Prelude

Hello! Welcome my friends, to the blog that never ends…at least until the serialization is over. This is Oh My God, They Were Bandmates, a blog dedicated to dissecting the manga How Do We Relationship (known in Japanese as Tsukiatte Agetemo Iikana 付き合ってあげてもいいかな) by Tamifull, published in print and digital in the US by VIZ Media.

So, Who Are You?

My name is Matt Marcus. I am a podcaster, watch collector, wannabe musician, and all around general enthusiast by nature. In the last few years, I have grown more and more interested in anime and manga, with a heavy (but not exclusive) focus on the yuri genre.

Yuri, Huh?

Yes indeed. If you are unfamiliar with the term, I will paraphrase the definition coined by Erica Friedman, the preeminent yuri scholar and cultural icon: yuri consists of anime and manga with lesbian themes, though not necessarily lesbian identity. It’s a unique genre, being the youngest in Japanese publishing and also the lease restrictive in target demographics when compared to staple genres such as shonen, josei, seinen, etc.

Since I started digging more into anime and manga in late 2019, I have voraciously consumed lots of yuri series. Like a lot of genres, there are copious tropes: the dark-haired cool beauty being paired with an energetic but naive light-haired girl, declarations of “I want to stay by your side”, “but we’re both girls”, etc. Have you read Milk Morinaga’s Girl Friends? Then you know about 70% of what to expect in a high school yuri series. In many cases, you can see the wireframe of the story and it simply gets tiresome.

HDWR was one of the standouts that I discovered in my explorations. In short, it’s a story about two lesbian teenagers who meet in their first term of college and, simply due to the fact that they are both gay, decide to date each other. The meat of the story is about the “then what?” afterwards.

What’s So Interesting About How Do We Relationship?

Well, many things! HDWR is a very different series from most yuri–in fact, it feels less strictly ‘yuri’ as much as directly LGBTQ+ (there is a distinction between the two, though of course there is overlap), but I am not here to quibble about definitions except to say that this is a very grounded series. It’s a story that has really fantastic characters who behave not like manga characters, but like real people. Painfully so! The way the characters bounce off each other and grow over time is incredibly compelling, which is why I started reviewing the series on Erica Friedman’s long running yuri blog, Okazu. The more I think about the series, the more I dig out of it.

Wait, You’ve Already Reviewed These? Why Start A Blog?

Yes I have been writing about the series, but only starting with the English release of Volume 4. I enjoy writing those reviews, but I only have so much room to work with, and with the format of the site I can’t be nearly as self indulgent as I would like. Often I find new things on later rereads, and there isn’t a place on Okazu for that (I’m just a guest reviewer, after all). I will be linking and references the things I’ve written before, but this blog offers me a place where I can a) start from the beginning and b) stretch my legs a bit more.

I was also inspired by the excellent podcast Mangasplaining, in which three veterans of the manga publishing world introduce the medium to a comic writer who works for Western publishers. The manner in which they discuss manga, especially as a visual medium, got me thinking more deeply about HDWR. A lot of the structure of this blog is also influenced by their meticulous and voluminous show notes that they publish on their site for every episode. As a podcaster myself, the level of effort put into the notes makes me feel EXTREMELY inadequate, but that’s more praise for them than critique of myself. If you haven’t listened to it, I would check it out!

OK, So How’s This Gonna Go?

I am going to start at the beginning with the original doujinshi and move forward generally volume-by-volume. I may decide to write topic-specific posts if it warrants the space, but most likely I will keep a running commentary on elements I find noteworthy as they come up. Note that there will be spoilers for the volume I am covering in each post. I will not spoil events in future volumes in case you are reading along, though I may call out moments to keep in mind for later.

As of right now, there are eight volumes available in English; Volume 10 comes out on February 17th in Japan. I believe the series is still ongoing online, but I am trying my best to avoid spoilers for future chapters and volumes until I have them in my hands. I cannot read Japanese, so I will be focusing on the English official releases except for any doujinshi, which to my knowledge has not been released in English at the time of this post. I will only use images directly from official releases, which includes sites like Pixiv.

I don’t have a particular publishing schedule in mind, but I will aim for a post every two weeks or so until I am caught up with the series. As new volumes come out, if given the opportunity I will post my Okazu review one-to-two weeks after release but will not update this blog until sometime later so I have time to digest the volume and revisit earlier ones for reference. As of right now, Volume 9 is slated for release in English on July 25.

This series has adult language and situations, by which I mean a lot of sex. Suffice to say, this blog is NSFW, as I will be posting images of pages and panels and I do not want to tie my hands behind my back. I will endeavor to give proper notice within each post, but know that you’ve been warned.

Of course, all opinions posted here are mine and mine alone. I know that not everyone will share my taste or perspective, but I hope putting my thoughts here would help more people appreciate this series, because I think it is really singular in a wonderful way.

And that’s it for introductions! Next post will be about the pre-serialization doujinshi. See you then!

Keep your eyes peeled!
(source: Tamifull’s Pixiv, https://i.pximg.net/img-master/img/2018/07/23/21/09/30/69827614_p6_master1200.jpg)