The Fall 2024 Manga Guide

Loved by Two Fiancés

What's It About? 

This sweet and spicy Mature-rated tale is about a man with two very different personalities—and a woman determined to navigate them both!

Café barista Hayase Hinako lives with her handsome fiancé Kagaya Seiya, a hotshot lawyer she met in her coffee shop. He's everything she could ever want in a future husband: sweet, caring, and handy in the kitchen as well as the bedroom. But just when she thinks it's all smooth sailing, her loving partner transforms from a gentleman into a tyrant overnight! He may look the same on the outside, but he's not the Seiya she knows and loves…so who is he?!

Loved by Two Fiancés has a story by Chizu Aoi and art by Mia Yuduki, with English translation by Molly Lee. This volume was lettered by mono. Published under Seven Seas' Steamship label (September 3, 2024).

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

Is It Worth Reading?

Is it really cheating if the other man is your fiancé's alter? Loved by Two Fiancés is at least tangentially interested in answering that question, but only after it's done with all of the sex. Actually, that's kind of an unfair way to characterize this new offering from Seven Seas' Steamship imprint because author Chizu Aoi does mention that they did some research into dissociative identity disorder (DID, formerly called multiple personality disorder), so there's at least a bit of interest in dealing with some of the harsher implications. And Hinako herself isn't entirely comfortable with what's going on – she doesn't feel like she can refuse Zero because he's part of her beloved Seiya.

That in itself is an issue that perhaps bears exploring. Hinako and Seiya are a gooey-sweet couple, madly in love and very, very happy. Zero intrudes on that, and he seems fairly keen to convince Hinako that telling him no is “unfair,” and she rationalizes sleeping with him by saying that he's also Seiya. However, Zero and Seiya see themselves as two completely separate people, both proclaiming their jealousy of the other and in a few cases working hard to make the other personality more jealous. Hinako almost feels like a pawn rather than a character, and the entire DID angle one calculated to allow the writer to have their cake and eat it too – the cake being the so-called “rape romance” trope, where the heroine says no but likes it anyway.

I have previously praised the Steamship line for having a variety of romantic flavors so that everyone can find one they enjoy. That still holds true with this title, which dips a toe into identical twin romance, forbidden love, and the aforementioned nonconsensual romance. For some readers that's going to be a heady mixture, and the art doesn't shy away from explicit sex scenes – there's at least one per chapter, which is pretty impressive for a short book. The effort is made to show how Zero and Seiya both treat Hinako's body differently, as well as how they interact with her out of bed. Hinako herself is much less developed, but I suspect that's because the intent is for readers to put themselves in her position, so the less personality she has, the easier that transposition will be.

I do have to give the book credit for making a real attempt to make Seiya's DID not just a plot device. His childhood looks, from the flashbacks, to have been traumatic enough that he needed a protector, and that was Zero. We don't see a lot about his past, but what we do see is enough to merit at least a small content warning. It's not physically violent, but the emotional violence is very present. It puts this volume in sort of an odd space, serious and silly at the same time, wanting to have its smut while still being taken more seriously. It may be able to pull it off as the series goes on. Whether you decide to give it that chance will depend on how you feel about the base use of DID.

Evil men in erotic comics targeted at women really be like, “I'm gonna make you cum twice before I even consider my own pleasure.” From its unrealistic portrayal of multiple personality disorder to its fantasy depictions of mind-blowing sex no matter the circumstances, Loved by Two Fiancés is a tale of pure escapism with the depth and substance of cotton candy. That said, readers who are aware of its lack of depth or realism and are still on board will appreciate this alternately cute and spicy story about a woman determined to love every facet of her fiancé.

Bubbly and a bit absent-minded, Hinako is a lady living the dream, after a picture-perfect meet-cute with a lawyer at her coffee shop job, she's now engaged, and her handsome, handy fiancé Seiya appears perfect on paper. But one night after a session of blissful lovemaking, Seiya transforms into a stranger: a man calling himself Zero who wears her fiancé's face but has an uncharacteristically rough, rowdy personality. Predictable childhood trauma is to blame for the sudden appearance of Seiya's alter ego, but now Hinako has a conundrum: is it cheating to have sex with Seiya in both of his personalities? Additionally, is Seiya's preference for different sexual positions depending on which personality is in the driver's seat borrowed directly from the Jim Carrey comedy Me, Myself & Irene? Neither of these questions get answered in this volume, but darned if Hinako isn't going to have sex until she figures it out.

This manga's title made me think there might be a three-way involved, but that isn't the case (unless you count the moments when Hinako and Zero make love next to a visualization of Seiya's primary personality, Three Wolf Moon-like). And while Zero is more assertive than Seiya, I never doubted Hinako was anything but consenting under his administration. The multiple personalities add interest, but the sex itself remains strictly in the realm of vanilla. This is clearly designed as a self-insert story; Hinako's “slightly more perfect than the girl next door” personality makes it easy for readers to imagine occupying her role. At turns both adorable and graphic, this story is exactly what it advertises. We'll have to wait until the second volume to find out how this pseudo-throuple makes it work, but I'm already confident they'll find a way.

Stories with dissociative identity disorder make me roll my eyes because it's never portrayed thoughtfully. In most cases, it's used as a plot device to generate drama or uncomfortable circumstances. There are even times when it's used in a violent, horror sense and I always feel bad because it is far more complicated than that. I was worried and when I finished this volume of Loved by Two Fiancés, my worries were there. I know what the story is trying to do, but it goes about uncomfortably and I find the situation hard to empathize.

This is a story about an engaged couple. The man in the relationship has a split personality, born from family trauma. The two personalities get jealous of each other and seem to take out that jealousy on our female lead in a lot of sexually charged scenes that very much skew the line of being consensual. The main fiancé is the perfect house husband while the other personality is the more edgy, bad boy type. Both of them can effectively make love with our main lead and I'm not sure what the story is trying to say about the situation.

Sometimes it feels like the story is leaning into the tragedy of the relationship and the trauma that the male lead went through while other times it feels like a love triangle with a twist on it. The split personalities are treated like separate people who get jealous of each other. Things get awkward because they share the same body. There's some talk about how these constant shifts in personality may affect their overall everyday lives. However, I couldn't bring myself to like it. The sex scenes are skewed too many lines to be stimulating, the female lead is way too passive to an uncomfortable degree, and the main drama between the two personalities isn't interesting enough to distract me from everything else in the story. It wouldn't hurt to skip this one.