A Palate of Orange. 

By Steph

(SPOILER WARNING) - Note that the experience you gain from reading Orange will always be beautiful, even through spoilers. However, if you wish to dive into this story with the raw surprised pleasure of discovering something new, I suggest stopping here. 

Tw: mentions of suicide

  What would you do if you woke up one day with a letter written by yourself 10 years in the future? Would you ignore it, throwing it away and laughing at the absurdity? Or would you take it, reading it just to relieve your curiosity? What if, when you read the letter, it told you to prevent your biggest regrets… about someone else you hadn’t even met yet? 

This very situation is how Ichigo Takano opens up the start of the manga Orange. Naho Takamiya, a second year high school student living in Japan, wakes up one morning with a letter on her desk. The letter, she is surprised to soon realize, is from herself 10 years later, noting her of events in the future. However, all of them are curiously connected to one boy—Kakeru Naruse, a new transfer student in her class. Nahu soon learns that in order to stop a Kakeru Naruse from ending himself - her future self’s biggest regret - she must make sure certain events do or don't happen. Orange follows Naho and her journey to save Kakeru—before it’s too late. 

When you eat an orange, the first thing you must do is peel the rind off. Sometimes after you peel the rind off, the orange can be overripe, under ripe, rotten, smashed. You never know what's inside the orange—because on the outside, most oranges look the same. And even then, after taking a look, you will never know what it tastes like until you take a bite of one of its wedges, and simply savor it. Is it sour? Is it sweet? Is it bitter? An orange isn’t just one flavor. It is a motley of the taste buds. That is the true surprise of an orange—the surprise you experience each time you eat one. The manga Orange in my mind is just like one of these oranges. At first glance, this may be a book you walk by, uninterested by the vague and serene cover art. Even I passed by it at first, thinking it to be just another cliché rom-com story of two teenagers in love. That itself was Takano’s intention, I believe, to hide the true meaning of the book and let the reader make their own forced perceptions just by a single glance. Just like an orange, it looks mundane, boring, unimpressive. And just like an orange, there is a bountiful prize to find right underneath the inedible rind. 

Yet still, there was something pure, something alluring at the simplistic style. It looked so happy and cheery, and almost made me believe it was just another boring book as I expected, until I took a closer glance. Yes, it still seemed peaceful and serene, but as I looked closer, there was a hint of sadness, and loneliness. Why had it captivated me so? I couldn’t really answer that question yet, so I slid the book out of its rows of shelves, flipping it to the back to read the snippet of a summary. 

While that’s what pulled me in, the real treasure of the book was the content itself. Just like an orange, the story was bitter, tangy, yet sweet, a mess of flavors in your mind. It was both heartbreakingly raw and innocent, the tang still resonating in my mind days, weeks after I read it. With a single glance, I could have ignored this story, but I didn’t. And I'm glad I didn't.