Whisper Me a Love Song - TV Tropes (2024)

Whisper Me a Love Song - TV Tropes (1)

Yori Asanagi and Himari Kino

Whisper Me a Love Song (Japanese: ささやくように恋を唄う Sasayaku You ni Koi o Utau, sometimes translated as Whispering You a Love Song) is a 2019 Yuri romance manga by Eku Takeshima. It began serialization in Comic Yuri Hime in April of 2019 and is licensed in English by Kodansha Comics. An anime television series adaptation by Cloud Hearts premiered April 13, 2024.

Whisper Me a Love Song is the story of first year student Himari Kino falling for third year student Yori Asanagi after hearing her play with her band, The SS Girls, during the schools opening ceremony. When Himari tells Yori that she has "fallen in love with her" when the two meet up by chance, Yori thinks that Himari is confessing to her, though later Himari clarifies that she meant she fell in love with Yori's music, Yori is embarrassed at first, but then decides to get Himari to fall in love with her for real.

Tropes present in the work are:

  • Affectionate Nickname:
    • Shiho shortens her friends' names into two syllables, no honorific. Himari turns into Hima, Hajime turns into Haji, Kaori turns into Kao, Aki stays as Aki, etc. Yori still gets "Asanagi-san", indicating the distance she still puts between them.
    • Kaori calls Mari "Maa-chan." Mari used to call Kaori "Kao-chan."
  • All-Loving Hero: Himari is an extremely kind and loving person who wants nothing but the best for the people around her. Which can lead into Chronic Hero Syndrome as she seems physically incapable of not going above and beyond to fix things if she sees a problem.
  • Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Yori is a beautiful dark-haired girl with a composed demeanor and is perceived as stoic by others. Downplayed however, as she's a Nice Girl and not as aloof as she looks, being instead quite the anxious and emotional overthinker.
  • Animal Motifs: Himari is a dog. Or, to be more specific, a friendly, easily excitable puppy. To drive the point home, she is often drawn with dog ears and/or a tail. Ironically enough, both Himari and Yori are established early on to be cat lovers.
  • Armor-Piercing Question:
    • Shiho asks Aki a question that hits close to home after Laureley's performance.

      Shiho: Was I better than that girl behind you who you love so much? [...] You can't fool me. I know all too well that you love Asanagi-san, Aki.

    • After hearing about Shiho's time with SS Girls, Yori comes to the conclusion that Shiho didn't hate being with them as much as Aki thought. Aki claims that Shiho never enjoyed her time with SS Girls, and any time she looked that way was a lie, but then Yori replies, "Mizuguchi. Do you really think that?" Aki is left speechless for two pages until she finally admits that she does not.
  • Bickering Couple, Peaceful Couple: Shiho and Aki are the Bickering Couple, with the two taking a long time to get together, there being no shortage of drama between them and Shiho being a tsundere. Meanwhile, Himari and Yori are the Peaceful Couple, as they are both generally nice and work out their problems relatively easily.
  • Big Eater: Shiho always orders a ton of food when going out, and for lunch she always brings huge lunch boxes that look like ones usually reserved for New Year's celebrations.Whisper Me a Love Song - TV Tropes (2)

    Aki: It's not fair that only your breasts get bigger.

  • Big Fancy House: Mari brings her bandmates to her house, a three-story mansion with a maid. The others are shocked by how rich she is.
  • Cast Full of Gay: You know heterosexuality is a foreign concept to the cast when even the Posthumous Character is revealed to have been in a lesbian relationship. Miki initially stood as the "token straight girl" in the cast, as it's mentioned she had a boyfriend, but she is later shown to be bisexual.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: Shiho is mentioned several times as the previous vocalist of the SS Girls before getting properly introduced in the series.
  • Clingy Jealous Girl: Downplayed with Yori. She gets rather uncomfortable when Himari gets too close to others, but mostly keeps those feelings to herself.
  • Didn't Think This Through: Shiho had Himari become Laureley's manager largely to spite Yori. It's only after the deal has been accepted that Himari's complete lack of knowledge about what a manager does is brought up, with Hajime adding that Himari has more reasons to want Laureley to fail rather than help them (or would have, if she wasn't an All-Loving Hero). Luckily for them, she is a fast learner and has plenty of initiative.
  • Fatal Flaw: Shiho tends to run away when any sort of challenge or adversity appears, which often ends up causing her a lot of angst. When her best friend ended up being better at the violin than she was she stopped playing, when she realized Aki was in love with Yori she quit the band. She would come to regret both decisions. The fact that she ends up challenging the SS Girls to a rock off actually points to how much she has changed since joining Laureley.
  • Festival Episode: Chapter 31 has Himari and Yori go to a festival together.
  • First-Name Basis:
    • Himari uses first names and appropriate honorifics on most characters. She eventually gets Yori to call her by her first name.
    • Aki, who's acquainted with Himari through Miki- Himari's best friend and Aki's younger sister, gets Himari to call her "Aki-senpai."
  • First Kiss: Yori and Himari have theirs during the fireworks festival, at the end of the sixth volume (Chapter 31).
  • Full-Name Basis: Mari Tsutsui refers to others by their full names.
  • Gone Horribly Right: Himari becoming Laureley's manager was just a spiteful prank by Shiho, but Himari took her job seriously and quickly learned to become an adept manager, so much so in fact that after everything is settled Shiho and the others legitimately worry that if Himari leaves it will be a major set back to their future career plans. Luckily Himari enjoyed her time enough that even without the incentive she decides to stay on as manager.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Most chapter titles are a list of things that happen or are otherwise included in the chapter. For example, the first chapter is titled, "The roof, a guitar & Senpai."
  • I Just Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Despite the fact that Aki had been in love with Yori for a long time she is nothing but supportive of Yori and Himari.
  • Last-Name Basis: Yori tends to refer to people by their surnames, even her best friend Aki. She continues to address Himari as "Kino-san" most of the time after they start dating, despite Himari calling her "Yori-senpai," and while she agrees to Himari's request to use her first name more, she often falls back on using Himari's surname. Aki's younger sister Miki notes that Yori calls both her and her sister "Mizuguchi"- Yori uses "-san" on Miki and no honorifics on Aki- much to Yori's embarrassment.
  • Love at First Note: The series starts with Himari falling for Yori upon hearing her sing, although it takes a while for her to realise as she thinks she fell for her music instead.
  • Love at First Sight: While Himari fell for Yori at first note instead, it is played straight with Yori, who does fall almost instantly in love with Himari.
  • Moment Killer: in Chapter 32, Himari and Yori end up at Yori's place after getting suddenly rained out from the summer festival. They decide to sleep together and start to make out. Eventually Yori gets so excited she rolls on top of Himari, holding her down by one hand, looking like she wants to take things further... only to realize Himari had fallen asleep partway through.
  • Nice Girl: The main couple Himari and Yori are genuinely kind and pleasant individuals - and Himari even takes it to All-Loving Hero levels.
  • Oblivious to Love: There is actually an oblivious triangle, Yori is oblivious to Aki, who herself is oblivious to Shiho. Miki is also in love with Aki, but Aki is oblivious to Miki as well.
  • The Ojou: Mari lives in a Big Fancy House with a housekeeper, and brings SS Girls over to her house for a meeting, resulting in them being amazed by how wealthy she is.
  • One Degree of Separation: Himari is connected to virtually everyone in the cast who is alive, due in large part to being Laureley's manager while also becoming Yori's girlfriend. Yori is amazed that Himari knows Yori's best friend Aki, who happens to be the older sister of Himari's best friend Miki.
  • Possessive Wrist Grab: Yori does one to Himari after their first date right as she starts to leave to tell her she wants to go out with her for real. Later, when Himari was about to run over to Momoka, Yori grabs Himari's hand (changed to a wrist grab in the anime) just out of jealousy.
  • Posthumous Character: Kyou Amasawa died some time before the start of the series and is only seen in flashbacks. Interestingly enough, the first of those flashbacks ends without mentioning her death leading Himari and the reader to assume she is still alive before the full story is revealed.
  • She Cleans Up Nicely: The boyish Yori, who never wears skirts or dresses except for the school uniform, is goaded into trying on a dress by Himari when they were out shopping in Chapter 14.

    Himari: You don't usually show off your legs, so it feels like something I shouldn't be looking at...

  • Sibling Incest: Miki's character arc, which starts in chapter 49, is about her realizing that she has developed romantic feelings for her older sister and figuring out how to deal with them.
  • Sprouting Ears: Whenever Himari is acting like a dog, namely by being very excited about spending time with person she loves, she is drawn with dog ears coming out of her hair. To a lesser extent, Yori is sometimes drawn with cat ears to illustrate her emotional clumsiness.
  • Switching P.O.V.: The manga's perspective alternates between the four main characters- Himari, Yori, Aki and Shiho. For example, the second chapter is the first chapter's events from Yori's perspective.
  • Technician Versus Performer: Laureley are the Technician to the SS Girls Performer. Shiho leaves no doubt that her plans are to make Laureley a professional band with world wide fame as her main goal, Aki on the other hand doesn't really have any future plans and just likes playing. Before finding out the truth Aki believes this is the reason that Shiho left the band.
  • Third-Person Person:
    • Kaori Tachibana playfully refers to herself as "Tachibana-san."
    • Aki once playfully refers to herself as "Mizuguchi-sama."
  • Tritagonist: While the story mostly just follows Yori and Himari, after Shiho Izumi is introduced she quickly becomes a huge focus character in her own right.
  • Tsundere:
    • Harshly deconstructed with Shiho. Her inability to open herself to others and almost compulsive need to be mean to the person she likes for minor slights does nothing but isolate her from her friends and create emotional trouble for everyone. She herself is included as part of the "everyone", as nearly every scene where she is alone shows her lamenting over how she can't stop pushing people away.
    • Mari is a straighter example. While she's a bit standoffish and prideful, in a Volume 2 extra, she, at Kaori's request, drops the Full-Name Basis and calls her "Kao-chan" like she used to, blushing all the while.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Aki has, through no action on her own, been at the center of every source of drama in the series, as either the one in love or the person someone else is in love with.
  • Wham Episode: Chapter 10 reveals that Aki is in love with Yori, putting pressure on Himari to figure out how she feels about Yori.
  • Wham Line: In Chapter 10, after Aki asks Himari how she feels about Yori, only for Himari to reply that she's unsure, Aki gives a startling response.

    Aki: Himari-chan, just so you know, I'm in love with Yori. Not as a friend. I mean in the romantic way. Hey, I may not know what it is you want in the end, Himari-chan, but do you mind if I take Yori for myself?

Whisper Me a Love Song - TV Tropes (2024)

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