Cross Heart
Cross Heart is a series of Web Original Yuri Genre Manga by Hikari "AnaKris" Inukai, originally published in Spanish (and partially, English) on Deviant ART. The series follows the story of Haru, a cheerful schoolgirl who finds herself falling in love with her aloof but beautiful schoolmate Kotomi. Simultaneously, Kotomi is losing an uphill battle against some very serious childhood traumas underneath a Stepford Smiler facade. The story is divided into three (or five, depending on how you count) chapters:
- Cross Heart (2008, 31 pages): Haru and Kotomi, both 15 years old, become friends.
- Someday (2009, 26 pages): Haru and Kotomi are 17 and heading for a Relationship Upgrade.
- Breakdown (2010-11, 108 pages): Set about half a year after Someday, this chapter consists of three parts:
- Part A -- Unheard Feelings: Kotomi struggles with telling Haru that she has to move away.
- Part B -- The Distance That Keeps Us Apart: Haru tries to deal with the pain in all the wrong fashion.
- Extra 1 -- Rumors
- Part C -- The Time That Has Passed: Haru, now 20, is still waiting but starts losing faith in her own feelings.
- Extra 2 -- Happily Ever After
To call this manga, particularly the last chapter, "Emotional Torque" would be an understatement--there wasn't a single dry eye among the readers back when the final pages were published. The author's current plans for the series reportedly include remaking and translating the two first original chapters in English and publishing the entire series on paper, shipped worldwide.
Tropes used in Cross Heart include:
- Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: After Kotomi stops calling, Haru begins to doubt her own feelings.
- All Just a Dream: Invoked by Haru when she and Kotomi finally meet again. She has seen it so often in her dreams already, she is almost glad to dismiss the real thing as another one of them.
- And Another Thing: "Don't give up so easily."
- Art Evolution
- Brainy Brunette: Kotomi.
- Broken Bird: Kotomi in Cross Heart. Haru in Breakdown.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Kotomi not telling Haru about her having to leave.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Haru becomes one by the time Breakdown begins.
- Cooldown Hug
- Crash Into Hello: Haru into Kotomi in Cross Heart.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Kotomi has it in spades.
- Dashed Plotline: Two years between Cross Heart and Someday; a few months between Someday and Breakdown; and three more years between Parts B and C of the latter.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Haru to Kotomi.
- Despair Event Horizon: Kotomi hits it in Breakdown, soon followed by Haru.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Breakdown.
- Even the Girls Want Her: Mentioned briefly in regards to Kotomi in Cross Heart.
- Foreshadowing: Early on in Breakdown, Yoko suspects Haru has a fever. Later on, Haru collapses with a flu, worsened by Post Dramatic Stress Disorder.
- Girlish Pigtails: Haru. When she lets her hair down, Kotomi remarks that she looks more mature.
- Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: Yoko to Haru.
- Hair Contrast Couple: Haru is blond, Kotomi is brunette.
- Headphones Equal Isolation: In a very subtle touch, Haru is often seen wearing huge headphones. If you think about it, although she looks like an extravert compared to Kotomi, she is really quite a loner, as we only ever see her interacting with Kotomi and Yoko.
- Incompatible Orientation: Haru's reaction to a guy asking her out is a wide-eyed "But you are a boy!"
- Intertwined Fingers: Haru and Kotomi do it in the beginning of Someday. Also, during their "marriage" in Breakdown.
- I Will Wait for You: The Promise in Breakdown.
- Living Emotional Crutch: Haru to Kotomi before their Relationship Upgrade.
- Luminescent Blush
- Meet Cute: Kotomi and Haru.
- Meido: Haru works at a Meido Café after graduation.
- Must Make Her Laugh: Haru really wants to change Kotomi's Stepford Smiler into something genuine.
- Parental Abandonment: Kotomi's parents live abroad most of her life and when they finally decide to do something for her, they only ruin her life even more.
- Parental Neglect: Kotomi's parents didn't give a damn when their 9-year-old daughter was raped. If that doesn't break someone's Moral Event Horizon, it must skirt it real damn close.
- Physical Scars, Psychological Scars: You don't really understand the metaphor of the "cross scar" from Cross Heart until Someday, where it is revealed that Kotomi tried cutting her veins soon after her rape, leaving a cross-shaped scar on her wrist.
- Rape as Drama: Kotomi was raped at the age of 9, six years before the Cross Heart.
- Relationship Upgrade: Ultimately subverted in Someday. Double Subverted in Breakdown, where we learn that Haru and Kotomi have been sleeping with each other since that night.
- Schoolgirl Lesbians: Haru and Kotomi.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Haru and Kotomi in Breakdown.
- Stepford Smiler: Kotomi in Cross Heart. Haru really hates her fake smile.
- Ironically, she turns into one herself when Kotomi announces she is moving away.
- The Glomp: Yoko delivers one to Haru in Cross Heart.
- Title Drop: Kinda. The title is a shortened version of "cross wound across [Kotomi's] heart". We don't learn the symbolism of it until Someday.
- Together Umbrella
- Zettai Ryouiki