Office workers by day, secret nerds by, well, all the time! Otaku are young Japanese people obsessed with games/manga/anime/cosplay, which is apparently stigmatized in Japanese society so our main characters have to hide their hobbies from co-workers/non-Otaku. Narumi starts work at a new company where her childhood friend Hirotaka also works and the two hook up. Joining them are another couple, Hanako and Kabakura, who also work in the same office, and the four of them happily nerd out in their spare time!
Unusually for me, I saw the anime before reading this manga but I liked the show and wanted more, not realising that the manga was just a repeat of the show - same stories! Which was a bit disappointing and probably why I wasn’t quite as taken with the book as I might’ve been had this all been new to me. I still kinda liked it though. And I use the term “stories” very loosely - nowt much happens to our cast but they’re such a charming group that it doesn’t really matter!
Narumi is an aspiring manga creator and Hirotaka helps her out at Comiket (Japanese Comic-Con); Hanako ropes Hirotaka and Kabakura into cross-dressing cosplay; the group meet Hirotaka’s little brother Nao, who, unlike his big brother is, hoho, a hapless gamer; and they generally putz around learning about each other - see what I mean by nowt much happening?
Also, I guess this is primarily a romance manga but it never really seems like either Narumi or Hirotaka are that into each other or that interested in love in the first place. They’re good friends but neither seem to want a physical relationship or anything more than company while they do their otaku stuff. Similarly, Hanako and Kabakura’s relationship just baffled me - they seem to hate each other and fight at the drop of a hat. And they fight about nothing and their insults are weird and they too don’t seem to really want to be in a relationship.
That might be otaku-awkwardness, though, from my firsthand experience of the culture, Japanese society in general is oddly sexless. Everything is very kiddie-friendly and the women dress very demurely in loose-fitting clothes compared to women in the west who have no issues wearing skin-hugging lycra to the shops!
Also Hanako has really big boobs but when she cosplays as a dude she’s suddenly somehow flat-chested - come on! Really? There’s no amount of taping or a magic sports bra that’ll flatten out a buxom lady like that!
Still, the characters are a delightful bunch and I liked getting to know them and their quirks all over again. And Narumi is beyond cute! I would recommend the anime over the manga though, which is on Amazon Prime right now if you have it. The voice actors are all amazing and I adore the catchy upbeat theme song.
Perhaps appropriately, Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku, Volume 1 is a bit of a jumbled mess, like its characters, but enjoyable enough too!
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