Welcome to another Guest Review Wednesday on Okazu. Matt Marcus is back again to cover Tamifull’s continuing series of young adult life that has a lot of layers to parse. Please welcome Matt back and give him your attention. Matt, the mic is yours…!

Matt Marcus is a cohost of various projects on the Pitch Drop Podcast Network, such as the JRPG games club podcast Lightning Strikes Thrice, which is currently covering Final Fantasy VIII.

In Volume 8 of How Do We Relationship While Still Being Friends With Our Exes, we follow Miwa and Saeko as they try to learn….well you get the idea.

Saeko and Yuria are still enjoying each other’s company, but their mutual dislike of being touched has put their sex life in suspended animation. Miwa, who accidentally baited Tamaki into a confession using her cat (so this time the cat outed the girl from…the bag…hmm), is nevertheless trying to maintain the status quo with her kohai in fear that her crush will lead to another debilitating heartbreak.

During the Band Club summer retreat, Tamaki starts flirtatiously teasing Miwa, or as one chapter aptly calls it, “Messing With You, To Great Satisfaction.” Miwa continues to hesitate, but Tamaki’s escalating pursuit–and a small push from Saeko–leads her to open up about her feelings. The two begin dating, which raises the dual thorny issues of Tamaki’s plan to transfer to another school and how to handle introducing their relationship to Tamaki’s friends.

I have a confession to make: I did not like Tamaki when she first showed up. But credit where credit’s due, Tamaki steals the show here. After a volume and half of getting closer, then backing off, only to get closer again, the way in which she pushes forward towards Miwa here is a very refreshing change. Something I noticed as well is that there are moments where the art shows her in a much more attractive light, particularly when she is acting confident. Compared to previous volumes, it’s one hell of a glow-up. Plus, she gets to show some developing maturity during her date with Miwa as they discuss their potential future.  I knew that the story would pair her up with Miwa, but what I was not prepared for was coming away from this volume thoroughly convinced that Tamaki is worth rooting for.

What makes Tamaki more than just a new love interest is how she poses as a foil to Saeko. Both are quite blunt and have a tendency to drop a biting line here and there towards Miwa. In a way, Tamaki’s harsher comments resemble some of Saeko’s in the first three volumes, such as when she calls Miwa a “bit of a wimp.” However, Tamaki’s are more on the line of teasing instead of insecure lashing out. Also, as time has gone on it’s become more clear that Saeko’s “toughness” that Miwa so idolized was a falsity; for Tamaki, her “difficult personality” is just who she is, and it’s that fortitude that pushes her through the various homophobic reactions of her friends when she comes out about her relationship with Miwa. It made me think back to Volume 6 where Saeko says that Miwa’s next girlfriend would need to be mentally tough to weather the challenges of being queer in a society that is openly hostile to it. It’s as if Tamaki read the job requirements before applying, but not in a “too convenient to be believable” way. 

Just to camp out on the coming out scene a bit more, the economy of storytelling Tamifull employs is worth highlighting. There’s a denial (“No way!”), a joke (“you’re just playing at dating, right?”), a somewhat condescending acceptance (“oh that’s very trendy of you!”), AND a flat-out rejection (“I don’t like people like that, it’s gross.”), all in the span of a few pages. It’s pretty impressive stuff, plus it gets those issues out of the way so the story can focus on the relationship itself going forward.

All of that said, there are still other developments going on. The most important one is how Miwa and Saeko’s friendship has continued to change. Miwa is trying to stay close, thinking of Saeko as her best friend, while Saeko is trying to pull back because, despite what she thinks, she’s still not completely over Miwa. The asymmetry of their feelings and how they process them internally is nuanced in a very compelling way. It is also fairly evident that the next volume will put Saeko more in the spotlight, since we did not see much progress about her body issues in this volume–not that she doesn’t play a big role in these chapters, but the Miwa/Tamaki story definitely took top billing.

The last plot thread I think is worth mentioning is the entanglement of Rika and Mikkun. It’s a case of the unstoppable force of casual sex meeting the immovable serial-dating object. I’ve mentioned being curious about Rika’s role in this story in past reviews, so perhaps we may see some progress here. Or it can just be a vehicle for jokes at Mikkun’s expense. I give it 70/30 towards the latter.

There are countless little positives I’d like to call out, like Yuria’s realistic body shape, the callbacks to the first band retreat, Saeko’s many new hairstyles that have clearly been done by Yuria. I’ve found the more time I spend revisiting previous chapters, the more I find moments where these later volumes carry echoes of the earlier ones in a way that I find very satisfying.

I think this is a fantastic volume, with deliciously playful tension and gentle but meaningful character development. Also, if you’ve been waiting for Good Things to happen for Miwa, you’re gonna love how this goes.

Art – 9 Fantastic paneling, great use of light and shadow, strong perspective choices–I’d say it’s the best looking volume so far
Story – 9 There are some predictable beats here, but the timbre continues to impress
Characters – 9 Tamaki won me over this volume
Service – 4 There’s a lot of non-sexual intimacy while nude, which is a form of service
Yuri – 9 / LGBTQ – 9 Got a complicated friendship between exes AND two couples to boot

Overall – 9 Band camp continues to deliver fireworks (just not literally this time)

Can I admit that I’m a mark for POV shots that take into account height differences? I mean, I just did, but we can be cool about it, right? Right.

Erica here: Totally cool. ^_^  Thanks very much, Matt for this insightful review. You’ve clarified some of my thoughts on this series, as well. It continues to feel more “real” than just almost anything else I’m reading these days for better and ill. ^_^