Manga Review: Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku, Volume 1, by Fujita

Rating (Out of 5): ~4

Publisher: Kodansha Comics

Release Date: April 2018

Volumes: 6+

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. RightStuf.

Volume: 2.

Goodreads Synopsis:

The awkward, romantic comedy manga about geeks in love that inspired the new anime! Can a professional man who's secretly a hardcore gamer and a woman who's secretly a fujoshi date without their hobbies getting in the way, or revealing each other's secrets?

Extra-long book includes 2 Japanese volumes!

Narumi and Hirotaka are, by all appearances, a power couple. They're young, good-looking professionals. But they have secrets from everyone but each other: They're serious geeks! Narumi is a fujoshi, and Hirotaka's a hardcore gamer. Their sweet, awkward love story started life as a webcomic before becoming a full-blown manga series by popular demand, and is about to become a major anime series!work.

Review:

This isn't 4-koma, but it is short, comedic chapters. Narumi meets an old classmate at her new job, Hirotaka, who is a fellow otaku. This is something they related to while in school, but now Narumi avoids telling people these things, and has had issues in the dating world because of it. So upon seeing Hirotaka again, she gets excited to have someone with this in common.

They decide to start dating, and in the moment, it feels like a “why not?” situation. A convenient decision. But as the story progresses, we get to see that there are real feelings involved, and that they do work well together. We also meet Koyanagi and Kabakura, fellow otaku work friends, who are also dating.

This was a really fun volume. Having such big, comedy-based volumes always take me a while to get through, but this was fun. Otaku series are always on my radar, and since this is also josei—or, at least, with adult characters—that's even more of a plus. This is fun and geeky, and the artwork is also really pretty.