Deep Love: The Story of Ayu surprised me a lot.  The story sounds like it’s going to be a typical drama of an angsty teenager who has lost faith in the world.  Both volumes impressed me, despite their jarring emphasis on sexuality, contrasting greatly with the innocence of Ayu’s life with Granny and Pao.  My review of the story will continue after the summary for volume two.  For now, here is the summary for volume one’s tightly packed story.

Chapter 1

Ayu sleeps with men for money, believing that it is the age that she live in. Compensated dating is the norm in the dirty city, and she earns a lot of money. She sleeps over at the home of her gigolo, Kenji, often. Besides his shifty job, he also is a drug addict.

Ayu meets an old woman with faith in the world around her. She and Ayu’s paths cross on many occasions, and instills a sense of hope in her – sort of. She and Ayu raise a puppy together, and also a seedling. However, she does not stop her involvement in the prostitution ring.

The gigolo has gotten into major trouble due to his drug problem, and needs to pay two million yen back to get some thugs off of his back. Ayu betrays the trust of Granny and steals, with the intention of just “borrowing” 1.5 million yen from Granny’s home.

Chapter 2

Ayu’s friend Reina is also involved in prostitution, and gets into trouble. One of her clients commits suicide after their exchange. Ayu tells her to walk away to keep herself uninvolved from the situation.

Ayu visits Kenji, but his apartment reeks of death. Kenji was dead by hanging. The money was completely gone, spent on drugs. Ayu leaves the apartment and knows she will have to get the money back herself.

Reina’s troubles are far from over. Some girls found out that she was sleeping with me for money, and steal her wallet from her. They call in a group of boys who they tell that they can do whatever they want to her. While the girls sing to kareoke in the same room, one of the boys rapes her. The ring leader, Keiko, takes photographs, then as a final show of shame, carves the word “whore” into her leg.

Ayu comes to the hospital to see Reina, and Reina, in a fit of recurring fear screams at her to go away. Ayu calms her down, and Reina hides the kanji of her leg with her nightgown. She was happy that Ayu came.

Chapter 3

Ayu, angry at their actions, finds the girls regular hangout spot, a coffee shop. The girls are there, talking about Reina with the dirty pictures spread out between them on the table. Ayu pours a cup of coffee on Keiko’s head, then takes a sharp knife and carves her leg. Looking at the blood on her own hand, Ayu seems shocked. She leaves with the threat of death for the next time one of them hurts Reina, then calls Granny, only able to say the word “blood”. Eventually, she tells Granny the location, and Granny and the puppy Pao rush to the train station.

On the way, Granny falls down and injures herself, so Pao runs ahead and gets Ayu. Ayu takes Granny home.

Ayu tells Granny about the missing money, but not her involvement. Granny doesn’t seem to mind, because the money was for her adoptive son who she was no longer allowed to see.

Ayu confesses that she stole the money. Granny said not to worry about paying it back right away since she was just a student, but Ayu had a second confession. She sold her body for money.

Granny was shocked and said nothing; Granny was pure and innocent. She had only one love her entire life who she was married to for one day. She had one son, who was not hers biologically. She was the complete opposite of Ayu’s sin.

Granny simply says “good night”, then knelt down at the table. Ayu gets up later and goes back to see Granny, and she was still sitting. She suggests that she lie down on the futon, but Granny does not reply. She is dead.

….

Ayu sits in front of a shrine to Granny, sad but unable to cry, until a man and a boy come to the door. The man gruffly tells the boy to hurry up, and questions who Ayu is. When the younger man sees the shrine, tears pour down his face.

Chapter 4

Ayu recognises his face from the picture Granny had shown her; this was her adoptive son, Yoshiyuki. He asks who she is, and she says that she is Granny’s daughter. He leaves with his real father. Ayu wants to pay for the operation since Granny never could, and plans to earn the money not by selling her body, but by honest work. She obtains good jobs to earn the money.

She meets with Yoshiyuki once in a while; his parents are strict about him leaving the house because of his illness. His parents do not approve of him seeing Ayu.

Once she earned 2 million yen, she visited Yoshiyuki in the park. She surprises him on the swing, but he starts coughing. She wants to touch his shoulder to calm him, but all the men she has touched with her hands flashes before her eyes and she cannot bare to touch him with her sins. He is fine after a while and calms. They chat and agree to be less formal in speech.

Ayu gives her savings to his father, but it’s not enough. He needs 10 million for the operation, but it seems like he’s a deadbeat father. He spends his nights at the pub.

Ayu finds it hard to believe that his parents are really his parents. He is such a sweet boy that she wants to make his dreams come true. He has always wanted to see the sky and sea of Okinawa, so she promises to take him there.

Overall

Deep Love ends with Ayu’s promise to Yoshiyuki.  The sky is so full of hope unlike the dismal opening of the series, in which nature is never even noticed in the panels.  The plot continues in volume two.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 13th, 2006 at 7:58 pm and is filed under Deep Love, Eden, Kotonoha, Manga, Yuu Yoshii. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. This entry has been viewed 3684 times.