Hi y’all! It’s been a minute since the last post, and this mini-update is also long overdue, so apologies for the radio silence. A few major developments have occurred over the past couple of weeks that I wanted to share before going on to Volume 2.
The biggest news is that VIZ launched a web and mobile app service that offers simulpub english chapters of their ongoing series, so readers can be up-to-date with the releases in Japan! And HDWR is one of the major series included!! There is just one catch…
Welp
From what I’ve heard, this is pretty typical. Once a series becomes simulpubbed, the current chapters get translated but anything that had not been localized prior will be updated once the official volumes release. To date, every volume has contained 9 chapters, which means that we will catch up in January/February with Volume 11 (assuming the publishing schedule stays the same). I have decided to not read these newer chapters until I can get current…which will likely mean buying copies of Volumes 10 and 11 in Japanese and Google Translating it. We shall see how strong my will is.
Nevertheless, I am extremely stoked that we are going to be able to catch up to the Japanese versions and that this platform will make it very easy (and cheap) for people to check out the series. Hell, you could start from chapter 1 and get caught up through Volume 8 just during the free trial period (if your heart can handle it lol). There’s no better time to dive in, though I assume that if you are reading this, you already have.
Another newsworthy development is that the series hit 100 chapters on May 15! A few artists on Twitter have posted some nice art to celebrate.
The series is now at 101 chapters, with no indication of it slowing down anytime soon.
That leaves one open question: how will this blog handle being in a simulpub world? I will continue to do one post per released volume; I don’t think I would have much to say until a significant number of chapters are out, as these storylines tend to stretch out over several chapters. Tl;dr, no change in plans.
Next, I had picked up the doujinshi omnibus that collects all of the pre-serialization comics in a single package. I have to say, I’m pretty impressed with the quality of the printing. The cover itself has a really nice metallic finish and the binding feels much more solid than the softer VIZ releases.
The cover has a nice shimmer that is hard to show in a static picture
There are some fun details in here to discover. For one, I was chuffed that Tamaki’s two excitable friends (whom I still don’t think are named yet?) were already designed before the series started. They don’t even show up until late Volume 6! That’s planning ahead.
Interestingly, the second story, 付き合ってないけどやりました (roughly We Aren’t Dating But We Still Did It), was modified from its original R18 version, with four new pages replacing the spicier section. I think it’s interesting that they decided to create new content to keep the story flow while also making the release more teenage-friendly (though I’d still call it very much NSWF). For those curious, you can find the full R18 version digitally on Tamifull’s Booth page.
Either way, this story is notable because it shows how Tamifull quickly dialed in the tone of the story and characters compared to the original doujinshi. Saeko here has a mean, domineering edge to her teasing that puts Miwa on the back foot throughout the story. It’s quite the contrast to her original depiction, which was more airhead-y. The art has also tightened up significantly. This is basically where we see the series really begin.
There are various other one-off pages throughout, however it is a bit of a bummer that these drawings, originally in color, have been printed in black and white and look very washed out. It is particularly rough for one of my favorite pieces, which is the drawing of high school Miwa and middle school Saeko.
The last and most interesting piece here is a discarded storyboard of the first chapter of the serialization. It’s fascinating, because a) it centers on Tsuruta and his journey of meeting Miwa, asking her out, getting rejected, and deciding to stay in the light music club and embrace the spring of his youth and b) it is awful. Reading this, it wouldn’t feel off-base for one to assume that this is Tsuruta’s story. They even speedrun his backstory as a 2D-girls-only nerd here! I could see a version of this story that would follow Tsuruta as he falls in love with another girl every chapter only for it not to pan out for a different reason each installment (this time, she was a lesbian!), but good-natured as he is, he decides to bumble ahead towards his next potential shot at love. Please, no one write this.
All in all, I was really glad that I was able to pick this up, even though it was a bit of a hassle to read. As of this post, copies are still available at Melonbooks. If you are a fan of the series, I think this is a very fun pickup.
The last doujinshi update is…significantly less palatable. I stumbled across a doujinshi from Comiket 94 that was a collaboration between Tamifull, Yuni (I Love You So Much, I Hate You), Sal Jiang (Black & White), and kuw8ra (ぜんぶ壊して地獄で愛して) called 好きじゃないけど好きな人, or I don’t love her but I love her.
The vibes…they are bad
The description, written in English on the inner page, is “Yuri x The Height of rudeness”, and boy does it deliver on that. Major content warnings here for physical and emotional abuse if you choose to seek it out. I’ll not get into the gory details but I do want to give a brief synopsis; feel free to skip if you want to avoid even broad discussions of abuse.
Tamifull’s story, called Unwilling Relationship, tells the tale of a well-loved and wealthy girl Mamiya who has developed a fetish for people who treat her badly, and her paramour Kuzawa, a poor former high school classmate of Mamiya who hates her but agrees to date her as an outlet for her frustration. Over the years, their relationship gets more and more abusive, but much to the chagrin of Kuzawa, who had been escalating her actions in order to drive Mamiya away, her efforts have only succeeded in deepening Mamiya’s ensorcellment. Kuzawa is sickened by Mamiya’s degeneracy, but despite all of this she finds herself falling in love with Mamiya. However, when Kuzawa lets her feelings slip out during one of their trysts, Mamiya threatens to kill her if her hate isn’t real. Kuzawa is forced to swallow her affection and continue this awful charade in order to hold onto their relationship. Turns out the abuser is also an abusee. Extremely dire stuff!
I have to say, finding this threw me for a loop. It colors some of what occurs later in HDWR in a very unflattering way; there is one moment in particular in Volume 5 that feels very similar to what is depicted in this story, but at the last second it pulls its punch (I guess literally as well as figuratively). It definitely demonstrates that Tamifull could go much darker with the story if they so choose, and to be honest that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Tamifull even admits in their author’s comments that this story was a bit extreme and may have had them question their sense of morals. Same, tbh.
The other stories in the collection are less severe but similar in vibe. Yuni was the ringleader who decided on the theme and pulled the project together. Why? I couldn’t tell you since I don’t see the appeal of stories like these. Nevertheless, if you still want to check it out, you can buy a digital copy on Yuni’s Booth store here; personally I’d say avoid it. The one silver lining is that I uncovered a handful of other, more wholesome collabs between Tamifull and Yuni in the Love Live! Sunshine!! fandom space. One of them is basically a photo guide of Awashima island, with drawings of Kanan and Mari added depicting the two on an island date. It’s very cute.
That was a rollercoaster, wasn’t it? Next time, for real, we will discuss Volume 2. See you then!
We have begun in earnest! How Do We Relationship was picked up for serialization by publisher Shogakukan and began releasing on the MangaOne and Ura Sunday web platforms on August 17, 2018. The first tonkobon collection released in digital and print on January 2019 and was brought over to the US by VIZ Media in June 2020 with localization by Abby Lerkhe, lettering by Joanna Estep, and editing by Pancha Diaz.
As a programming note, this series touches on topics and situations that can be triggering for some readers, so I will call out content warnings for each post.
Content Warnings for Volume 1: compulsory heterosexuality, bullying, internalized homophobia
Volume 1 begins with Miwa and Saeko beginning their relationship and shows the girls navigating the issue of sex. I am going to endeavor to not hit every scene or plot beat since that would be tedious to both write (and read), but since V1 establishes a lot of the story it may be longer than future posts.
First, to start with the cover, the cover conveys a couple things clearly: that Saeko and Miwa are the focus, but also that there is still an ensemble behind them. It also shows that Saeko is the pursuer who is looking for physical affection in a playful manner, with Miwa looking a bit confused on what to do.
The Plot
The manga begins with a scene of the two women in bed post-coitus. Miwa marvels about having a girlfriend, but Saeko pushes that aside for more physical affection. Notably, the scene is narrated from Miwa’s perspective and Saeko’s face is not shown—she is either facing away or her face is occluded by the speech bubbles. We find out this scene happens some time in the future. The story then jumps back to their first meeting in the beginning of the school term.
These pages were originally released in color in the web platform, although they have been gray-scaled in both the print and digital versions in English. To be frank, the color usage is very flat and “digital” looking, which makes this scene feel at odds with the rest of the manga. The black and white version does not look particularly good either. It’s a shame, because it detracts from the otherwise strong (and a bit spicy) hook to start the series.
What the first chapter goes on to do very well is establish clear characterization through dialog. I have to really tip my hat to Lerkhe’s localization work here, because the voices for the characters are distinct and, in my opinion, very believable for college students. For example, we learn a lot about Saeko just by her “bro-y” affect.
The meet-cute of the century, folks
The majority of the plot here centers around Saeko’s immediate desire to have sex butting up against Miwa’s fear of it. Saeko is sexually experienced, though it is tinged with trauma: she was bullied in middle school for dating a girl, so once she entered high school she decided to date one of her male friends and quickly sleep with him as a means of “normalizing” herself. Saeko regrets rushing into losing her virginity, and so she does not want to be responsible for Miwa making the same mistake.
Saeko’s guilt about her sex drive is a major point of the volume
Throughout the volume, Saeko is initiating various levels of physical affection: she reaches for Miwa’s hand after bass shopping, she glomps on her when hanging with the band, she initiates the first kiss, and she is the one who asks for sex. She is clearly ecstatic to have the opportunity again to be intimate with another woman, but her impulsivity ends up backfiring on her as Miwa struggles to keep up.
On the inside title page (and back of the print edition), you can see Saeko’s hand grabbing Miwa’s, with the latter hesitating to reciprocate
Miwa, on the other hand, is acting as if the relationship is a romantic one: she plans dates, gives birthday gifts, keeps track of their monthly anniversaries. She’s playing the part as if she is reading the script to a shojo manga. For instance, she takes Saeko to the aquarium to mark their first month of dating. The lesbian aquarium date is a bit of a meme now, so it feels like Miwa picked the tropey date option because, well, that’s what you do. (Ironically, two recent female-lead aquarium-themed series, A Tropical Fish Years For Snow and The Aquatope On White Sand, both kept the primary relationship platonic despite having, in my view, heavy romantic subtext.)
Tamifull states in the Comics Natalie interview that their intent was to explore the idea of a “calculated” relationship and depict it as a valid choice rather than simply a compromise to one of mutual romantic love. I don’t believe this was Tamifull’s exact intention, but to me their relationship feels like an subversion of the ‘fake dating’ trope. In those cases, the couple is outwardly appearing romantic while the reality is that there is no intimacy to begin with (though often one partner has romantic intent). Miwa and Saeko are actually dating, but Miwa is pretending to be romantic (like in the trope) while Saeko has no interest in that and only seeks physical gratification (in violation to the trope). Nevertheless, everyone who is aware of their relationship assumes that it is a typical romantic one—and notably, neither Miwa nor Saeko admit privately to their friends that their relationship is more along the lines of “exclusive friends with benefits”.
As they state in their author comic in the back of the volume, Tamifull set out to explore the messiness that arises from a relationship between two people who are internally compromising. But unlike many series of this nature, it’s refreshing that there are conversations happening between Saeko and Miwa that are very frank about sex. Late in the volume Saeko asks Miwa “do even you get horny?” and it’s not an accusation—it’s a clumsy but earnest attempt to communicate sexual needs.
Saeko puts up a strong front for Miwa but it’s just that—a front
The other major source of tension in the book is, as you may expect, the issue of coming out. They are accidentally found canoodling by bandmate Mikkun, and in that moment Saeko decides to smooth over the situation by claiming that it was her fault and calls what they were doing “gross”. After Miwa takes issue with her response, Saeko owns up and comes clean to Mikkun who is surprisingly chill. The girls then tell their other bandmates about their relationship who also take it reasonably well. So for now, they have found a safe space within their band (plus a couple other friends) to be open about their sexuality.
Something I would highlight about this subplot is how Saeko communicates to Miwa versus how she talks to Mikkun. On a date, Miwa comments that Saeko is “pretty out” to which she states that she wants to live truthfully—and then soon after she immediately backpedals once she perceives a potential threat. Miwa even calls her out on her hypocrisy. Saeko seems like she is about to tell Miwa about her middle school experience but stops herself and moves the conversation on. However, when Saeko talks to Mikkun, she tells him about her girlfriend and the abuse they both experienced. The fact that Saeko stops herself from opening up to Miwa first rears its head here and will grow as the comic continues, but it’s very notable to me that we see it seeded so early.
The Volume wraps on Saeko’s 19th birthday, which begins with the band’s first live performance and ends with Miwa taking Saeko to a love hotel. Miwa fully accepts Saeko as they begin to have sex, bookending perfectly with the opening of the first chapter.
Side Characters
Tamifull has stated that Saeko and Miwa’s three fellow band members, Tsuruta, Mikkun, and Lucha, were all designed as different kinds of youkya, or cheerful characters. They are representative of different types of masculine stereotypes, and I think their inclusion are well-deployed as cultural commentary as well as sources of comical levity. For this post, I will focus my attention on Tsuruta.
Tsuruta is a “college debut” character, an introvert who is trying to reinvent himself. I would say that Tsuruta is a reader insert character for male readers: he is immediately smitten with the traditionally feminine Miwa and continues to carry a torch for her despite knowing that she isn’t available. It is hard for me to not see him as representative of male otaku who hold a fetishistic possessiveness of female characters, heightened by the fact that the woman in question is a lesbian and therefore would never even be theoretically interested in him. Though his depiction could tip into didacticism, he isn’t outright reprehensible, just misguided. We will return to Tsuruta in the future.
We also meet Rika and Usshi, who are members of a different band in the Light Music Club that become fast friends with Miwa and Saeko. Rika, specifically, is a sexually liberal girl who is also a natural shit-stirrer. Tamifull said that they conceptualized Rika, along with Miwa (and presumably Saeko), in order to normalize women having high sex drives. Now, beyond that, I am not sure what her broader thematic purpose is, and I hope to work that out more as the series progresses. Usshi here, who is a rural transplant, mostly functions here as the “straight man” to Rika.
Time
One element of Tamifull’s storytelling technique that I would criticize is their habit of fast forwarding in time. They will often have time slip forward from a point of high tension to a moment that is past the initial resolution of the conflict but still wading in the aftermath. Saeko and Miwa’s meet-cute is the first example of this, where after Saeko gives her “I was looking respectfully” excuse for looking down Miwa’s blouse, they cut to some time in the future with Miwa telling Saeko about how terrible of a first impression that was. In a way, Tamifull’s treatment of time creates, as I said in my Okazu review of Volume 4, “[a] tumultuous energy [that] accurately reflects the free-wheeling nature of one’s first year of college.” However, when it collides with moments of conflict it feels like a bit of a narrative crutch, especially when you begin to see how frequently it gets deployed. Hell, it happens two more times in this volume alone: when Mikkun discovers their relationship and after Miwa overhears Rika call her a “pain in the ass”.
I think the reason for this is that Tamifull is not interested in the moment-to-moment beats of an argument-apology-forgiveness arc; they are more interested in the messiness that comes afterwards with the feelings that linger from the underlying and still unresolved conflict that fueled the tension in the first place. I understand the impulse to crack through the shell and get to the chewy center of the issue, but I don’t always find the method successful.
Art
I will start with an admission: I am not a visual artist, nor am I someone trained in analyzing drawing technique. That said, I have listened to every episode of Mangasplaining to date. That should count for something, right?
The style overall does have certain moe-blob tendencies, particularly the roundness of the characters’ faces. A few of the pages in Volume 1 are redrawn versions from the doujinshi; for instance, here is a comparison of the moment Saeko comes out to Miwa:
The most obvious improvement is the detail of the cityscapes behind both girls, but the panel layout also does a better job incorporating Miwa into the scene. There are a handful more examples of near one-to-one reproductions throughout the volume.
This three column layout centers a moment of high tension and uses the center seam and misaligned borders to highlight the gap between their feelings
The two-page layout above demonstrates Tamifull’s deft use of paneling. The four vertical panels that start off the spread indicate that things are moving quickly, but then get interrupted by an out-of-alignment panel at the bottom. The center “column” has a jagged appearance, with diagonal edges with the top and bottom misaligned. In the left-most column, the panels are back in alignment again, giving a senses of Saeko moving quickly away from the moment. Tamifull does not often employ drawings that span across multiple pages, so moments like this have extra punch.
I would be remiss if I did not give Tamifull props for the fashion. Just in the first chapter alone, Miwa and Saeko each have five distinct outfits, all of which establishes both character’s sense of taste. Saeko tends to wear t-shirts, jeans, hoodies, denim jackets—all with relatively relaxed silhouettes—finished with sneakers; Miwa, on the other hand, is fond of low cut blouses, A-line skirts, pants with more traditionally feminine cuts (high-waisted with either a slim fit or flared at the knee), with high heeled shoes and large earrings. It conveys a lot of characterization very quickly and it’s just fun to see. Fashion is low key one of the best parts of a post-high school setting.
One of the notable features of the art is the character designs. What leapt out to me in particular is the differences in how Tamifull draws the eyes of each character. Each one is a distinct combination of lid shapes, iris sizes, and eyebrows. In particular I noticed how the more feminine characters have larger, rounder irises and the more masculine ones have smaller ones (right down to Lucha, whose eyes are always drawn as closed).
Cast headshots arranged by iris size. Note that Usshi appears out of place—put a pin in that for Volume 2
Now, that’s not to say that you should use this observation as promoting biological markers of gender, and this is definitely not the first time that a mangaka gave their women larger eyes than their male counterparts; what it does is highlight the range and variety of the character designs. That goes for body types too: for instance, I really like that Saeko’s mom actually looks like a middle-aged woman. It’s not uncommon to see parents that look more like slightly older siblings to their children, so seeing someone who clearly looks her age was refreshing.
Another art detail that will become more important as the series goes on is Saeko’s hair. Her hair is dyed a dirty blonde and is not well-trimmed, with her bangs falling in unkempt spikes. As time goes on, more and more of her roots are exposed because she neglects to touch-up her dye job. In this volume, her hair’s primary use is marking the passage of time (which helps make the time-movements in chapter 1 more readable), though I would also say it represents Saeko’s frazzling state of mind as she tries to hold out for Miwa to be ready for sex for weeks on end. It’s strong, subtle bit of visual storytelling that doesn’t draw heavy attention to itself, though it will become more prominent as the series goes on.
Gear Chat
Since I am a guitarist, I have to nerd out a bit on the instruments. Miwa buys a Fender Jazz Bass, which I think is a very apt choice for her. It’s got a curvy offset body, slender pickups, and a generally classy vibe clad in presumably Olympic White, all of which fit Miwa to a t. Unfortunately, it is not consistently rendered in the art throughout the volume.
I’d like to believe that Miwa did not beat her bass out of shape that quickly
Saeko plays a Fender Stratocaster, which is an extremely versatile guitar known for snappy and bright pickups, which is again reflective of Saeko’s personality and ability to socially adapt with ease.
You could also say that their instrument choices reflect their top/bottom dynamic in bed, though it is less in-your-face here than with Sakiko and Chika in Hello, Melancholic!, who play the flute and bass guitar, respectively.
Note that all headstocks have been genericized, which could be to skirt around needing to pay for likeness rights or it could indicate that all of the instruments are one of the ubiquitous copies of the genuine, and much more expensive, brand name guitars. Japan did have a long history of making close copies of American designs, the now-called “lawsuit-era” axes made by companies like Ibanez, Greco, Burny, Tokai, and many more. (As an aside, I do wonder how much money was paid for the Gibson Les Pauls that appeared in Bocchi the Rock.)
Closing Thoughts
If you couldn’t tell by this point, I’ve gone deep on just this first volume. There are a lots of elements I would want to highlight that I haven’t even made space for, such as when and how Tamifull employs a change POV from the main pair, or the thematic (and literal) weight of the earrings Miwa gifts Saeko on her birthday, or just how incredibly funny the comic is! Because the characters are so well rendered, the ways in which they bounce off of each other feels incredibly organic. It is a very strong opening with a handful of small issues that often come in the early chapters of a new series. The volume ends where most series finish, with the consummation of a relationship. However, this is just the first verse.
All of the images are taken from the ComiXology/Kindle version of Volume 1
Before they were known as the Beatles, there was a band called the Quarrymen. Every artist has an origin story, so in order to properly discuss this series, we must first set the stage. This is a brief background on the works of mangaka Tamifull (Tamifuru しっとりオブラート) up until the serialization of How Do We Relationship.
Tamifull’s self-portrait caricature
I will start off by saying this is going to be an atypical post on this blog. As I mentioned in my introductory post, I cannot read Japanese, and the HDWR serialization is the only work of Tamifull’s that has been localized in English. That means that most, if not all, of the information here is reliant on machine translation or scanlations. Therefore, please take any of the translations here with a grain of salt. If I misunderstand or misrepresent anything here—or if there is any additional information that you have found—feel free to drop a comment! I may revisit this post in the future if better information comes to light.
Given that most pieces of the doujinshis were later adapted into the serialization, there are parts of this post that are effectively spoilers for events up through Volume 8. If you are new to the series and want to go into the it completely blind, you can skip the discussion of the HDWR doujinshis below and begin reading Volume 1 along with the corresponding blog post once it goes up.
The analysis here will be fairly shallow since there isn’t much material to dig into. I will be primarily pointing out the unique elements of the comics in context with other similar manga, but know that such comparisons are constrained by my language limitations and my fairly niche exposure to the world of manga writ large.
Last caveat: I have not found super concrete evidence of Tamifull’s gender, so I will default to gender neutral terms for now.
Start Me Up
One of Tamifull’s many Love Live! fan comic contributions
Tamifull is the seemingly sole member of a doujinshi circle called Sittori Oblaat. Based on the information on their Tumblr page, their first works were based on the Smile PreCure! series in early 2012. They would go on to contribute a variety of doujinshis for the Love Live! series, one of which they list as their first professional publication in Dengeki G’s Festival! COMIC Vol.35, released in April 2014.
Their first serialization Don’t Call Me Goddess! (Megami-sama to Yobanaide! 女神さまと呼ばないで！) ran in the magazine Manga Time published by Houbunsha from August 2014 until February 2016. I have only been able to find pictures of the magazine pages on Tamifull’s twitter, so I have not been able to find out any information on what it is about, but it does seem to be yuri.
Tamifull’s announcement of the first chapter of Don’t Call Me Goddess! on Twitter
Their next serialization is a series called Air Doll and Sister (Kuuki Ningyou to Imouto 空気人形と妹), which ran in Tonari no Young Jump (Shueisha) from November 2016 through September of 2017. It is a raunchy comedy about a teen girl who discovers that the her older brother’s blow-up sex doll is sapient.
Cover of Air Doll and Sister
Out of all of these early works, this is the one I most wish I could dig into, if only because sex and sexuality play a major role in HDWR and so it would be interesting to see how the topic was handled here.
That leads us to the original HDWR doujinshi.
‘Cause We Ended As Lovers
The cover of the first doujinshi
The first release was created for COMITIA123 in February 2018. Tamifull mentions in an interview with Comics Natalie (which I will refer to in more detail for Volume 1) that Air Doll and Sister had a very niche audience, and so they aimed for a broader target with HDWR. More importantly, they specifically wanted to write the characters in a way that would be more relatable to women. We will come back to this in future posts.
The comic begins with Saeko, a rambunctious tomboy with long dyed hair, coming out about liking girls to Miwa, a girl who resembles a mature woman (roughly based on musician Shiina Ringo) but is in fact inexperienced in love. Miwa also admits she likes girls, and Saeko proposes that they start a relationship of convenience.
Saeko and Miwa come out to each other
The comic is narrated from Miwa’s perspective and jumps through a few vignettes–their spontaneous but unromantic first kiss, going on a date, their first time having sex in a love hotel. In one scene, Saeko mentions that their five month anniversary is coming up. Miwa questions why would it matter, and Saeko says that it is a celebration of their love. Miwa laughs, because the truth is that their relationship is still not romantic. In the narration, Miwa wonders whether Saeko does indeed love her.
Saeko and Miwa’s first kiss in the Casual Music Club room
Sometime later, Miwa spots Saeko walking arm-in-arm with an unnamed girl. The scene then cuts to Saeko apologizing to Miwa for appearing as if she were cheating. Miwa counters by saying that it doesn’t matter because they aren’t in love, and that perhaps it would be better if they break up so that each could find someone they truly have feelings for. Saeko admits that she may like this other girl, and that she was trying really hard to keep their relationship together despite knowing it wasn’t true love. They agree to amicably split, though the narration ends with Miwa admitting that cried for sometime when she got home and that the swelling of emotion took her by surprise.
There is also a bonus page set at a party the following April where Saeko asks Miwa if there are any first year girls that caught her eye. We see a close up shot of one such first years, and Miwa says that she isn’t interested in younger women. Saeko thinks to herself that Miwa is clearly lying.
Visually, There is a variance in the level of detail and the consistency of the characters. Saeko in particular fares the worst, occasionally looking somewhat Tezuka-esque which makes her look significantly younger and more moe.
Saeko here appears much rounder, the shading is rougher, and the background is much less filled in than in other scenes*
It makes me wonder if certain parts were drawn early in the project’s development and others were later drawn and inserted in between. The first kiss page, for example, shows a club room full of music gear cluttering the space, while the city background shots on various pages are very rudimentary. By the next release for COMITIA in May 2018, the character designs feel more similar to the pages in the original that had more detail—and coincidentally they match the look of the early serialization.
In terms of narrative choices, there are a few interesting things to note. The first one is that the girls get together right at the start without any pretense of romantic attraction. Often, series with fast pairings begin with one emotionally invested partner and the other who begins neutral but comes around to love (examples include Bloom Into You, I Married My Best Friend To Shut My Parents Up, Onna Tomodachi to Kekkon Shitemita). The closest parallel I can think of to the relationship here is Scum’s Wish, but the context and purpose of the principal relationship there is very different, with both partners using the other to satisfy their sexual frustration caused by wanting unavailable people. In contrast, Tamifull purposefully shows the relationship as generally positive despite lacking romance.
Another unique point is that they end up breaking up but staying friends. Suffice to say, that is not a very common plot arc; a more typical story would end with them confessing that their feelings are romantic. It is even less common that the split is mutual, with no bad blood. In real life, people date and break up for various reasons, and then life has to go on. It’s not great for a wish fulfillment story, but it is fertile and relatively untilled ground for tension leading to catharsis. As far as we can tell, this is the end of Miwa and Saeko as a couple, but it is certainly not the end of their stories.
The last thing I want to point out is the setting, which is college. A vast majority of “relationship” stories such as this are set in either high school or with working adults (and sometimes a distressing mix of the two); this is especially true for yuri stories, given the genre’s origin in Class S stories. For whatever reason, in the yuri/GL space the setting is more common in Korean manhwa, with examples such as Blooming Sequence, The Love Doctor, My Princess Charming, and so on. More commonly there are series that start in high school and follow the characters into college such as the Kase-san series and Futaribeya. I mean, technically Otherside Picnic‘s leads are college students but you wouldn’t be blamed for forgetting that fact.
Examples of other yuri/GL series starring college students
I think the relative rarity of college stories in manga is a shame. What that setting allows for is a more “adult” story that still features immature—but not childish—characters. By adult, I mean wielding a significant amount of agency in one’s life. College students (and similarly aged people who go straight into the workforce) are just getting their first tastes of autonomy. What is so enticing about the setting is that there are so many inflection points that characters can be run through, be it about careers, love lives, or personal identity. That said, other than the first kiss chapter, the setting doesn’t really come through in this particular doujinshi other than the inference that the greater freedom to socialize away from their families allows the girls to explore their queerness with lower stakes.
Character-wise, I noticed that Saeko acts with relentless positivity as she pushes the relationship forward, while Miwa is more passive and pessimistic. Miwa’s negativity feels a bit heavy-handed, though that is likely colored by my familiarity of her characterization as naïve and timid in the serialized version. That said, it makes sense that this version of Miwa proposes a break-up because she wants to protect herself from heartbreak. She appears to be repressing a budding affection for Saeko, and so the safest course of action would be breaking off the relationship before she can get hurt. Still, that feels atypical of someone in their first relationship, romantic or not.
Despite its unique qualities, I found the story a bit hollow. The final line about Miwa crying left an ache in my heart, but looking at the story as a whole, there wasn’t much of a message to glean from it. It just feels like someone recounting a college story to you, with no ultimate takeaway other than “that happened to me.” It’s compelling insofar as the interactions between the characters feel more true-to-life than a typical manga, but there is not a lot of space on the page for the characters to grow. Saeko in particular feels like she’s just along for the ride.
I’m Moving On
A later doujinshi chapter, where Saeko and her bandmates discuss their mutual appreciation for breasts. Note the dynamism of Miwa breaking the panel boarders (and Saeko’s skull) on page 2
Tamifull continued to create doujinshi of these characters up until the serialization began. They are still primarily focused on Saeko and Miwa’s dating life, though they also introduce their bandmates from the Casual Music Club Mikkun, Tsuruta, and Lucha, as well as other club members Rika and Usshi. One comic debuts an updated version of the “hipster kohai” from the bonus comic as a new love interest for Miwa named Tamaki.
Tamaki makes her first appearance in this piece made for COMITIA124
Interestingly, one of part of that story involves Tamaki asking Saeko about the “purpose” of dating another woman. Saeko’s reactions are much more measured, presumably because she is a year older from the days when she and Miwa were dating.
Saeko’s expressions here are more nuanced, and her change in hairstyle makes her look older, especially next to her kohai.
The improvement in the art from the original doujinshi is easily apparent, with more complex expressions, paneling, and perspectives. The stories are still relatively shallow (most are two-to-three page gags), but they express more humor and introspection than the original work. A lot of these elements will be carried forward into the serialization. Interestingly, the Tamaki chapters have completely shifted focus away from sex and more towards romantic feelings. I would keep that evolution in mind as we move forward.
My final comment I will give on the doujinshis is that Miwa and Saeko’s queerness is known and treated as normal by their friends. None of them look at them askance, or question their orientation, or express any poorly informed opinions. That’s pretty unusual! Knowing that a large part of growing up queer involves choosing when and to whom to come out, it’s heartening to see that Miwa and Saeko feel comfortable and safe openly being themselves.
That wraps up our session! Next up, we will begin the series proper with Volume 1.
*Unfortunately I could only find this page from a scanlation, so I will not source it here. If I find an official source I will update the source info accordingly
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!
Oh My God, They Were Bandmates 
