go into high school as a changed person. How successful he is at that is another conversation.

april showers bring may flowers by ruko sakura from yen press uguisudani talking about cookies
©Yen Press, 2024
april showers bring may flowers by ruko sakura from yen press shinbashi smug face
©Yen Press, 2024

My initial impression of this first volume is that the broad strokes of the plot are reminiscent of Kimi ni Todoke: From Me To You. The female lead who isn’t traditionally beautiful and lives in her own head, the handsome male lead who’s friendly to everyone, and the pretty love rival who everyone thinks is an angel but fully takes advantage of her appearance and secretly plots the demise of the female lead. Okay, maybe not to that extent, but still.

Hana’s character is written in a more comedic and delusional tone compared to Sawako’s. Ueno says the flower Hana just tucked in her hair looks cute. Hana’s brain warps that input into Ueno spreading it to the whole school and she imagines a near future where others call her ‘the floral uggo’. When they are at the convenience store to eat something, Ueno saying “Maybe I’ll get something hot,” means “You’re here to serve as my wallet,” when translated into Hana’s Delulu Lingo.

april showers bring may flowers by ruko sakura from yen press hana offering to pay for food
©Yen Press, 2024

Her character and how she interprets every single interaction through the lens of her self-worth and body image might feel over the top to some. Especially when a character keeps falling back into the same thought patterns, having to read them repeatedly on paper can be redundant and boring. However, I appreciated this repetition in April Showers Bring May Flowers.

This recurrence amplifies how strongly one’s body image is linked to their sense of worth, and how often these harsh, critical thoughts seep into seemingly unrelated, day-to-day interactions with others or keep one from experiences otherwise one would like to be a part of.

The “ordinary” girls in romance manga are usually drawn not all that differently from their traditionally beautiful and thin peers. However, Roku Sakura chooses to differentiate Hana stylistically from other girls. Although the tone of Sakura’s approach to Hana is humorous, this visual difference serves as a reminder of how others see her for the reader. My only hope is that the artist does not go down the path where Hana’s weight or eating habits are forcefully being changed under the guise of “health”. For now, it was reassuring to see her parents being supportive of her eating what she loves.

The male lead Ueno is portrayed as bubbly and kind, someone who can strike up a conversation with anyone without prejudice. We get to know him a bit more towards the end of the volume thanks to Hana’s mother going the usual busybody mom route and playfully interrogating him during a chance encounter. Hopefully, we’ll get to learn bits about him beyond his kindness and warm character in the next volume!

april showers bring may flowers by ruko sakura from yen press ueno and hana talking about flowers
©Yen Press, 2024

The art style is straightforward and does the job. Fitting the tone of the series, the reaction faces Hana pulls throughout are hilarious, not to mention relatable! The other characters except Ueno all have their inner weird faces as well. However, there are moments when Hana happily or shyly blushes, and she looks so adorable. Because these moments are rather rare and strikingly different from her usual mode, they are all the more striking.

April Showers Bring May Flowers opens with 4 color pages, with two of them a spread. In the physical version, these pages are printed onto glossy paper. Since manga dust jackets aren’t the standard in the U.S., these color pages are always a welcome addition. It’s also a nice added bonus to see characters in color not only on the cover but also in panels.

To conclude, I enjoyed the first volume of April Showers Bring May Flowers more than I expected! I’m certainly looking forward to the continuation. Shojo and romance manga enthusiasts will definitely not miss this series, but readers who prefer the comedy side to be more prominent in their romance or slice-of-life stories will have a satisfying time as well. Here’s to see more heavy leads no matter the gender in the future!

april showers bring may flowers by ruko sakura from yen press hana hyping herself up
©Yen Press, 2024

April Showers Bring May Flowers Volume 1 is available digitally and in print on Yen Press’ website and other retailers.