One reality of being a teacher (especially a high school teacher) is that students are incessantly curious about their teachers' marital and/or dating status. If they find out that their teacher is single – especially if the teacher is (or looks) young – they will try to set the teacher up with any other single teacher of opposite gender who happens to work in the same building and is even remotely in the ballpark on age; if the students get even a suspicion that the teacher might be bisexual or homosexual then same-sex pairings are fair game, too.

Some of this element is present in this series from manga-ka Pikachi Oui, but the first volume does not focus on the students' perspective anywhere near as much as the English version of the title suggests. In fact, outside of one “Class” (i.e., chapter), students at the school where the protagonists work barely appear at all. Even in the Class where the students are involved, the focus still primarily remains on the protagonists. This may have happened because, as Oui explains in “The Making of Haya-Tera” bonus piece at the end, the concept was originally yuri love between two working women; them being teachers was just an afterthought used to more easily justify how they came into frequent contact in the workplace despite having different jobs. Hence the students mostly just exist here to give Hayama a little push to take the initiative in her relationship with Terano. Their role could just as well have been filled by meddlesome co-workers.

Some of those are present, as two other female teachers not only encourage Hayama and Terano to get together but also derive entertainment value from watching their relationship play out. (One even privately admits that she sought transfer to an all-girl's school specifically to witness yuri relationships.) They pop up a bit more often than the students do, but ultimately they also have a limited presence. This is a story about, and only about, Hayama and Terano and their developing relationship; in some of the Classes not a single other character with any lines of dialog appears.

That puts the full story weight on Hayama and Terano. They hold up passably under that burden, but only barely. Their initially-tentative and gradually more assertive lovey-dovey behavior is sweet and cloyingly cute, and the light-hearted tone that most of the story takes keeps things from getting too complicated. While the story plays out primarily from Hayama's perspective, it provides just enough of Terano's viewpoint so that her inner thoughts are not completely overlooked. However, that also contributes to the volume's main flaw: the characterizations are rather shallow. Neither of the two women has much character definition beyond their reactions to each other and their fledgling relationship. This is especially bad for Terano, whose defining traits seem to be only that she is the more girly of the two (compared to Hayama's more masculine air) and that she is deeply in love. The only other independent characteristics they have are that Hayama is the more responsible and generally more mature one, the designated driver when Terano drinks.

The main cause for this shortage of independent development might be that the story starts about a month into their relationship, rather than with them meeting; only a flashback to when Hayama asked Terano to go out with her provides any indication about prior events or what they were like before. In one sense this is fine, as Oui chose to have the story about the way their relationship develops rather than the way it starts, but the writing does not do enough to compensate on the character front. Instead the story focuses entirely on how they gradually get bound together in both emotional and physical senses. Once they finally kiss, that becomes a regular component of their interactions, and the volume ends with their relationship finally turning sexual. The progression to that point is natural enough, but unless the intent is to show that the two have no definition or meaning to their lives outside of their love, something feels like it is missing.

Oui's artistry does not do anything complicated, but it doesn't need to. Both Hayama and Terano are attractive enough and their designs achieve a convincing balance of youth and maturity; most importantly, their happiness as a couple shows quite plainly and convincingly. The lighter tone allows for heavier use of exaggerated expressions and SD transformations, but when things get hot and heavy, all gimmicks are set aside. Some milder fanservice in a hot springs scene presages the sex scenes at the end, which depict tasteful nudity and only mildly explicit sexual activity; though it still has a fanservice aspect to it, the scenes are staged more with an emphasis on showing two people exercising their love rather than just being lurid.

You may have noticed that I have not once yet brought up that this is a dedicated yuri series. That's because the yuri aspect is handled so matter-of-factly that it is a non-factor in the story. No one is judgmental about it, everyone is supportive, and neither lead shows any hint of a “but we're both women!” protest. Turn one of the protagonists into a man (or transgender, for that matter) and barely a word of dialog would need to be changed. This would be a sweet little love story no matter what gender(s) were involved.