Nikurashii Hodo Aishiteru (憎らしいほど愛してる) subtitled in English “I love you, to hate you,” is a new adult life story about two woman who work together who are having an affair. Asano-san is the hyper-competent manager, Fujimura is a rising star in the company. The two make a formidable couple and are admired by the division in which they work.
Asano, who is married, appears to be satisfied with the nature of their relationship – meeting after work for meals and sex is the outlet she needs. But Fujimura is increasingly dissatisfied with the arrangement. She finds herself falling in love with Asano, and wants their relationship to be more than a diversion.
The story isn’t full of grand soap operatic content. It’s more filled with the kind of gut-churning small mistakes that fill an adult life. Asano goes home to a husband she doesn’t feel like she knows and pressure to leave the job she loves to become a mother. Asano and Fujimura try to return to just being colleagues, but cracking under the stress, Asano makes a grave error that puts her division’s work at risk. The entire division kicks in to help fix the problems; Fujimura is there to help prop up Asano during their important late-night push to get everything done. Too tired to go home they share a hotel room once more, and, at last, Asano realizes what is important to her.
In the final pages, Asano tells Fujimura that she’s getting divorced and in a very public confession, tells Fujimura her feelings in front of a Christmas illumination. Aww. ^_^ We see them 6 months later sharing an apartment and a life.
I really liked this book. Yuni’s art is slick and adult. The bed scenes are intimate rather than servicey. The initial premise, which is not yet all that common in Yuri manga, is the same plot as a zillion lesbian romances of the 1990s. ^_^ As a result, it felt both fresh and incredibly comfortable at the same time.
Ratings:
Art – 9
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 9
Service – 3 Nudity, but mostly tastefully done.
Overall – A strong 8
Asano’s journey is not unique, but the characters are developed well-enough for the story, which feels very much ready-made for an evening television drama. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? ^_^
Honestly, I don’t really like how many yuri and BL manga like to contrast relationships and motherhood / fatherhood, especially when some works want to say in open text that only straight people want children.
In Japan, queer people cannot adopt children or at least use IVF services? Of course, only the person themself can decide whether they needs children or not, I just don’t understand such categoricalness.
There is no legal status for same-sex families or marriages in Japan. A Japanese person would be considered a single parent, which would make it harder to adopt.
Even here in the west, it is still assumed by many people that to be gay means there can be no children. IVF or adoption is not simple.
But that is not even what was happening in this story. Asano was married to a man, and the pressure as for her to quite her job that she loved to become a full-time mother. She liked her career, but Japan has extremely few resources for working mothers. There is still tremendous pressure to stay home and be the mother.
There was a television segment on Japan years ago that broke my heart. It was a woman talking about how she had no name since she had a child. Her husband and child called her “Mother.” She fantasized that her husband would just call her by her name again.
I understand that Asano just made the choice that she considered the most right for herself. Just in line with the modern discourse on same-sex families, I personally would like to see more anime or manga with a sympathetic or realistic image of qeer parents.
In my country, everything is so bad that if you are in a same-sex relationship or are a trans person, then you can lose a child because of an “immoral lifestyle”, in addition to which officials can even accuse you of “promoting homosexuality among children”. This is completely serious, so the whole queer manga gets an 18+ rating in our country to avoid problems with the law.
Yeah, I know about that. I also heard that because of this, many Japanese women experience depression and loneliness, even having a husband and several children. Therefore, I hate the current situation when society puts a woman before the choice of “family or career”.
However, I am not a woman, so I can’t say for sure about the female experience, so I ask you to forgive me if I get/say something wrong.
You did not say anything wrong. I agree that it would be nice to see something different – and, in some ways, this manga *was* that difference. Asano weighed her options and left to make the life she wanted. We see her and Fujimura happy in their lives and choices. That’s way better than the 1980s marriage or death options. ^_^;
Yes you are right. We can discuss social issues for a long time, but I think that any person is free to choose their own destiny, and if this is what they wants, then why not?