14/02/2022: unconventional “romance” stories

This is our third Valentine’s Day release so we’ll spare you our usual recommendations. The manga on this list have something unusual that makes it special. Also, we’re including series that don’t explicitly involve romance, since a lot of romance series go only as far as teasing the possibility of romance so the romantic leads are perpetually “just friends” (although we know that they like each other).

1) Starting Today She’s My Childhood Friend

A transfer student who’s moved about for her whole life feels like she’s missing out on the normal childhood experiences, so she gets her new neighbor and classmate to become her “childhood friend”, so they go about having fun and doing the things that they’ve read that childhood friends do e.g., eating together after school, skipping class together, talking through their adjacent windows. However, they also realize that those kinds make them feel funny inside… almost like these activities aren’t so much for childhood friends as childhood sweethearts…

2) Nega-kun and Posi-chan

Nega-kun is a really pessimistic guy and has a crush on Posi-chan, an outgoing and bubbly girl who everybody likes. This would appear to be bad because Posi-chan is clearly way out of his league (which Nega-kun realizes), but it turns out that Posi-chan really, really, really likes Nega-kun back! This would appear to be good… but it turns out that Posi-chan is OVERLY optimistic and constantly overestimates the progress of their relationship, so nothing gets done…

3) Omoi ga Omoi Omoi-san

This series is about a boy’s trials and tribulations that arise from his relationship with his girlfriend Omoi-san, whose love is very “heavy”, in the sense that she keeps planning ahead too far (e.g., picking out baby names) or overreacting (e.g., contemplating suicide when he decides to spend more time in school on baseball practice). It sounds weird but it’s not like she’s a toxic manipulator and you know it’s not serious, so it’s not like the series is trivializing toxic relationships.

4) Don’t Blush Sekime-san!

A boy and girl finally get together but there’s a problem – the girl is so in love that she’s too shy to face her boyfriend! This results in bizarre situations where they’ll go home together – in adjacent train cars – and go on “socially distant” dates (although the series predates the pandemic). Good fun!

5) Protagonist x Rival

This series comprises small snippets of an unusual love rivalry between a plain girl, her crush, and the hot girl who’s always hanging around the guy. However, the strange thing is that the hot girl isn’t competing for the guy’s affections, but the plain girl’s! Each chapter plays with a shoujo manga trope and flips it around e.g., there’s a bunch of girls saying something mean about the plain girl so you expect the mean girl to join in but then the mean girl actually scares the group of girls away instead.

6) Three Years Apart

This manga has a pretty interesting storytelling mechanic where we see the romance in two different times: when the couple were kids and couldn’t do much together because they were three years apart; and now when they’re together as adults when the age gap doesn’t really matter anymore. The contrast between the two periods is quite special.

7) Kono Kaisha ni Suki na Hito ga Imasu

A secret office romance! Can you imagine yourself in this scenario at a Big 4 firm where office romance is prohibited? I can’t – because I don’t have a training contract.

8) Asoko De Hataraku Musubu-san

This entry is a bit of a cheat since it’s the setting that makes the story unusual. Basically, it’s about a guy working at a condom-manufacturing firm who falls for his co-worker who’s awkward, diligent and aloof, but they slowly grow closer. You’d think that a series like this is really dirty, but the stuff about condoms is strictly technical and it’s actually quite a normal romance. I haven’t run into any sex scenes yet, but I think that might change in the near future. Our MC isn’t too lousy and indecisive like a lot of other MCs, and Musubu-san is really cute and top-tier waifu material.

9) A mother in her 30s like me is alright?

We’ve previously recommended a series called “I want your mother to be with me” which is about a freeter going after a hot 30-something widow and learning how to be a proper man who can take care of her and her kid. (I don’t mean it in like sugar daddy way – the widow is very independent and capable and helps run a restaurant by herself). This is the same but different!

A useless dude frequently visits his next-door neighbor’s house to help with chores and play with her daughter. (The neighbor is a big-chested 30-something single-mum.) Suddenly, he declares his love for the neighbor and is soundly rejected because he’s completely useless. However, the plot twist is that this leads to exactly no plot development because he keeps trying without improving himself in any way whatsoever and the neighbor is totally fine with this scenario. It’s actually amazing in the how relaxed everybody is about this situation, and it’s really funny with a lot of gags which revolve around the guy being useless, lazy and obtuse.

10) Liar x Liar

A young woman hates her playboy stepbrother but he sees her when she’s dressed as a highschooler and falls in love with her.

11) Himegasaki Sakurako wa Kyoumo Fubin Kawaii!

We’ve recommended this before but the scanlators have resumed updates. Normally, the childhood friend in a romantic comedy loses out to the new girl. However, the author’s decided to do away with this horrible trope by stating from the get-go that the childhood friend will win the guy! Unfortunately, he doesn’t clarify how much humiliation she’ll go through before that happens, so we’ll see Himegasaki get herself into all sorts of predicaments because she’s so desperate to win over the guy (who she doesn’t realize already likes her).

12) My Split Little Sister

Same as above. A highschooler hates her brother in a tsundere, and he can’t seem to figure out how to improve his relationship with her. One day, she wakes up and finds that she has a clone who absolutely can’t keep her hands off the brother and shenanigans ensue. (Spoiler: they aren’t related by blood so it’s not weird like Oreimo.)

13) Musume Janakute, Watashi (Mama) ga Suki Nano!?

Here's another story featuring MILFs. In this case, it's a bit more normal with the MC being an upstanding youth - giving the Mother more reason to actually like him back, whereas the appeal of the other series lay in its absurdity - and part of the fun is how the Mother can't believe that the MC likes her because she was shipping the MC with her daughter instead.

14) Fujiyama-san wa Shinsuki

A sweet romance between a 180cm-tall middle schooler and her childhood friend of below-average height. Pretty realistic and very sweet!!! Very little drama, so it’s a nice and relaxing read.

15) Please Go Home, Akutsu-san!

A fun rom-com about a delinquent girl who bullies her classmate into letting her crash at his rented apartment so she can sleep and read manga there, only for the typical romcom hijinks to ensue and for them to slowly fall for each other. I feel like this situation would be really dangerous in real life and you should probably call the police, but it’s clear that the MC wasn’t really being bullied badly so I guess it’s not too bad. Really funny!

15) Suki x Suki

A pair of childhood friends grow apart in high school, with the girl becoming a queen bee and the guy just being normal. Oddly, the girl really, really doesn’t like him and never misses the opportunity to be mean to him. However, she suddenly realizes that she has the power to turn invisible and uses this power – TO SHOW HER AFFECTION TO THE BOY while incognito and in all sorts of embarrassing ways. The kicker is that THE BOY IS THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN SEE HER IN INVISIBLE MODE so he knows everything.