Half Is More, Vol. 1 Review: Identity, Belonging, and Being Seen

By Ashley Williams

What surprised me most about Half Is More, Vol. 1 is how much ground Yoiko Fujimi manages to cover while still making the manga feel personal. This is a story about being mixed, but it is also about belonging, family, race, language, cultural expectations, friendship, and the exhausting experience of having other people decide what you are supposed to be before you ever get a chance to tell them yourself. Fujimi makes her intentions clear before the manga even begins, acknowledging the complicated history of the Japanese term haafu, or “half,” and explaining that she deliberately uses it to prompt readers to consider the implications the term continues to carry. I enjoyed this first volume quite a bit, but one story in particular immediately grabbed me.

Half Is More is structured around several character focused stories rather than one traditional continuous plot. Volume 1 contains chapters centered on Kazumi Mandanda Yoneyama, Saeko Sekiguchi, Marina Kamebuchi, Rushia Numata, and Alexandra de la Rosa, along with a bonus story about Kazumi's youth. Their lives and experiences intersect, but each chapter allows Fujimi to approach identity from a different angle.

The first story featuring Kazumi Mandanda Yoneyama was easily my favorite. Kazumi is a Black and Japanese woman with a Japanese mother and French father, and the manga presents her as someone whose appearance means people constantly make assumptions about who she is and where she belongs. What I especially loved was seeing a Blasian character at the center of a manga without her race being treated as simply a visual gimmick. Her identity affects her childhood, her relationship with Japan, her career, her friendships, and especially her relationship with her younger brother Yuta. The opening image of Kazumi as a little girl surrounded by other children immediately establishes that feeling of being singled out even while adults are telling everyone that they should simply get along.

Kazumi and Yuta are particularly interesting because they came from the same parents and grew up in the same household, yet they have developed very different relationships with their identities. Yuta legally removes “Mandanda” from his name and becomes Yuta Yoneyama, something Kazumi struggles to understand because she sees her name as part of who she is. Yuta sees the decision far more pragmatically. I liked that Fujimi does not make either sibling into a simple mouthpiece. Instead, she demonstrates how two mixed-race people can experience the same society and come away with completely different ways of surviving it.

There is also a childhood metaphor involving a lone black fish in a school of red fish. The black fish eventually gains acceptance because it possesses abilities that make it useful to the group. It sounds like a simple children's story, but Kazumi's interpretation of it becomes much more complicated as an adult. Why should someone have to be exceptional before everyone else decides they deserve a place beside them? That idea stayed with me because it captures one of the manga's biggest themes. Acceptance should not require someone to prove that they are special.

The later chapters continue exploring identity from completely different perspectives. Saeko Sekiguchi, whose mother is Chinese and father is Japanese, experiences the opposite problem from Kazumi. People tell Saeko that she does not “look” mixed, question her Japanese-sounding name, and immediately ask her to say something in Chinese. Her story looks at what happens when an aspect of your heritage is effectively invisible to other people and then suddenly becomes something they expect you to perform for them.

Marina Kamebuchi's chapter moves more heavily into friendship, guilt, and accountability. I appreciated this chapter because it shows that Half Is More is not interested only in obvious examples of racism. Marina begins reflecting on moments when her own words or behavior may have hurt people she cares about. Eventually she realizes that she cannot simply leave things unresolved and decides she needs to reach out to Saeko. It is a quieter chapter, but it adds another dimension to the book's larger discussion about understanding experiences that are not your own.

Rushia Numata, who has a Japanese father and Filipina mother, brings another perspective. Her chapter digs into dating and the stereotypes that people attach to mixed families. Even the seemingly innocent question of where her mother and father met has become frustrating because Rushia realizes that some men have already constructed an answer before she speaks. The chapter touches on assumptions about Filipina women, immigration, money, family, and what someone thinks dating the daughter of an immigrant will mean. Rushia's refusal to allow those expectations to determine what she deserves made her one of the characters I enjoyed most after Kazumi.

The final major story introduces Alexandra de la Rosa and expands the manga's perspective again by focusing on students entering Japan without knowing Japanese. Alexandra comes from the Philippines, while another incoming student comes from a Peruvian family, leaving the school's teachers scrambling to determine how to support them. There is humor in the teachers being completely out of their depth, but there is also something meaningful underneath it. Treating everyone “equally” does not necessarily mean treating everyone identically when some students need completely different forms of support.

One of the biggest strengths of Half Is More is that Fujimi refuses to present mixed people as though there is one universal mixed experience. Kazumi can be proud of the parts of herself that make her visible while Yuta wants fewer obstacles attached to his identity. Saeko can go through life with people not realizing she is mixed at all. Rushia has to deal with assumptions about her mother's background. Alexandra is dealing with language and adapting to an entirely new environment.

They also feel like actual people instead of characters created solely to deliver messages about racism. They drink together, joke around, complain about work, talk about relationships, argue, embarrass themselves, discuss food, use social media, and occasionally say something stupid. That everyday material is important because it prevents the manga from becoming a lecture. Fujimi lets the serious subjects emerge naturally from people's lives.

I also really enjoyed Fujimi's artwork. The opening of Kazumi's chapter immediately stood out to me because of the beautiful color pages. We first see Kazumi as a child and then an older Kazumi standing in the middle of Shibuya, followed by Yuta surrounded by cherry blossoms. The contrast between those colorful introductions and the traditional black-and-white manga that follows gives the characters an immediate visual presence.

Once the book shifts into black and white, Fujimi's art is clean and extremely expressive. Characters have distinct faces, hairstyles, clothing, and body language, which is especially important for a manga with such a large ensemble. She is also very good at changing the amount of visual information depending on the scene. Comedy can become packed with exaggerated faces, dialogue, food, restaurants, phones, and social media screens, while emotional scenes suddenly open up with large areas of white or black space and very little background detail. Marina's chapter uses that negative space particularly well as she begins confronting her own feelings. I also appreciate how modern the manga feels visually. Social media posts, group conversations, fashion, hairstyles, nightlife, workplaces, and restaurants make these characters feel like people living in contemporary Japan rather than characters existing in an empty setting.

I enjoyed Half Is More, Vol. 1 a lot. The first chapter with Kazumi was the clear standout for me because seeing a Black and Japanese woman dealing with identity from that perspective is something I do not see nearly enough in the manga I read. More importantly, Fujimi gives Kazumi enough complexity that she never feels as though she exists simply to provide representation. Her complicated relationship with Yuta, her childhood memories, her pride, her frustration, and even the contradictions in how she views herself make her feel real. The other stories build on that foundation by showing that being mixed is not a single experience. Sometimes you stand out immediately. Sometimes nobody realizes your background until you tell them. Sometimes the biggest struggles come from family expectations, language, dating, or the seemingly harmless questions people keep asking. If I have one criticism, it is that the anthology style means the emotional impact is a little uneven. Kazumi's chapter sets such a high bar that some of the shorter stories do not have quite enough time to reach the same depth, and the final chapter clearly leaves room for Alexandra's story to continue into Volume 2. Still, the interconnected cast gives the book a personality that made me want to spend more time with these characters.