Manga / Musunde, Tsunaide

Musunde, Tsunaide relies heavily on First-Episode Twist to set the plot in motion. Spoilers for the first few chapters will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

As children, Tsunagu Kuraishi and Kanoko Sakaki were the best of friends, even if they were worlds apart in personality. Tsunagu, who suffered from a bad case of Chronic Self-Deprecation, chalked their Odd Couple friendship up to the mere fact that they were neighbors. Charity from the more-fortunate, she thought. She simply couldn't fathom any other reason why a popular and charming girl like Kano would be friends with self-proclaimed "self-aware garbage" like herself. And yet, despite being an unkempt mess with low self-esteem, she was constantly encouraged by Kano to take care of herself and sort out her life, because Kano believed she could be really popular if she made the effort.

One day, they headed out with some friends to an abandoned, forbidden shrine named Nomiyama-sama to play hide and seek. Tsunagu was "it". Kano declared to her friend that she wouldn't be found, and Tsunagu cheerfully replied that she'd try her best anyway. The other girls ran off to find a hiding spot, and Tsunagu began to count.

And then, things got very strange.

Now, six years later, Tsunagu and the Sakaki family must deal with the fallout of what happened on that fateful day.

Musunde, Tsunaide ("Bind, Connect") is a supernatural mystery Yonkoma by Cherry-Arai, published in Manga Time Kirara from 2019 to 2022.

Musunde, Tsunaide contains examples of:

• Art Shift: At the beginning of chapter 10, Kano asks her sister what kinds of things she likes. She's expecting to hear Shirayuri say stuffed animals or puppy dogs. When Shirayuri instead says "Bugs!" the next panel shows Kano repeating it with a totally black background behind her, while she's drawn in a fairly realistic manner that wouldn't look out of place in a Junji Ito manga.
• Bait-and-Switch: After Kano vanishes at the end of chapter 1, the next chapter focuses on Tsunagu's sadness at her best friend disappearing six years prior and how she's not ready to give up the search. Just when it seems like the manga will revolve around the hunt for the missing girl, she traipses merrily out of the woods, not having aged a day. The series then reveals itself to be a Schoolgirl Series about Kano going to school with her "younger" sister while trying to puzzle out what happened to her.
• Becoming the Mask: On Kano's advice, Tsunagu decides to fake being a normal girl, even though she has no self-esteem at all. However, it becomes apparent that she has faked it so well that she's become the real thing, and the girls in her class think she is super cool.
• Blank Stare: Characters staring at stupefaction at what they've just been told is a common occurrence.
  • In chapter 11, when Tsunagu's classmate calls her "little miss perfect", Tsunagu is drawn with a crude, simplistic face and scribbly shading over a purely black background to really sell her shock and confusion.
  • In chapter 12, Kano tries to tell Tsunagu that it's easy to talk to other people if you just Be Yourself. Cut to Tsunagu giving her a Thousand-Yard Stare while a majestic backdrop of the galaxy appears behind her, to visually illustrate she's completely lost and out of her depth. She searches within herself to identify what "being Tsunagu" means. The only thing she can come up with is sleeping all day.
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Kano has a tendency to be the tsukkomi to both her sister and Mai. In one strip, both of them got caught up spouting absurdities to each other while Kano served up a new retort with every panel. At the end, they teased her over how much she enjoys being the tsukkomi.
• Chronic Self-Deprecation: In chapter 1, Tsunagu's inner monologue constantly puts herself down as the worst human being who has ever lived ... at age nine. She refers to herself as "self-aware garbage" simply because she has a laundry list of reasons she doesn't want to do her homework. And this is just the 2nd page, by the way. She goes on for a bit.
• Chuunibyou: When they first meet, Kano considers Mai a chuunibyou because of the grandiose way she talks and acts. However, Mai claims she slipped through time and lived a whole lifetime in a different world before being reborn. Thus, her demeanor is just the result of living into her sixties before returning to her original life as a little girl.
• Contrived Coincidence: It's quite a convenient coincidence that Tsunagu's cousin Michika Kosaka, whom she's very close with, just so happens to be the homeroom teacher that Shirayuri and Kano (after she returns) are placed under, right when it's time for the story to get rolling.
• Covers Always Lie: The cover of the first volume depicts Tsunagu and Kano as kids in their grade school uniforms, holding hands while they go off to play, implying it's going to be about child protagonists. However, Tsunagu wears that uniform only once (barring an occasional flashback) on the first page of the first chapter. Starting with chapter 2, she moves on to high school while Kano, who fell through a gap in time, remains in grade school. There's no hint of the time-displacement angst at the heart of the story on the cover.
• Curtains Match the Windows: All four main characters have eyes that are a similar hue as their hair. Shirayuri's eyes are sometimes depicted as a little more violet than blue, but other times they're an exact match.
• Decoy Protagonist: Initially, it seems like the series is going to focus on Tsunagu's quest to find out what happened to her missing best friend. However, Kano reappears fairly quickly (in terms of page count, not narrative chronology). Since three of the main characters are nine-year-olds and Tsunagu is the only high schooler, naturally the kids spend a lot of time together while Tsunagu hovers on the sidelines like a third wheel.
• Distant Finale: Chapter 39, the finale, skips forward in time six years to show Kano and Yuri as high schoolers, and Tsunagi as an adult ... in theory.
• Divine Punishment: In chapter 13, Mai speculates that the disappearances were the result of being "spirited away". Kamikakushi, or "hidden by kami", refers to the gods punishing mortals by making them disappear.
• Don't Go in the Woods: The disappearances seem to be linked to a certain shrine in the forest which is forbidden to enter. When Kano and her friends disregard the warnings and trespass in the woods to play, she ends up disappearing for six years. To further the fairy tale-like situation, volume 1's character page features her dressed up like Little Red Riding Hood.
• Driving Question: What is causing people to slip through cracks in time and reappear days or even years later without having aged a day?
• Eldritch Location: The shrine atop the hill is roped off and forbidden to enter, and sometimes people who venture up there get lost in time.
• Eyes Out of Sight: Nanairo Torii, an old classmate of Tsunagu's, has heavy purple bangs that are draped in front of her eyes.
• First-Episode Twist: The first chapter follows Tsunagu and Kano as kids. Kano encourages Tsunagu to clean herself up and take some pride in her appearance, and basically does everything she can to paint a giant target on her forehead for "doomed childhood friend". And sure enough, at the end of the first chapter, Kano vanishes into thin air during a game of hide and seek at a local shrine. The second chapter then skips forward to Tsunagu in high school. She has duly followed Kano's advice to clean herself up and have confidence in herself, though she rues the fact that people seem to have given up on the search for Kano. She heads to the shrine where Kano vanished and yells her name, implying the series is gearing up for an I Will Find You plot ... only for the nine-year-old Kano to traipse happily out of the trees, wondering what's taken Tsunagu so long to find her.
• Fish out of Temporal Water:
  • Inverted in chapter 5. Even though Kano skipped over six years of time, she reinserts herself back into her new life seamlessly and makes a ton of new friends. Tsunagu, on the other hand, is utterly heartbroken at the fact that her best friend is much younger than her and frets about how she can still spend time with a bunch of nine-year-olds without it seeming weird.
  • Played Straight in chapter 6. The revelation that Tsunagu's cousin, whom Kano remembers helping out when she was a clumsy teenager working in her family's bakery, is now her teacher triggers a bout of melancholy in Kano. She muses about her favorite amusement park having a ton more rides, being in the same grade as her little sister, and not knowing what happened to her other friends.
• Flat Character: Five of the six main characters have interesting, rounded personalities. On the other hand, Yachiyo Amagi is "classmate who wants to be friends with Tsunagu". She really has nothing going on, other than her role as a plot device to establish that Tsunagu could be popular in school if she puts the effort in.
• Forgettable Character: In chapter 1, before Kano's disappearance irrevocably alters her life, Tsunagu shuns the spotlight and says she wants to become a "background character", to the point some of the other girls playing hide and seek with them don't even realize she's there.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Although Kano knows Kosaka-san, Tsunagu's cousin the clumsy baker who just entered college, she doesn't realize it's the same Kosaka-san as her homeroom teacher, now six years older, until Shirayuri points it out to her in chapter 6.
• Generation Xerox:
  • There's a spaced-out troll of a nine year old with light orange hair and a chuunibyou attitude named Mai Sonobe. It's not made clear at first how she relates to Shino Sonobe, but given that Cherry Arai is known for setting her works in a Shared Universe, it's a very good bet they're related somehow. Gets a little wink in chapter 29, where she claims people call her family a "cluster of cells" because they all look and act identically.
  • When the girls become fifth graders in chapter 38, their new homeroom teacher is named Yamaji. He has a similar haircut to Mitsugu Yamaji from Three Leaves, Three Colors, who was Shino Sonobe's coworker. Naturally, Mai says she doesn't like the look of him and he isn't to be trusted.
• Handwave: Any time there threatens to be actual, legal consequences surrounding Kono's return, like how she can attend school as Shirayuri's nonexistent cousin, the answer is always, "Eh, her grandfather is really well connected, don't ask questions."
• Hidden Depths: It's revealed in chapter 13.5 that Tsunagu is great at handicrafts, a fact which shocks Mai. She is significantly less shocked when it's explained Tsunagu enjoys it because it's a hobby she can do in complete isolation, without any human interaction whatsoever. Mai switches from praising her for actually being good at something to castigating her for turning everything gloomy and depressing.
• In Mysterious Ways: Due to what was most likely a rushed cancellation that scuttled the Myth Arc, the series ends up feeling like this trope is in play. We don't learn anything about why the gods decided to spirit Kano and Mai away, or why Yuri was given the gift of sight. Things just happened, and they decide to move on with their lives while embracing the memories.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Tsunagu must cope with the fact that her best friend from grade school is still in grade school, while she's in high school and hanging around with a bunch of children.
• Left Hanging: The series ends without explaining the nature of the disappearances, why Yuri could see things when she was young, or the mysterious thing she saw that was alluded to during the beach episode. While it hasn't been confirmed, the abruptness of the conclusion, the use of Distant Finale to skip years of character development, and the fact that Mai Sonobe and Nanairo Torii don't even appear in the final chapter has led fans to suspect it was cancelled on short notice.
• Minor Living Alone: Tsunagu's grandmother passes away shortly before the event of chapter 2, when the series jumps forward in time to the present day. Because of that, Tsunagu is left to live in the house alone. However, she says it's not a big deal because she has a lot of family in the area, like her cousin — who is also Kano's teacher.
• Missing Child: Chapter 1 ends with Kano disappearing off the face off the Earth. She's gone for six years, causing her parents and best friend an incredible amount of sorrow, before she mysteriously reappears at the end of chapter 2 without having aged a day.
• Missing Time: The core of the story. People seem to disappear near the mysterious shrine Nomiyama-sama. One of them, main character Kano, turns up six years later without having aged a day.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: At the end of chapter 2, when Kano is returned to the real world and Tsunagu sees her for the first time in six years, Tsunagu is so overcome with emotion she pounces on the girl while weeping. Kano, who doesn't recognize her due to the age difference, ducks behind a tree and screams that she's a pervert. Kano pleads with her to recognize her, and there's a quiet moment as they gaze into each others' eyes ... and then Kano activates her anti-abduction buzzer.
• MST3K Mantra: Invoked by the author. In the volume 1 afterword, she encourages readers to enjoy the series as a light comedy rather than look for a deeper meaning.
• Odd Couple: In the first chapter, Kano is a neat, studious, refined young girl while her best friend Tsunagu is a messy, lazy, slacker. Kano encourages Tsunagu to get her act together, and after she mysteriously vanishes Tsunagu takes her advice to heart.
• Plot Detour: Although there are references to the mysterious shrine and the disappearances peppered throughout the first volume, it isn't until chapter 13 (the last one in the volume) that the girls decide to look into the mystery, under the pretext of doing a research project about the town.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: As the four main characters try and unravel the mystery, they ponder just how utterly weird their combined circumstances are. Kano skipped forward six years in time, so she's still in fourth grade even though she should be fifteen. Another girl in her class who also claims to have skipped through time says she lived to old age before returning to her original body, so she acts like a sixty-year-old even though she's also in fourth grade. Kano's "younger" sister Shirayuri is legitimately an actual fourth grader, but Kano finds that weird because they're the same age now. And Kano's best friend Tsunagu took The Slow Path after she disappeared and is now actually fifteen, but she doesn't want to be left out so she claims she's mentally still a fourth-grader. Kano whines, "This is too complicated!"
• Raised by Grandparents: Tsunagu was raised by her grandmother after her parents died in a car accident when she was young.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Sakaki sisters both have cool-colored hair, while Tsunagu and Mai both have warm-colored hair. Tsunagu (sloppy) and Kano (refined) have more muted, realistic hair, fitting their down-to-Earth personalities, while Shirayuri (taciturn) and Mai (gabby) have brighter Technicolor hair, befitting their exaggerated characterizations.
• Relax-o-Vision: During the talent show in chapter 33, Nana's kangaroo impression elicits this response.
  Narrator: This scene was so awkward showing it will only cause further embarrassment to Nana, so we rather present you a beautiful lake picture. Thank you for your understanding.
• Shared Universe: Cherry Arai is known to set her stories in the same universe, and this one has a little girl with the same surname, hair color, and general attitude as Shino Sonobe from Three Leaves, Three Colors, implying they are related somehow.
• Shout-Out: After looking into the disappearances in chapter 13, Mai suggests they were "spirited away". When the others ask what brought her to that conclusion, she shrugs and says, "I'm not 100% sure, but ... it has a nice ring to it, don't you think? Like a movie or a drama series."
• Sudden Game Interface: Subverted. In the volume 1 omake, we see a glimpse of Mai arriving in the other world where she claimed she spent a whole lifetime.
  Mai: Holy crackers! What am I supposed to do now? There's only one thing to do now, I guess. Stats! Open now!
  [Beat]
  Mai: I guess this is not that kind of world.
  Narrator: It wasn't that kind of world!
• The Slow Path: Kano skipped over six years of her life, leaving her best friend Tsunagu to grow old without her, leaving the poor girl with no shortage of angst and sadness.
• Token Adult: Tsunagu is fifteen, but due to the mysterious shenanigans happening with time, her best friend Kano is now a child, so she often finds herself hanging out with Kano, Kano's sister, and their classmate, who are all nine.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Kano's sister Shirayuri looks pretty feminine — long hair with a bow, dresses up like Alice when they visit Kuma Kuma World — but Kano says she "acts kind of like a tomboy" because she has an outdoorsy, rough and tumble personality and boyish interests like collecting cicada shells and carrying around sticks she picked up "somewhere".
• Trapped in Another World: While Kano just skipped over six years of her life, Mai claims she lived to old age in a parallel world before being reborn in her body. Kano struggles with whether to accept this, but she takes it on faith because Mai did the same for her.
• Unmoving Plaid: Kano's dress in chapters 1 and 2 is a crosshatch pattern which remains perfectly straight, regardless of the cloth folds.
• Whole Costume Reference: On the character page in volume 1, the main characters are dressed like fairy tale characters that match their circumstances.
  • Tsunagu Kuraishi is The Little Match Girl, because she's a nervous wreck who bemoans her misfortune.
  • Kanoko Sakaki is Little Red Riding Hood, because she encountered great misfortune while walking through the woods.
  • Shirayuri Sakaki is Alice, because she takes things around her in stride no matter how bizarre they are.
  • Mai Sonobe is Puss in Boots, because she has a potentially deceitful nature and nobody's sure whether to believe her tall tales.
• Writing Around Trademarks: When chapter 7 was first published, the Sakaki family go to an amusement park called "Nezumi Resort". In a bit of serendipity, not only is nezumi the Japanese word for mouse, it also rhymes with Disney. However, it seems like it was too close for comfort, and subsequent releases edited the name of the park to "Kuma Kuma Land Resort", kuma being the Japanese word for a bear.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: Mai claims she lived an entire lifetime in the five days she disappeared, which is the reason she carries herself like an old lady.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: While Tsunagu has absolutely no self-esteem, Kano is unwavering in her belief that Tsunagu could be really popular if she puts the effort in. Chapter 11 shows that Kano is absolutely right. Tsunagu's athleticism and her demure, studious daily routine (which is largely motivated by things Kano or her grandmother nagged her about, or just complete laziness on Tsunagu's part) makes her classmates go nuts over her.