REVIEW: Home Office Romance (manga) by Kintetsu Yamada, translated by Matt Treyvaud

Home Office Romance is a contemporary romance one-shot manga. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This is technically set during pandemic lockdown times, but there's no sense of strict restrictions and very little talk of the pandemic itself - the time period is mostly just an excuse for Nokoru to suddenly be asked to work from home and for Natsu to find herself stuck in Japan, unable to go on digs due to travel restrictions.

Anyway, this manga is told from the POV of Nokoru, an exhausted and overworked systems engineer. When his company tells him he needs to start working from home, he's faced with the realization that he's spent so little time at his place that, even after living there a year, most of his stuff is still in boxes. He does his best to make his home, now his new work space, more livable, even going so far as to create an Angkor Wat-like paradise on his balcony. 

It's during this time of working from home that Nokoru meets his neighbor, Natsu, a grad student in archaeology. Nokoru soon finds himself thinking about Natsu a lot, looking forward to opportunities to talk to her and spend time with her, and trying, in his awkward way, to figure out if she's as interested in him as he is in her.

Oof, I loved this! Nokoru was very serious, prone to overthinking, and very analytical in his approach to everything. Meanwhile, Natsu was more relaxed, although she had some worries of her own. She tended to be bolder, for example, initiating their first kiss.

I had avoided this volume for a while because the description made it sound like more of a pandemic story than it actually was. Nokoru and Natsu's developing romance was such a delight to read, thankfully, that I found myself going back and rereading it immediately after finishing it. You could see the exhaustion gradually melting from Nokoru's eyes as his relationship with Natsu deepened and he began rethinking his priorities.

One of my favorite bits involved Nokoru trying to figure out how to arrange a date with Natsu without getting in the way of her studies or research. The result was PreliminaryProposal.xlsx, simultaneously the nerdiest and most adorable thing ever.

And it certainly didn't hurt that the art was great, too. Man, this makes me want to dig up my Sweat & Soap volumes and finally finish that series. Yamada's romances are so good!

Extras:

Translation notes and an afterword by the author that talks a bit about the creation of the volume.