How Do We Relationship?

Tsukiatte Agetemo ii Kana is a pure masterpiece. Dealing with very real subjects, it has its share of strengths and weaknesses, but it handles them all very well. Romantic relationships, breakups, sexual life, friendship, at certain points the difficulties of adult life, and of course lesbian relationships- are portrayed in a realistic and thoughtful way. One interesting thing is that it tackles topics like breakup and how’s life after it. You’ll very rarely see that in other manga ! If you are like me, you might not really like it right away—it took me 3 volumes, around 30–40 chapters, to truly enjoy it. That’s quite long, yes… Maybeit was too “real” in its story, especially in its more negative aspects. And to be completely honest, the characters weren’t likable at first; some were even off-putting. But if you like it, give this manga a chance. Really. All characters each have excellent character development ! I don’t want to spoil too much, but let’s take Saeko as an example. In my humble opinion, she was the most detestable character at the beginning, yet she showed genuine and beautiful growth throughout the manga—so much so that she became one of, if not the best character in the series. So despite a mixed beginning, Tsukiatte Agetemo ii Kana truly finds its footing and ends with a beautiful and cute end. I really, really recommend it !

Yuri or yaoi have so much more to delve into than in any hetero relationship, topics such as homophobia, lack of marriage and sexual desire make the concept of homosexual relationships so much more interesting even if one isn't personally connected to that ideology, but even with that much more added, a lot of yuri/yaoi don't dive into those topics and instead focus more on the cuteness factor of that relationship, now of course those series have a completely different appeal and are able to differentiate themselves out of that, but it lacks the realness and raw challenges that a homosexual relationship in real lifewould have. Then you have manga like "Seaside Stranger" which do actually challenge those topics and don't get me wrong those series are great and portray their messages successfully, but a part of me feels as if they're almost too inaccessible. So what if we balanced these 2 aspects of yuri together with each other? Welcome to How Do We Relationship. We're introduced to the 2 main characters (Saeko and Miwa) having foreplay... in the 1st page. And it's later mentioned in the same 1st volume that the 2 got together just solely by the fact that the 2 of them were attracted to girls starting to date not at all long after they 1st met and it's clear straight off the bat that HDWR is not going to follow the convention of having it's 2 main characters flirt with each other for 14 volumes straight until they confess to each other ending the whole series after the fact. No, HDWR is a coming of age story where you can see the 2 main characters develop their feelings further and further while having this question in their mind, do i really like this person I'm dating right now? HDWR may seem quite messy, but so is a normal relationship in real life making it much more easy to connect to compared to a lot of rom-coms especially because the characters are adults with actual responsibilities like jobs compared to your average high school rom-com MCs. We see characters like Miwa and Saeko having actual arguments on actual serious topics dealt with in the real world that you may not fully expect to be having when beginning a relationship and the series conveys the emotion of having feelings for another like no other anime or manga I have ever seen and it makes these feelings with the actions done feel very human as a lot of these actions that the characters do in HDWR are just wrong and i wouldn't judge if someone felt discomforted from some of the stuff shown from the characters, but what is really trying to be conveyed is the journey you have to make to really grasp what you just did. Everyone makes mistakes but how you approach that mistake afterward truly is the final stepping stone of the consequences done later and whether you actually gain forgiveness or not. And of course how one perceives that action is subjective, but compromising on that is what human's should do and HDWR handles that idea precisely and condensed making you feel and stand for every character in the series and even if I don't agree with every character in the series, I can't help to just sympathise with them. The premise for HDWR may not seem like the most interesting thing ever, but the story and the characters fully compromise with that exploring with so much depth which comes from a relationship other than just the outside bubbly details, there's moments of anger, moments of agony, moments of dread, but the journey of being in a relationship is fighting away from those moments and HDWR fully shows that journey with ups and downs. In conclusion, How Do We Relationship is probably my favorite manga of all time and truly resonates with you once you've finished it with some chapters making you have to just lay down and sink in what you just read, life is tough sometimes, but hey, it isn't fun if we don't challenge it. Go read How Do We Relationship, you won't regret it.

i originally read the first couple volumes of this manga in english during COVID and thought it was super cute, but ended up waiting until it finished to read the whole thing in jp (this is relevant later i swear). and thank god i did cause oh my god this manga is a hell of a roller coaster. do not be fooled by the cute ass cover lmao i have never been this called out by yuri before. it's messy as hell in a very real way and if you're queer it will drag up all kiiinds of painful memories. like damn, lesbians really arelike this worldwide huh lol at the end of the first volume, tamifuru writes about how this manga was born from the desire to see like, instead of a romance where attraction and tension slowly builds and ends when the characters finally get together in a dream relationship, what happens if you just push them together right away? what happens if you treat it like the real world, where relationships often involve lots of compromise, hidden selfish desires, and conflict? and so what you get with How Do We Relationship is a very realistic take on romance and all the joy, conflict, trauma, and growth it involves, told through a cast of characters with starkly different personal relationships *to* sex and romance. this wide representation is one of How Do We Relationship's biggest strengths, in that it shows how conflict and growth, and the success or failure of a relationship lies mainly in the interaction of these differences, and how couples navigate the inevitable friction that arises from them. if successfully navigating it is even possible to begin with. its other strength is just how painfully true to life everything in it feels; how sex and love can just as easily be traumatizing as they can be joyful; and how growth and maturity in all these things only tends to come to you when you're smacked in the face by the consequences of your choices. How Do We Relationship is a super hot and super messy roller coaster of a manga, and reading it was both really painful and an absolute blast. it really stands out in a genre that tends to make its romance utterly saccharine or wildly toxic. and don't get me wrong, i love both of those approaches too. but HDWR really shines for how it manages to feel so grounded and emotionally intense simultaneously. and for how realistically queer all of its characters are (in a way more than just queer trauma) and looking back at my couple of english volumes after finishing the series, it also has one of the smoothest damn english translations i've ever seen. like i'm not a translator partly because of just how hard it is to go from japanese to smooth and genuine sounding english. it's seriously impressive!