Chief among those differences is the fact that this tale follows a heroine rather than a hero. Nanoka is also significantly younger than the boys who are the protagonists of Sumino’s other works; she’s only in the fourth grade, making her about nine years old. She’s a very precocious child, but that isn’t doing her many favors, largely because she knows she’s ahead of her peers academically, which she assumes makes her different from them entirely. That’s a dangerous thought pattern to fall into, and since her parents aren’t around much due to their jobs, it becomes her teacher’s task to try and gently teach her that being “special” doesn’t mean that you’re any better or worse than anyone else. Like many precocious children, Nanoka thinks that she still knows more than the adults around her, which is behind the importance of the three friends she makes outside of her home.

When the story begins, she’s already met two of the women who will form the backbone of her development. Because her parents are out of the house all day, Nanoka has taken to rambling around town after school, and that’s what leads to her making the acquaintance of her new friends. The first is a woman somewhere between twenty and thirty whom she calls “Skank-san,” mistakenly assuming that the unfamiliar word she sees scrawled on the apartment nameplate is the woman’s actual name. (She has permission to use it, which tells us a lot about Skank-san right there.) Nanoka knocks on her apartment door after finding an injured black cat; Skank-san is the only person willing to help her. Afterwards Nanoka and the cat (who functions as a bit of a guide throughout the story) continue to visit the woman to talk, completely unaware of what the hints she drops about her work mean. To Nanoka, she’s just a friend, and more than that, the nice woman who helped save her cat. She and kitty also go visit Obaachan, an old woman who lives in a large house in the middle of a small forest; Nanoka met her while exploring. As the name suggests, this woman functions as a grandmother for Nanoka, baking her treats and offering soft but solid advice whenever Nanoka needs it from her almost magical woodland home.

It’s when neither of these women are home that Nanoka meets her third friend, a high school girl whom she calls Minami for the name of the school on her uniform. Nanoka finds Minami on the roof of an abandoned building in a different part of the forest, and to her horror, when she discovers her, Minami is engaged in cutting herself. Nanoka can’t quite understand why she’d want to, but she’s immediately thrilled that Minami is writing stories and demands to read them. Eventually the girl gives in, and it is the combination of Nanoka’s complete and total belief in Minami’s writing ability and a fight she has with her parents about missing visiting day at school that brings the truth of who Nanoka’s friends really are to light.

It isn’t all that difficult to figure out, but that doesn’t take anything away from the beauty of the story. In many ways it thematically mimics Antoine Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, one of several classic novels Nanoka reads over the course of the story. While we could draw distinct parallels between some of the characters in both works (the cat as the fox, for example, or Skank-san as the rose), it’s more about one of the things the fox tells the prince in the story: “On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux,” which can be translated as “We only see clearly with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” Nanoka’s friends teach her to see with her heart, and to recognize that what her eyes may see isn’t always the best, or the fullest, truth about a person or a situation. That’s what Nanoka truly lacks in the beginning of the story, and what she comes to find by its end, and Sumino’s use of the theme is what makes the book shine, despite its basic predictability.

The use of the theme of dreams is another place where we can see the influence of The Little Prince, although that is perhaps a bit more obscure. As readers of the text may recall, the narrator (largely assumed to be Saint-Exupéry himself) meets the prince after his plane has crash-landed in the desert; he and the prince spend eight days together before the prince is bitten by a snake so that he can “return” home to his planet. While there are many interpretations of this, the one that best suits I Had That Same Dream Again is the idea that this is all the narrator’s dream of hope as he wanders in the desert, searching for a way home. Nanoka is the prince to Minami, Skank-san, and Obaachan, giving them a dream of hope in their personal deserts just as the prince does for the narrator. They all learn from each other, and it’s those lessons, that gift to see with the heart, that guides the story to its conclusion and what readers take away after putting the book down.

Like all of Sumino’s works, there is a weight to this story. Idumi Kirihara ‘s art supports that nicely with its basic simplicity – we always get a sense of what everyone looks like and where they are, but it works with the text so smoothly that you could almost forget that this is an adaptation. That allows the themes of the story to work unhindered, although it should be noted that there are scenes that may be more disturbing to some readers because of the visual nature of manga, such as flashbacks to Skank-san’s past or Minami’s cutting.

I Had That Same Dream Again is a tribute to second chances. It is also the only one of Sumino’s translated works (as of this writing) not to involve a pseudo-manic pixie dream girl who changes the protagonist’s life; in fact, Nanoka’s interactions with Hikari, a boy in her class, almost seem to refute the trope. But most importantly, it’s a well-written, well-adapted story about how being “special” or “different” doesn’t mean that you have to set yourself apart from everyone else if you just learn to look with the heart.

Mata, Onaji Yume wo Miteita
I Had That Same Dream Again

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I read this with high expectations knowing how highly it is rated.. so here goes.

Story: Great story. The ending is a bit iffy for me, but I know if I spend some time dissecting it I will all come together (I hope).

Art: Art is crisp and clean.

Character: The characters of the story were great, they played integral parts of the plot and I loved it.

Enjoyment: I wanted to read more and more about this little girl’s life. I wanted to know what all the characters had to do with each other. I definitely enjoyed it.

Overall: Very good. I do recommend it.

‘Happiness does not walk on its own to you. You have to use your own feet to reach it.’

What is happiness to you?

A simple question, but the number of answers is almost infinite.

This may be a manga that could help you find your own meaning of happiness.

Story: 9
I decided to read this because it was done by the same author and artist involved in ‘Kimi no Suizou wo Tabetai’ (KimiSui). This is based on the novel of the same name.
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The story focuses on Nanaka and her interactions with various people as she tries to find the best answer for the meaning of happiness, a homework set by her teacher.

Mata, Onaji Yume wo Miteita introduces the reader to various forms of happiness. Minami-san, a high school girl who deliberately hurts herself. ‘Abazure-san’, a mysterious young woman. The old lady who lives alone in a wooden house. All these people have deep regrets in their lives as they try to rediscover their meaning of happiness along with Nanaka. The manga is very successful in trying to group all these different types of happiness together into one. During Nanaka’s journey to find her own answer, the story naturally makes you question your own meaning of happiness and life. As if you’re in a dream or under a spell, the story enters your mind and opens its world to you. This is why I really like the title of this manga.

‘I Too Saw the Same Dream’ is not just a story about happiness. It also presents us with hardships as well. Loss of loves ones, failing to take a chance, giving up on achievement, fear to build courage. These hardships enable us to try to move on, which is why, in a way, they may be essential. Seeing Nanaka witnessing/experiencing these hardships and learning step by step how she might cope/help was a joy to watch. Despite her age, she is such a mature character.

The fact that we have characters who not only live very different lives but also have varying ages is crucial. The views of various people on their own source of happiness highlights the ambiguity of the meaning of happiness. It gives us a picture on how one’s meaning of happiness can change over time. Regardless of age, we always long for some form of happiness, even if we sometimes think we’ve given up. But those who think they are used to living without happiness will never be able to experience it. This is the main lesson I learnt from the story.

Pacing was great. It didn’t feel like anything was rushed. However I haven’t read the novel so I’m not sure if this is a good adaptation. I’ll have to buy it and read it myself. I’ll update this section by then.

Predictability is the only major flaw I could find. Until around half-way through the series, I didn’t have a clue where this was going to lead. But after a certain point it became more and more obvious what was going to happen.

However I can kind of see that there weren’t many options to make the story less obvious, considering the length of this series and the ending. Therefore, if you’re someone who wants to read something unpredictable, I wouldn’t recommend this.

Art: 10
The art is by the same person who drew KimiSui. So if you want to read a manga with similar art to KimiSui, I suggest you to read this.

Personally I think the art style fits better with this manga instead of the other one because the protagonist is of a lower age here. In KimiSui, the characters looked a bit too young to be considered high school students.

Character: 10
Nanaka is brave, determined and smarter than your average elementary school kid. She simply enjoys life without caring about how others see her. This is especially true when she ignores being isolated by the rest of the class due to her straightforward personality. It was refreshing to see a protagonist who is not a high school student.

Yoru Sumino manages to make Nanaka a mature character whilst still preserving the typical pure innocence you would expect from a child. This is perfectly presented through Nanaka’s common lines on the meaning of life: ‘Life is like. ‘ By combining various features of daily life from a child’s point of view and her broad imagination, we get quotes like these:

‘Life is like a lunchbox. Because you can’t put everything you want.’
‘Life is like a fridge. ‘
‘Life is like pudding. ‘
‘Life is like lunchtime. ‘

Would an adult be able to say lines like these? Maybe, but I doubt a lot of people could. In the busy society we live today, adults would typically think more about the money side of things and living without any worries. To me this really emphasized how adults and children live in different worlds and view things in a different light.

Minami, ‘Abazure-san’ and the old lady all have some form of development along with Nanaka. As they give advice and hints to find her answer they also find their own happiness from Nanaka. I won’t go into more detail than this because it will easily spoil the story. You will understand when you read it.

Enjoyment:10
Overall: 10
‘To those who are weary, a sweet and warm story’

This is what was written on the cover of the Korean translation of the novel. I haven’t read the novel myself (yet), but this phrase is what led me to read the manga.

I had that same dream again

Somewhere along the way, I began jumping too. I laughed to myself, imagining that the two of us were doing some sort of special training together. The frog put all it had into that training. Surely it was a shy little thing, only conducting its training on rainy days, when there were few people around. I cheered the stalwart little frog on.

But perhaps the frog didn’t hear this encouragement, or perhaps it simply wasn’t planning to train today, because eventually it hopped off, scampered into the grass, and vanished. I was sad to see it go, but although I waded into the grass myself, and no matter how much I muddied my boots, I could not find the frog again.

I was filled with a sense of gloom, but there was nothing I could do. By now, I had pushed my way all the way to the riverside. I decided to climb back up the embankment, but I proceeded along a different path, never abandoning the hope that perhaps fate would help me find the frog again.

A bobtail cat was waiting for me at the end of the path, huddled in the grass. I ran over to her, kicking my way through puddles. She was covered in mud, flecked with red here and there. More than anything, I noticed that her tail was only half as long as it should be.

How terrible, I thought.

I did not wonder who she was, nor how she had ended up this way. I folded my umbrella and gently wrapped her up my arms, carrying her up the bank so as not to startle her. I could sense her quiet breathing.

At first, I thought I might take her back home. However, I quickly discarded that idea when I realized there would be no one else there. I couldn’t mend her wounds alone.

My face was cold from the rain, and I was sure that she must be cold too. I thought about whom I could implore for help. I climbed down the bank opposite the river and ran to the nearby cream-colored apartment building. Although I ran a bit recklessly, the cat did not stir in my arms.

I rang doorbells on the building’s first floor, starting from the end. There was no reply at the first door, nor was there one at the next, or the next, or the next. Finally, the fifth door swung open, but the woman who answered closed it again the moment she laid eyes on me. I kept trying at door after door, but there was no one home at most of them, and when occasionally someone did open the door, no one was interested in hearing me out. The little one in my arms was trembling.

I reached the last door of the building. My heart was racing as I pressed the doorbell. Her gentle breathing was growing fainter, and I was afraid that she might be fading away in my arms. I heard the bell ring within, then other sounds. At first, I was relieved to know that there was someone inside. There were plenty of other doors where there was no one present, even if the lights were on.

Footsteps approached slowly, someone unfastened the lock, and the knob turned. The moment that the door opened, I shouted: “Please save her!”

The beautiful woman looked at me in shock for a few moments. She looked at the little one in my arms. I stared into her eyes. You must look people in the eyes when you’re speaking to them, Hitomi-sensei had told me.

The young woman’s eyes stopped on my new friend’s trembling form, and then she did something that no one had done: she looked back into my eyes.

She stepped inside, and returned with a towel. She took the little soul from my arms and took her inside, wrapping her up.

“You come in, too. Take off your coat and shoes.”

Hearing her gentle voice, I felt such relief I could have fallen asleep right then and there, but I needed to thank her first. I wondered what her name could be, and my eyes fell on the nameplate fixed beside the door.

I read the letters that were crudely scrawled over the nameplate in black magic marker.

It was a strange name. It didn’t sound Japanese at all. I wondered if she might be a foreigner, though she didn’t look it. I tilted my head curiously.

“Come on now, come inside, I’m not scary.”

The woman insisted that I have a bath before thanking her, and before I knew it I was washing myself. When I stepped out of the bathroom, some adult-sized pajamas were set out for me in place of my soaked clothes, and I gratefully slipped into them. The woman was wrapping the little cat in bandages. I watched her hands as she worked, not wishing to get in the way.

“Thank you, really,” I said, when she had finally finished her doctoring.

“No problem. I put your clothes in the dryer, so you can wait here until they’re ready.”

She looked taken aback when I said her name. Perhaps she was surprised that I knew it.

“That was what it said on your nameplate out front,” I explained. “It’s okay if I call you Skank-san, right?”

“You mean as my name?”

As I nodded, she let out a great laugh. I hadn’t the slightest clue what that was supposed to mean. However, I was glad that she seemed to be amused, so I started to laugh, too.

“Aha ha. Ah, yeah, that’s just fine. That’s my name.”

“Are you from another country?”

“Huh, that’s a weird name.”

Skank-san laughed again.

“Skank-san?” I said. “I can rewrite your nameplate for you, as a thank you for saving this little one. It might be rude, but I can’t say those letters are very well-written. My handwriting is much better.”

But she just shook her head. “Mm, I appreciate the offer, but it’s not the sort of thing I’d want you to bother with. I didn’t write it there, either.”

“Huh? So who wrote it?”

This time, she laughed thinly. “I’ve already forgotten who it was.”

And so I became friends with Skank-san and Miss Bobtail. Hitomi-sensei seemed to think that I didn’t have any friends, but in fact, I had wonderful friends. Friends who would play Othello with me. Who would walk with me. And I had friends who would talk to me about books.

That was why, even if I had no friends at school, and even if my father and mother were too busy to ever play with me, I was not lonely.

My first meeting with Granny was not as fraught as the day I met Skank-san and Miss Bobtail. When I say it was not fraught, I mean that I was not sad or in pain at the time.

If you climbed the hills through the trees near my home, you would find a clearing, and there in that clearing was a wooden house. One day, I came upon this house, and spent a long time looking at it, thinking how wonderful it was and how unusual for our area. After some time, I knocked on the front door, wondering if the place was abandoned. It was terribly quiet, but an old woman with a lovely smile opened the door.

From that day on, we would be friends.

Today, the spacious wooden house was as wonderful as always.

“How are the sweets you make so tasty, Granny?”

“When you’ve lived as long as I have, you learn how to make things taste good. That’s all,” Granny said nonchalantly, sipping her tea.

As I nibbled on the madeleines she had made, I tried to unravel the secret of their deliciousness. Miss Bobtail lounged in the sun flooding the plank floor corridor that ran between the living room and the open field.

“I found that book you were telling me about,” I said, sitting at the low table in the tatami-floored room. “The Little Prince. It’s in the school library, so I tried reading it.”

“Did you like it?”

“Mm, I liked how it was written, but it was kind of hard.”

“Was it? You really are sharp, Nacchan.”

“I’ve thought so too, but I’m not really there yet. I didn’t get it at all.”

“It’s important to know what you do not know. The worst thing you can do is to think that you understand something when you really don’t.”

“Is that how it is?”

“Even not understanding it means it left some impression on you, didn’t it?”

“That’s true. I think having a
cat to talk with suits me better than a quiet sheep in a box.”

Granny laughed softly and looked at the little one sleeping on the floor. “Such wonderful praise from you, and all she does is sleep.”

“That’s fine. She always does what she wants.”

Miss Bobtail yawned, her tail swaying back and forth. It was contagious, and I opened my mouth in an unseemly manner to let out a yawn of my own. Then, I decided to talk to Granny about the same thing I had discussed with Skank-san—the conversation from school. When I told her the whole story from start to finish, Granny laughed out loud, just like Skank-san had.

“I see, I see. That sounds dreadful, making you run in the yard and stay after school.”

“It wasn’t. I mean, I hated P.E., but it wasn’t so bad staying after. I do like Hitomi-sensei.”

“She sounds like a wonderful teacher.”

“Yeah, she is. Even if she kind of misses the mark. Hee hee, I had this same conversation with Skank-san.”

“Did you win at Othello today?”

“Only one time. But even then, I still lost twice. I wonder if I’ll get better at it someday.”

“You will. You have the power to see the future, after all. That’s an indispensable power when it comes to games.”

I knew that Granny would never tell a lie, so I was thrilled to hear this. There was a wonderful smell around her, not like incense. A wonderful smell unlike other adults. When I told her that once, she smiled and said “That’s because I’ve already graduated from being an adult.”

“That means that Skank-san has the power to see the future, too,” I said.

“I wonder. Unlike children, adults are usually creatures who look back into the past.”

“But Skank-san is better than me.”

“That’s because she’s lived longer, Nacchan. She knows how to win better than you.”

Granny talked often about how long people had lived. But she was right, she had lived at least seven times as long as me, which was probably why her madeleines were much better.

I reached out to grab a second one, but then withdrew my hand. If I were to have two madeleines on top of the Yakult and the ice cream, I wouldn’t have any room for the dinner my mother made.

I decided to use my brain for something else, to make myself forget about the madeleines.

“We have an assignment in school,” I said. “To think about happiness.”

“That sounds like an interesting lesson.”

“It is. But it’s really hard. It would be fine if we could talk about as many things as we like, but we only have as long as the class period, and I’m not the only one in the class.”

“That’s true. You have to put all those things in order, and pull your answer out from the middle.”

“I want to find an answer that will surprise Hitomi-sensei, that everyone in my class will understand.”

I felt a swelling of pride imagining Hitomi-sensei’s praise. Letting myself get carried away, I started reaching for another madeleine, but I held back at the last moment. Granny saw me and laughed.

“What’s your happiness, Granny?”

“My happiness, hm? Lots of things. Drinking tea on sunny days like this, and whenever you stop by this lonely home. However, thinking of a single answer would be difficult. I’ll think about it.”

“Yeah, think about it. Come to think of it, Granny, are you happy right now?”

Granny took a sip of tea and smiled. “Yes, I am.”

She appeared that way, and the feeling spread to me as well. When I looked out to the hall, Miss Bobtail was sleeping happily as well. This old wooden home must be filled with the essence of happiness, I thought.

“Oh right, can you tell me another book to read?”

“You said that you already read Tom Sawyer, yes?”

“Yeah, it was fun.”

“Well then, how about a story about Tom’s good friend?”

“You mean Homeless Huck? Is there another book?”

“Oh, you hadn’t heard, then? It’s called The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It’s a lot of fun. If it’s not in the school’s library, you could ask Hitomi-sensei about it.”

Hearing this wonderful news, I tucked the name of the book away in the same part of my brain where I kept my most important memories.

We both loved talking about books, and so I never noticed how much time had passed.

Which was your favorite story from The Little Prince? I liked the one about the Prince and the rose. It was so charming. What about you, Granny? The one about the snake who ate the elephant, maybe.

As we carried on like this, an orange hue washed over the world outside. I looked at the clock on the wall to see that it was already half past five. I had to get back home by six. I promised my mother that I would.

I woke my friend with the flicking tail and said my farewells to Granny.

“I’ll see you next time, Granny.”

“Take care on the way home, now.”

“I will. I’ll look for the book about Huck, too.”

I waved to Granny, who had come to the front door to see me off, and Miss Bobtail and I climbed the footpath down the hill. The path was gorgeous. Orange-colored. I was never sad to say goodbye like this. I always had tomorrow after all, and the day after that.

“Happiness won’t cooome, wandering my way sooo, thaaat’s why I set ooout to find it todaaay!”

I parted ways with my bob-tailed friend and headed home to do my homework. Around half past six, my mother returned home. She was out of the house even on Saturdays and Sundays sometimes, but she was always home at dinnertime. I thought how nice it would be if it was always dinnertime, but then I would have to give up on the yogurt I had at breakfast.

Today’s dinner was curry rice. Even though I’d already had Yakult and ice cream and a madeleine, I still had seconds of the rice.

“I wonder if I should go on a diet,” I said.

My mother laughed. “You don’t need to,” she said, handing me a cookie she had gotten at work.

I couldn’t help myself. I ate the cookie with vanilla ice cream on top.

“Maybe having your favorite ice cream with a cookie is happiness,” I said.

“For me it’s with coffee,” said my mother, sitting in front of me as she dunked her cookie in her mug and ate it.

And then, as always, I took my bath and I grew tired around ten o’clock. And, as always, I did not talk to my mother, nor to my father who returned after I had gone to sleep, about my conversation with Skank-san.

IF I HAD TO GIVE my mood a color as I donned my indoor shoes at the elementary school lockers, it would be grey. Mostly because of all the unpleasant people I’d run into that morning. At times like these, you’d usually say that you were feeling blue, but I liked the color blue.

“Oh man, the weirdo’s here!” a voice I did not recognize called from inside.

I gave a theatrical sigh. “You all really must be stupid if you can’t beat a weirdo like me on tests. How fascinating.”

Gratified by the looks of anger on the faces of several of my idiot classmates, I refused to converse with them further. Eventually one of them said something like: “Why’re you such a baby?”

I wanted to praise them for being able to even speak intelligibly, but they left, and so I put on my indoor shoes and went into the building.

A single voice put a halt to my grey-colored shuffling. I turned around to see one of my classmates, and my expression turned dark.

“Oh! Morning, Ogiwara-kun.”

“I just finished reading Tom Sawyer yesterday,” he said. “It was really good.”

“Did you? That’s great. Which scenes did you like?”

“The part about the paint, I guess. I thought Tom was really cool, too.”

“Tom really is appealing. And smart.”

“Homeless Huck, right? Oh, come to think of it, I’m—”

I stopped. Not because I was trying to keep my talk with Granny to myself, but because a boy came running up from behind Ogiwara-kun and crashed into him. I turned my back on the startled Ogiwara, but I doubt he even saw it. The boy who had run into him was a close friend, and had most certainly run into Ogiwara in the name of boyish roughhousing, not bullying. No one would bully Ogiwara-kun, nor would he bully anyone. He had a lot of friends.

I, on the other hand, had no friends in our class and elected to turn my back on this. Other than Ogiwara, everyone else in our class either thought I was clumsy or hated me. Still, I had never once been bullied by them. And so, I decided to make my exit first, upon noticing Ogiwara’s friend. A friendship between boys isn’t something a girl should get in the middle of.

I needed to stop at the library before I could head to the classroom. The library opened first thing in the morning, which was wonderful for me. I much preferred to spend the raucous period before Hitomi-sensei arrived in the quiet library.

When I entered, I was greeted by the unique smell of the books and the kind librarian. I asked the librarian if they had The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which I’d heard about from Granny the day before. The librarian guided me to a bookshelf and left me to seek out the book myself.

“If you’re a lover of books, you’ll want to enjoy the heart-pounding feeling of searching for them,” she said.

I felt the same way.

I quickly found the book in question and picked it up, my fingertips tingling with excitement. I dropped my bag and took a nearby seat.

I’m sure that Ogiwara-kun and I were the only ones in our class who understood the incomparable feeling of opening the first page of a book. It would be wasted on the others.

All alone, I took the first tiny step into the tale of Homeless Huck.

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