Can a bunch of wrongs make a right? Miyako Miyahara is sure gonna try in her romantic comedy I Can’t Believe I Slept With You, Volume 1.

Chiyo Koduka is depressed. Out of work, down on her luck, she’s three months behind on the rent and sees no hope. When her landlady shows up with an offer she can’t refuse, she doesn’t refuse. But she’s not thrilled. The landlady is willing to forgive a day’s rent when Chiyo provides “favors,” which is where they begin.

As the days pass, the landlady’s favors become much less extreme, sliding from playing games together, to a comforting hug. Chiyo is pretty clueless as to why her landlady might be making such a one-sided offer, but we know the truth, and it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect.

Koduka is clueless, clumsy but she was good at one thing and would really like a chance to do it again. For the sake of the plot, she also has absurdly bad luck, which wore on me. The landlady (we don’t learn her name until the end of the volume,) is kind, thoughtful, competent and very sad. It’s this that colors the whole book for me. As a romantic comedy, when the comedy is rooted in pain, it’s hard for me to laugh.

All of that said, by the very end of the volume, it is apparent to us that the landlady is not a pervert or an opportunist. She’s a very lonely woman in a one-sided relationship. Which leaves is with Koduka. She easy to sympathize with, I think we’ve all been where she is in one way or another. But the hapless doofus is a hard sell for me.  Your mileage might vary of course but, for me, Koduka will be the biggest hurdle in this story. I just cannot find “funny” bad luck amusing. It kills me in Oshi ga Budokan Ittekuretara Shinu, (推しが武道館いってくれたら死ぬ ) every time. Like, we get it. She’s a hapless ne’er do well. Ha. Ha. Ugh.

Kiyahara’s art is solid, most of the scenes take place in a small Japanese apartment, so no grand artistic scale is needed, but the creator does a solid job of making the apartment feel…small. This is something I rarely see, as artists tend to give their characters plenty of room in those imaginary studio apartments.

The strongest moment is the reveal of the name the series was originally going with, “Even if it was just once, I regret it.” This moment in the narrative gave me what hope I have for the series.

Let me perfectly honest here – romantic comedy is not my genre. I find it almost impossible to accept the premise and just roll with it. Hopeless x hapless do not a comedy make, for me. But, if you like romantic comedy you might very well like this series. I think it has a good heart and isn’t planning on torturing either reader or characters, like Oshi ga Budokan Ittekuretara Shinu.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 7, but I hope it does something interesting with itself.
Characters – 7, same.
Service – Implicit, yes, but not overt.
Yuri – 9, but dropping down to a steady 7 as the true story unfolds

Overall  – A solid 7 with plenty of room to grow.

While I have got little hope that this series will be anything different than what it is, I still hope for the landlady to be less forlorn sad and Koduka to become less clueless. Anything less would make it, well, another Oshi ga Budokan Ittekuretara Shinu. One of those in my life is enough.

Thanks very much to Seven Seas for the review copy!