The Fall 2024 Manga Guide

Home Office Romance

What's It About? 

Nokoru has been working brutal overtime at a demanding job when the pandemic lockdown finally gives him the chance to telework from home. This new situation (and the time he saves on his commute) lets him rediscover old passions and new hobbies. The lush garden he creates on his apartment balcony provides a chance to get to know his cute neighbor, Natsu, a graduate student in archeology.

How do two adults build a relationship amid "social distancing," when face-to-face interaction is frown upon, even dangerous? It feels like a tall tale to find an office romance at home, but these are strange times...

Home Office Romance has a story and art by Kintetsu Yamada, with English translation by Matt Treyvaud. This volume was lettered by Sara Linsley. Published by Kodansha Comics (November 12, 2024).

Is It Worth Reading?

Sweat & Soap is one of my favorite manga romances. Across its volumes, it plays out a remarkably healthy love story that takes all of the various factors of two people making a life together and examines them in a shocking adult fashion – meaning that the characters are adults who act like grown-ups, not high schoolers. That made me very excited to pick up Home Office Romance, a single-volume story from the same creator, and while I didn't love it quite as much, it certainly still makes for good reading.

Set during the pandemic (which, I realize, may make some readers avoid the book altogether), the claustrophobic feel of the story makes a lot of sense. With only two real characters, the narrative focuses on the way that the onset of the pandemic and remote work affected social interaction, as well as the way that we relate to the world in general. For Nokoru, being told to work from home made him realize how unhealthy his work/life balance was. Having a seventy-five-minute commute felt fine when he took the job, but the pandemic forced him to see that it just wasn't sustainable and that he was much healthier (physically and mentally) working on his own time, from his own space. Speaking as someone who discovered much the same thing, there's an understated realness about Nokoru's revelation – it's not an epiphany, but a quiet “aha” moment. When he finally has time to unpack his apartment, he's reminded of all the things he used to enjoy doing, which helps him reclaim his sense of self. Again, it's not a loud realization, just a quiet reclamation, which is both in line with his character and very familiar.

It also, of course, allows him to meet Natsu, his next-door neighbor. Natsu didn't even realize she had a neighbor, which again tells us a lot about Nokoru's life, and her gregarious nature at first makes Nokoru uncomfortable. But when she quickly recognizes that his balcony garden is modeled after Angkor Wat, the two hit it off. Before too long they're negotiating a budding romance amid social distancing, although it's worth mentioning that we don't see a lot of it. Since my state completely shut down during the pandemic, it was surprising to me to see them go out to eat or that they could fly somewhere towards the end of the book, but the small cast does the job of conveying “pandemic romance” just fine. It's a more condensed story than Sweat & Soap, but that's to be expected, and my only real complaint is that I never felt like I got to know Natsu. It's still worth reading, though – this is one manga creator who knows how to write a grounded love story.

I finish a book like this and I think to myself “Man, I'm so jealous.” I feel like this is the type of romance I want in my life. House Office Romance is a very simple story about two neighbors who developed their relationship over a specific time. A lot is told from the perspective of our protagonist who is the exact type of analytical introvert that I can relate to. He second-guesses himself, is constantly wondering whether or not he's making the right decision and he is doing his best to figure out what exactly he wants out of life outside of his, rather comfortable, safe space. There is a narrative throughline here about two people who at first seem very content in the world that they have created for themselves in their apartments.

But then, being neighbors, talking to each other across their balconies, allows them to slowly yet comfortably overlap those worlds together. It's only when they get a taste of what it's like to reach out that they mutually decide to expand those worlds together. This is a bit of a slow-burn romance between adults and everything is handled with a sense of comfort that can be silly and a little raunchy without overstepping. There's a believable chemistry here and when things escalate towards the final third of the book, the emotion hit me in a way that I genuinely wasn't expecting.

I do feel like the story ends a bit too soon. It would've been nice if there were maybe one or two more chapters that expanded on a particular step our young couple makes in their lives. But if my biggest complaint about a story is that I wish there was more of it, then that means it's probably doing something great. I can definitely see myself rereading this a few times in the future, both to remind myself of the type of romances I want to see more of in fiction and the type of romances I want to see more of in real life.