Words and Art: Haruka Chizu
Publisher: Viz (Imprint: Shojo Beat)
Translation: Andria McKnight
Touch-Up Art & Lettering: Rebecca Sze
Design: Jimmy Presler
Editor: Karla Clark
Age Rating: Teen
This manga release sure did sneak up on me, I must say. Unlike Firefly Wedding which I was well familiar with, Snow Angel appeared as a new and shiny Shojo release that I knew next to nothing about.
A quick search engine search (sorry cousin Google, you ain’t it anymore) revealed that mangaka known as Haruka Chizu is newer to the game. In 2020 under the pen name “Chizunaru” she debuted with a one shot, then created a single volume of work before Snow Angel’s release–the creator’s first multi-volume work. Her twitter page mentions that her work focuses on Girls’ manga/BL manga/mixed genres and that she is a fan of happy endings in stories. Along with being a rescue dog caretaker, the mangaka devotes time to posting her artwork online via her Instagram and Pixiv pages.
The other day I pulled up the Merry Manga website and saw the absolutely gorgeous front cover of Snow Angel on the homepage. Clicking on the site’s listing for it made me curious so it led to going to the publisher’s webpage for the new series where I read the mini preview– OH! I knew that I wanted to read it so here we are. Shojo Beat gives us a simple but mighty synopsis for the English language debut for Haruka Chizu’s first series: “A reunion with her childhood friend gives a depressed young caregiver the push she needs to live for herself and find love.”
Spoilers in the review below
Trigger warnings: themes of familial abuse and trauma and in the work and written review below
This first volume of Snow Angel begins ten years in the past with children playing in the snow and living their best lives. Besties Muku, Yuto, and their respective siblings Inori and Sakuto are enjoying the snowy weather in the Japanese countryside and express sadness when the two sets of siblings have to leave and go to separate homes. This is such a cute and endearing way to open the narrative of this manga: of them all being so carefree and happy in their childhood before real life catches up to their families and things change–because things always change. The boys–Yuto and Sakuto leave for Tokyo and the girls Muku and Inori experience a loss in the family and are uprooted, changing the trajectory of Muku’s life as she mentions, “That moment marked the end of my childhood.”
Lord knows that I love a meet cute and even the failed ones! I can’t be mad at popular tropes in the stories when they are employed so effectively and add to the overall story. In the current day, adult Muku is on a train headed back home. Readers learn that she wasn’t allowed to attend college, leave town as young people do once becoming adults–she’s been the primary caretaker of an aging family member and the primary glue of her household. Stuck at home, she’s been forced to take jobs that don’t pay well or offer longtime benefits or stability closer to home–much to the urging demands of the older family members: her mother and grandmother. Alas before we learn all that, Muku has a surprising encounter with a young man on the train whom she helps out. While initially she is excited as they share a hobby, his pessimistic attitude drags and sours the experience for her.
What helps make Snow Angel such a compelling read is the mangaka’s ability to weave together this incredible narrative of a young adult, a young woman attempting to reclaim herself. Muku is a young woman who is trying to reclaim her voice, her steering in her own life, and a way to co-exist with her family doing so. She sees her young life at twenty-one years of age as wasted and wants to consider and explore a life where she is first, not her grandparents, her mother, her dead father’s memory, and not the little sister she still wants to protect. Meeting her childhood best friend Yuto again, serves as a timely catalyst to break free from the chains of familial abuse she’s been living through.
I consider Haruka Chizu’s work here very much as a coming-of-age story, and I just adore when manga artists explore real life, hard hitting societal topics in their works. I noticed that the publisher included “themes of familial abuse and trauma” under the Teen rating of the volume which I appreciate for readers and interested parties who want to pick up this book. Not unfamiliar with reading about such topics (controversial to some) in manga like child neglect and parentification, when I learned that one of the main characters was a caregiver, a young one at that, intrigued me. Muku Shiroshika is thrust into a thankless caretaker role–implied at a young age and it is not a uniquely new phenomenon to young adults or girls and women, unfortunately.
In the United States, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health mentions that a study from 2024 reveals that an estimated 1.6 million youth (ages 15–18) and 2 million young adults (ages 19–22) are caregivers, representing 9.2% and 12.7% of their respective age groups. The study does emphasize that time spent caregiving impacts young adults’ educational opportunities and achievements. This incredible piece from NPR, aptly titled, For young adults, caregiving isn’t just hard. It can shape you for life shares different stories of young caregivers. One profile places emphasis on caregiving in early adulthood and how it might shape so many life decisions, outside of someone’s identity.
As for Japan, I am learning a few interesting realities for the country. The silent struggle of Japan’s ‘young carers’ opens up on how Japan’s aging population and declining birth rate have heightened the young caregiver issue. These young people face not just risks to their education, wellbeing, and rights, but they face a lack of awareness and support as well. Faced with a rapidly aging society and shrinking workforce, Japan has been easing restrictions on non-Japanese engaging in home nursing care to help combat the issue. Haruka Chizu’s Snow Angel introduces such a young person in Muku who is silently drowning in the obligations, responsibilities, and the weight of her family’s expectations upon her that keep her held down.
While I appreciate the mangaka’s fictional caregiver, some readers who may have been or are in less-than-ideal caregiving roles may feel that Muku’s complicated family home doesn’t best represent them or the issues feel too glossed over in this first volume. (Not my experience as a former caregiver, just so that you know.) Other readers who may not like to read and sit with uncomfortable situations in manga may feel this volume is not for them. I feel that Snow Angel is a brilliant and brave start to a new series that asks the uncomfortable questions and shows a young person in distress and struggling to gain their life back and fighting to gain agency over their life. Here is a really well written and illustrated introduction to a life on hold, on ice and the fiery will of the person within wanting to change and have a say in doing so.
Coupled with the sharp writing with such a sensitive societal issue is Chizu’s beautiful artwork in Snow Angel that meshes it all together so well. It would be easy, too easy to say that the mangaka’s art is easy on the eyes, that the art is gorgeous. Instead, I will tell you that one of the places where her illustrations shine the most are the scenes where Muku is overwhelmed by the family that loves her and uses her. In one such scene (see the manga trailer embedded above in this review) after tending to her aging grandfather, she stands in water.
Her severe mental situation is represented on page masterfully as she’s drowning, air bubbles popping up and a crushing weight of words keeping her down. “I’m Exhausted.” “But They Need Me”, “I wanted to Go To College Too” and “If Only I Could Leave Too” are just some of the inner thoughts floating above her against a dreary and black background. These pages are among a few in the volume that effectively help translate how isolated and alone she is and how her family keeps her immobilized, unable to act. I also really, really appreciated the creator’s attention to detail with the screen tones and playing up light and shadows making certain situations like confrontations and quiet moments of self-doubt stand out more on the page.
As with Firefly Wedding, I love that Viz’s Shojo Beat imprint is bringing us newer talents in the genre and dare I say listening to their fan base on what series are moving the needle and which ones need English language translation licenses. It is too early in the game to tell if the imprint has truly revitalized itself, yet they are continuing to bring us Shojo girlies (gender neutral) a surprisingly good crop of new releases that I am reading, buying, checking out from my library, and reviewing. Snow Angel volume one has impressed me as a reader and a critic. The artwork and narrative work together well in the start of a fictional account of one of such an often invisible and silenced majority no matter where you look in the world.
My one true concern is as a romantic relationship is hinted to be developing for Muku–whether that plays into her resolve to change herself. The end of this volume suggests otherwise yet we’ve all seen stories of growth by a likable, lovable even, female character completely overshadowed by a romance or the storyline of the male lead or worse off, a random male character. I’m ready for the next volume as I want to see our main character continue breaking free of her family’s influence despite continually finding that it is harder than she thought. Snow Angel is a coming of age tale of the Shojo variety of one of life‘s strongest soldiers working for the life she finally feels capable of trying to lead.
Snow Angel Volume 1 is published through Viz and can be found where comics and manga are sold.
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