The Fall 2024 Manga Guide

How My Daddies Became Mates

What's It About? 

Sparks and fists fly in this Boys' Love omegaverse spin on the “how I met your father” trope!

As teenagers, Kuroga Akane and Shirosaki Aoi couldn't have been more different. An alpha and an omega from rival schools, their initial meeting wasn't exactly love at first sight. In fact, it was downright brutal! Fast forward to adulthood, and not only are they mated and married, but they even have an adorable daughter! How did these former delinquents go from wanting to beat each other to a pulp to falling in love?! Recommended for Mature Audiences.

How My Daddies Became Mates has a story and art by Mikkamita, with English translation by Jacqueline Fung. This volume was lettered by Toppy. Published by Seven Seas (September 24, 2024).

Content Warning: This title is intended for 18+ audiences.

Is It Worth Reading?

If you've ever been confused about the omegaverse (and who hasn't?), picking up How My Daddies Became Mates can help. That's not because the story deals with definitions, but because Seven Seas has, in their wisdom, included a three-page explanation of the genre before the story. It's remarkably thorough and even has diagrams, which probably weren't strictly necessary, but at least the next time my mother asks me to explain omegaverse to her, I can save myself some embarrassment and just hand her this book.

The story itself is worthwhile, too. Its frame narrative is elementary schooler Shima asking her dads how and why they got married, which feels like a very natural thing for her to do. The book opens with Aoi and Akane going to Shima's first open classroom day, and her classmates immediately notice that she has two fathers. Because even the omegaverse isn't exempt from outdated ideas about family structure, they tell her that her family is weird, which understandably panics her fathers. The situation never blows up, thanks to a friend with two moms, but it gets Shima thinking. She has no issue with her family, but if having two fathers is odd, how did her parents end up together? This jumpstarts the extended flashback that forms the main body of the volume, with occasional returns to the present to let us know that Aoi and Akane are leaving out a few NSFW details that we readers are privy to.

Generally speaking, there's nothing truly remarkable about the main story. Aoi and Akane are from rival high schools, brought together by a misunderstanding about why Aoi keeps beating the crap out of guys from Akane's school. Their initial attraction is equal parts hormonal and emotional – yes, their secondary sexes play a role, but Akane is willing to go so far as to punch himself in the face to stop going after Aoi if the other boy doesn't want it, and the real reason they bond is a cat named Mochisuke. Personalities are more important to their romance than anything, and the creator strives to show that consent is the sexiest piece of their physical relationship. At least there's some implication that the boys would have been attracted to each other without the omegaverse nonsense, although the genre demands that that still plays a role in their relationship.

On the whole, this is nearly as cute as the title implies. The present-day sections are a little better on that front, and Shima feels like a relatively realistic child, curious but largely willing to accept that her dads got married because they love each other and that there's nothing wrong with that. It's a relatively typical story otherwise, but still one that BL omegaverse fans should enjoy.

We've all been there. You're pummeling a rival into dust when suddenly, amidst the exchange of blows, you get a whiff of an intoxicating scent and become overwhelmed with desire. Even high school delinquents aren't immune to the irresistible pull of biology in the Omegaverse. So goes the story of How My Daddies Became Mates, the least age-appropriate “How I Met Your Father” retelling possible.

This story swaps between the past and present to feature romantic leads Aoi and Akane at two very different times in their lives. In high school, they were rival tough guys, their secondary sexes be damned—right up until the draw of one another became too much to resist and must be satiated through uncensored X-rated action. Now, they're living in domestic bliss with their adorable daughter, Shima. I was expecting the porn but I didn't expect the feels, like when Shima proudly defended her dads from a classmate who called them weird.

It's a sexy, fluffy story but whenever the Omegaverse comes up between its pages, I can't help but be disappointed by its lack of worldbuilding. This manga begins with a three-page textbook lesson introducing the Omegaverse, the characteristics of the secondary sexes, and how they interact in society. So I had a lot of questions about how that would play out in the world of the manga, and very few of those questions were answered. It is implied that Aoi is a househusband because he's an Omega who requires a flexible schedule around his heats. But if this is a common Omega lifestyle, why does Shima have to defend her dads at all? The story mainly uses the Omegaverse as a handy plot device to explain why this BL pair is so enraptured by one another, and why they have a daughter who looks just like them. Aoi and Akane don't need to have well-developed characterization or much chemistry with one another, because we're simply told that they're obsessed with each other because of the chance circumstances of their biology—alphas and omegas are Just Like That. There isn't much depth to this story, but if you're here for the fluff and the steam you won't be disappointed.