Just Communication: Skip and Loafer and When The Day Comes

Author: Adam Wescott

Editor: Masha Zhdanova

Misaki Takamatsu’s Skip and Loafer tells the story of Mitsumi and Sousuke, two high school students from very different backgrounds who nevertheless become friends. As the two of them grow closer, they inspire each other to reach outside of their comfort zones and become better people.

Skip and Loafer is nominally a romance comic. A mismatched boy and girl, potential love rivals and dramatic confessions are all there and accounted for. But Takamatsu is less interested in the chemistry between Mitsumi and Sousuke than she is in depicting how they interact. Mitsumi is unafraid to speak her mind, charming some and turning others away. Sousuke always goes with the flow, which makes him popular but also a bit of a coward. Takamatsu depicts their contrasting natures and friendships with the care of a natural scientist.

Last year’s anime adaptation did an excellent job of introducing the series to a wider audience. Once that audience has breezed through all 9 existing volumes of the manga, though, what comes next? I wish I could recommend Tomoko Yamashita’s series Ikoku Nikki, but it sadly has not yet been licensed yet in the United States. Thankfully there is another comic that I think anybody who appreciates Skip and Loafer would enjoy. To find it, though, we have to leave behind the world of manga entirely.

When the Day Comes is a South Korean webtoon by OMYO. It’s the story of a boy and a girl, Norang and Paran, who are preparing for their high school culture festival. As far as their classmates are concerned, they are a perfect couple. But Norang and Paran have a secret: they broke up ages ago. The high school cultural festival will be their last time together before they announce their breakup to their friends. 

When the Day Comes takes place over only two days and 52 chapters. OMYO limits the core cast to just five main characters. The series therefore lacks the sprawl of romance epics like Cheese in the Trap and Lore Olympus, which run for hundreds of chapters. Its Korean title, “Gakjaui D-Day” (Our D-Days) suggests the reason why. When the Day Comes is a story about deadlines. The cultural festival is the perfect chance for Norang, Paran and their friends to tell each other how they really feel. 

Nobody wants to let the moment slip by. But working up the courage, and finding the right words at the right time, is difficult. Norang’s classmate Jangu wants Paran to give him the go-ahead to pursue Norang, but Paran won’t do it. Yiro intends to confess to her dance club classmate Daeil, but she already turned him down the previous year. Norang can’t get along with Paran’s friend Seowon because she’s convinced Seowon hates her. Norang is so desperate to be liked, and Paran so afraid of rejection, that they lie to their classmates rather than speak to them honestly.

While Skip and Loafer also features a climactic culture festival, Takamatsu plays a different game than OMYO. Her characters are first year students, and this is only their first festival. It passes quickly because they do not yet realize that their time in school is limited. Important beats, like the first appearance of Sousuke’s mother, play out without incident. Only Sousuke’s childhood friend Erika is able to disturb Skip and Loafer’s good vibes, and she is dispatched soon afterwards.

Skip and Loafer is told with an adult’s remove rather than teenage immediacy. The characters operate not as vessels for the readers to project themselves into, but as three-dimensional people to observe. The presence of Mitsumi’s aunt Nao in the story is a tell. Her perspective helps us to understand aspects of the characters that we might not otherwise see. In this way Skip and Loafer captures something outside the highs and lows of traditional young adult romance. When the Day Comes, by comparison, lives in those highs and lows. 

What, then, unites Skip and Loafer and When the Day Comes? It all comes back to communication. There’s a scene early in Skip and Loafer where two of Mitsumi’s classmates meet at a movie theater. Makoto is clever but blindly judgemental. Yuzuki is gorgeous and popular. Makoto assumes that there’s no way a girl like Yuzuki could ever understand somebody like her. Yet at the theater, the two of them realize that they both like salted popcorn. This small similarity is just enough to start building a friendship. 

Another author might engineer conflict between Makoto and Yuzuki by having Yuzuki look down on Makoto. Takamatsu, though, doesn’t do this. Yuzuki understands immediately that Makoto is nervous around her. She gives Makoto an out, by saying that there’s no reason why Makoto should have to spend time with somebody she doesn’t like. It’s Makoto’s choice to refuse Yuzuki’s offer, and to instead commit to understanding her despite their differences.

Makoto makes this choice over and over throughout the series.  At the cultural festival, she sides with Yuzuki when her friends from middle school judge her the same way that she once did. The next year, when she and Yuzuki are no longer in the same class, Makoto pushes through her belief in Yuzuki’s popularity to recognize that her friend needs her support more than ever. At each turn, Yuzuki has to remember to reach out to her friends about her feelings rather than cut herself off so as not to bother them.

The central couple of When the Day Comes, Norang and Paran, have plenty in common compared to Makoto and Yuzuki. They’re both named after colors, Norang meaning yellow and Paran meaning blue. They like many of the same things and even live close to each other. Their relationship is supported by their classmates and embraced by the two of them as fait accompli. Yet we learn that everything they share just makes their differences even more aggravating. They both love movies but prefer different genres. They enjoy the same snacks but can’t agree on the toppings. 

What brings people together? What keeps them apart? Takamatsu and OMYO are fascinated by these questions. Makoto and Yuzuki’s great challenge isn’t becoming friends; it’s the hard work required to remain friends. Norang and Paran’s relationship might have died by a thousand cuts, but their differences, when approached from the right angle, might be totally managable. Keeping a friendship alive (or a romantic relationship, for that matter) requires daily compromise and negotiation. 

One such example in When the Day Comes is the friendship between Norang and her classmate Yiro. Norang offers Yiro a hand one day, when Yiro is recovering from a messy breakup. Her kindness revives Yiro’s spirits and binds them close. Yiro appreciates the way that Norang is always looking out for her. Norang admires Yiro’s forthrightness and honesty. But when Norang breaks up with Paran, she keeps the truth from Yiro. The truth is that Norang’s selflessness is a defense mechanism; she’s deeply afraid of being hated by her peers.

When Yiro finds out that Norang has been keeping the truth from her, she lashes out immediately. “You act like you were being considerate,” she says. “But the bottom line is, you did it for yourself.” It takes her a little while to realize that she might have hit Norang too hard. But then, Yiro has always believed that friends shouldn’t lie to each other. The moments in her life when she kept her feelings to herself, rather than communicating those feelings to her friends, are what she regrets the most.

Yiro’s blunt honesty and Norang’s fear of being disliked are not compatible. For the two of them to grow, they must learn to meet each other halfway. Norang decides to be more open with Yiro about her problems. At the same time, Yiro gives Norang space to deal with her anxieties privately. “You’re not me,” Yiro says to Norang, “and friends don’t have to tell each other everything.” A step forward, a step back. The dance continues.

There are times in Skip and Loafer, too, when a clean resolution like this is not possible. Later in the series, Mitsumi and Sousuke start dating for real. (In a typically Skip and Loafer moment, the two begin their relationship without a dramatic confession scene.) Mitsumi wakes up every day overflowing with love for Sousuke. But Sousuke doesn’t feel their attraction as strongly. He likes Mitsumi, but experiences love very differently.

While Norang and Paran kept their breakup secret from their classmates, Mitsumi and Sousuke kept their relationship secret. Sousuke sees it as a way to keep things on an even keel. There’s no telling what chaos might erupt if their classmates knew the uptight country girl and the handsome city boy were going out. Unfortunately, Mitsumi doesn’t see it that way. Her love for Sousuke curdles into jealousy every time he extends another girl the acknowledgement she wants for herself. She breaks up with him in the end, not because she hates him but because she isn’t having fun anymore.

If Mitsumi and Sousuke never told their classmates they were dating, were they ever in a relationship to begin with? Norang and Paran grapple with these same feelings. “We didn’t say we liked each other anyway,” they say. “And we never asked each other out…so I don’t think there’s going to be much difference.” Later, though, when Norang and Paran think about it, they realize neither can remember hearing from the other why they broke up, either.  The end of the relationship they were both convinced was illusory was itself an illusion. 

As Yiro says, “it’s quite hard for two people to like each other at the same time.” Jangu keeps missing opportunities to confess his feelings to Norang. Seowon says what she means with no consideration for others except when it comes to the person she cares most about. Even Norang and Paran, who once had the fairy tale relationship other people take for granted, threw it away for reasons neither of them can agree on or remember.

OMYO takes care to remind us, though, that love is a silly thing. Norang likes Paran’s face more than anything else about him. She doesn’t even know what initially made Paran interested in her. Jangu only ever goes out with other class representatives. For Seowon, the smallest gesture of affection is enough to transform her day. These are the flimsy webs that bind people together. That, OMYO says, is perfectly fine.

In both Skip and Loafer and When the Day Comes, differences between friends are an ordinary part of life. It takes the chaos of the culture festival for Norang and Paran to realize they broke up “not because we didn’t tell each other that we liked each other, but because we never fought.” Meanwhile, in Skip and Loafer, Sousuke only begins to experience romantic pangs in the same physical way Mitsumi does after they separate. These kids still have plenty to learn about relationships, romantic or platonic. Nobody has taught them whether conflict is normal or instead a reason to despair. It’s up to them to figure out that living in the world means working through your differences with your peers every single day.

When the Day Comes is just one of several Webtoon series playing in the same field as Skip and Loafer. The fantastic (and sadly yet to be localized) Jibi Eobseo, or No Home, dissects relationships between families and classmates with surgical precision. The first season of Odd Girl Out tells the story of a friendship between an ordinary girl and her three popular classmates. After School Lessons for Unripe Apples, the newest series by the author of Cheese in the Trap, precisely captures the joys and embarrassments of South Korean middle school life in the 90s.

Many of us tend to remain in our bubbles. Manga fans read manga, anime fans watch anime. Webtoon readers spend time on their app of choice. I dismissed vertical comics for some time as a medium I didn’t understand. I, too, had to learn to communicate. It wasn’t easy to take the leap and put my trust in an artist I didn’t know and a format I had to learn. But as a certain someone says at the end of When the Day Comes: “It doesn’t matter how different we are…I made an unforgettable memory that will last a hundred years.”