It seems entirely fitting to end a tempestuous week here on Okazu with a tempestuous series. Tamifull’s college drama fits the mood perfectly.

In Volume 1, we met Saeko and Miwa, two students who start dating, but flail a bit figuring out how to make their relationship work both physically and emotionally. As we open the pages of How Do We Relationship, Volume 2, we can see that they have worked out the physical half of the problem. The emotional half, however, is more complicated – as it mostly always is with humans.

Because they now “fit,” together, one might believe that the barriers that keep them from communicating would likewise be coming down. However, Miwa spends her hours concerned that she’s holding everyone back, especially Saeko. Saeko’s denial of her own emotions keeps putting a wall between them. And on top of all this, neither of them are particularly open and out, which causes confusion and jealousy. Add to the mix some clueless bandmates and an aggressive encounter, and things start to look tenuous.

It’s about now that I see stress fractures in this relationship. I don’t really know what other people are seeing, but it seems really obvious to me that if this was a real-life couple I knew, we’d all have a betting pool to see how long they last before they broke up. I’d give them a couple of months, tops. Full props to Tamifull for putting stress on this relationship from all the possible angles at once in a realistic and interesting way.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 7 Awkward, jangly, makes you want to run up and give them all advice
Characters – 6 The band members are kind of annoying, especially the guys being clueless and intrusive.
Yuri – 9 / LGBTQ – 5
Service – 3

Overall – 8

Will Miwa and Saeko figure out how to talk about what they are feeling? Tune in to Volume 3  coming from Viz Media this June and find out!

I’ve got Volume 6 here in Japanese and really have no idea what to expect!