I want to annoy the pretty boss.

The first section of this review will be spoiler free. I’m on a kind of streak of reading romance manga this year. THE REVIEW FOR THIS MANGA IS PART 3 OF IT. PART 1: Kawaii dake ja Nai Shikimori-san PART 2: Koi wa Sekai Seifuku no Ato de SPOILER FREE TERRITORY Kawaii Joushi wo Komarasetai (translated as “I want to annoy the pretty boss”) is a 4-koma romance manga by Roku Tachibana, who is also kinda famous for making ero-manga (you know, the extra-spicy ones). As for the story: Shun Aoki, a 23-year-old starts working in a new company and shortly after finds itself in love with his boss, a 31-year-oldIra Megumi. The thing is, while the handsome Aoki already had plenty of girlfriends, Megumi, despite her age, is completely inexperienced on anything related to romantic relationships. From chapter 1, the story develops around this concept and how they, but especially Megumi, can learn to grow and change. As I’ve said in earlier reviews, I found it very curious how japanese authors usually don’t write romance off high school settings. It may be because romance manga readers are usually high schoolers, at least in Japan. But this is an office romcom, which is way more relatable to any working adult, so I went to check it out. And was honestly surprised. I’ll use this first section to recommend it to anyone who wants to dive in completely blind, although it doesn’t make any difference because the story itself is pretty simple. If you like romance stories with some character development, cute art and character design and a sprinkle of comedy on top, I would recommend this to you, specially if you’re tired of all the high school tropes and want to see topics more related to adult relationships, like sex, financial life, living together, etc. Give this a try, and if you’re into more down to earth romance about these topics, I think you will enjoy AT LEAST some aspects of it. SPOILER TERRITORY There’s not much to say in regards of some big surprises, but maybe some people would like to discover the paths the story takes by themselves. The strong point of this manga is how Megumi learns to be in a relationship, from accepting being in love to understanding how to communicate her feelings and desires to her partner. Aoki’s, although a charismatic fella, doesn’t have the same development as his girlfriend, but that is simply because he’s already way more experienced than her in that regard. The dynamic between the two only gets better as the story progresses, from Megumi first questioning herself if she even wants to be in a relationship, to her accepting there is nothing wrong or immoral about sex, to finally deciding that she wants to live together with Aoki, even if it may cause problems to her on the company she worked so hard to climb up the ranks. Speaking of which, a big part of the comedy also resides in the fact that they are dating in secret, being, well, a boss and her subordinate and all that. One very good aspect of Megumi’s development is that she is very workaholic and didn’t have any interest in romance or almost anything besides work prior to meeting Aoki, really. Seeing her change so much as to accept exposing her relationship even if it may jeopardize her professional life shows how much she changed as a person by the end of the story. Although small, the cast of characters are good enough and some are really unique. As for the art, I find it very good, but I also think that the 4-koma format harms the author’s potential, because sometimes they make a detailed illustration that needs to fix a tiny box on the panel, and that makes it kinda hard to appreciate the tiny details, which is not absurdly top-tier, of course, but good enough to make you want to see the care they put on the clothes, character designs and scenarios. In conclusion, a solid romcom manga, with an interesting setting, good characters, good pacing, good art and the right dose of comedy. Recommended to anyone who likes romance manga and especially to the ones tired of all the High School tropes of 90% the genre has.