Whisper Me a Love Song

Episode 8

Happy Pride! This show about an adorable lesbian couple will be going on hiatus for most of the month. The two things aren't related, of course—even if you haven't been keeping up with the news, it's been easy to see that Whisper Me a Love Song has been plagued by production issues since before day one. They continue into this episode, with some truly awkward art every time Shiho is shown playing her violin—her head is bulbous compared to her instrument and body, and there's a lot of inconsistency in dresses as well. The most exciting visual aspect is that we get a black background for the diagonal stripe of rainbow spots instead of the usual white one.

Despite the adaptation problems, the appeal of the actual story isn't absent. This episode digs into Shiho's backstory, and although we still don't get actual confirmation of a crush on Aki, we learn about why she's been such a pill in general. I mentioned last week that the common denominator in Shiho's band-hopping career could be Shiho herself—and that seems to be solidified here. Shiho began her musical career as a self-proclaimed violin prodigy; we don't know for certain how she came to think of herself this way, but as a little girl, she built her sense of self and identity around the notion that she was the best child violinist out there. But then reality came calling: Shiho met Kyou, and suddenly she wasn't winning everything, she was losing to her new friend. That's a difficult moment for anyone, and something that's most commonly (in my observation, at least) experienced when you move from being the best [insert thing here] in your high school to realizing that everyone in college is the best [insert thing here] from their high schools—and someone is going to be better at [thing] than you are. It doesn't matter if that's writing, music, studying, or sports—there'll always be someone you think is better than you at what you've always considered yours. And if it's hard at eighteen, it's even harder at eight.

It looks like Shiho facing this reality with Kyou shaped her into the person she is in the present. If her present band isn't on track to be what she considers the best, she can't be part of it; if Aki doesn't like her back, she can't be friends with her. When Shiho glibly tells Himari that Laureley (pronounced “Lorelai,” which was a surprise to me, although it makes sense with Shiho) is going to go pro, you have to wonder what she'll do if she finds out that Momoka and Hajime don't share that ambition. After all, we've seen that Momoka is equally if not more devoted to the cooking club. Shiho's goals and ego don't always account for people not sharing her ambitions. That might be the key that decodes her personality.

It also stands to make things very difficult for Himari. Shiho doesn't appear to know that Himari and Yori are dating yet, but Miki already sees that it could be hard for her friend to support both SSGirls and Laureley and Shiho doesn't seem above using Himari to get to SSGirls in some way. We're going to have to wait to find out, though, and hopefully, this show fares better than the last series I did weekly reviews for that had a similar issue. (That was Märchen Mädchen if you're curious.) But at least the manga for this is available legally, so while we wait for this to return, it's a good chance to pick up the books and see what we've been missing.

Rating:

Whisper Me a Love Song is currently streaming on HIDIVE.