In Love's Key, Reprised

by Guri Nojiro

Genres: Manga, Romance
Pages: 209
Rating:

Synopsis:

Forced by poor health to take a leave of absence, curmudgeonly conductor Kiri returns to his rural hometown for some much-needed rest. But on his very first night back, he comes dangerously close to freezing to death—until local grocer Osamu scoops him up out of the cold and into the warmth of his embrace. Can this younger man, a years-long fan of Kiri’s work, thaw out the ice in the maestro’s heart? Or will Kiri be doomed to a life of frigid loneliness forever?

Guri Nojiro’s In Love’s Key, Reprised has a fairly typical Japanese m/m dynamic: one guy goes obsessively after the other, who appears to resist and be very grumpy, but finally gives in and it’s been love all along. It’s a bit insta-love (with the slight justification that Osamu saw/heard Kiri playing the piano some years before at a critical point in his life), but it comes out pretty cute.

The premise is that Kiri is a well-known orchestral conductor whose work has suffered since the death of his mother, as he starts being too harsh and nitpicky, falling all out of sympathy with his musicians. Run-down, he ends up going to his mother’s home for a while to recover, whereupon Osamu smothers him with enthusiasm, gets him to conduct the school choir, and wriggles into his life with enthusiasm and warmth, helping Kiri to warm up as well (both literally and figuratively, since he ends up cuddling Kiri shirtless after finding him freezing and wet from snow/no heating in his house).

The art is okay, and there are some very cute moments; it didn’t blow me away, but it did manage to tug on my heartstrings anyway, especially at the end when Kiri publicly calls Osamu his partner. It’s pretty tropey, but… sometimes that’s fun, and it hit the spot for me right now.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)