Hello and welcome to another Guest Review Wednesday on Okazu! I am super excited to welcome a new guest reviewer to our blog. Patricia has been an enthusiastic YNN Correspondent and now I am super pleased to have her as part of our Guest Review staff! Please give Patricia a warm, Okazu welcome! Kind comments are always appreciated. ^_^

My name is Patricia Baxter (she/her). I am a bisexual autistic writer who has previously written articles concerning how media represents different marginalized communities. You can find more of my work through my personal website “Autistic Observations”.

Yukawa Kayoko is a quiet thirty-one-year-old woman working in an office building, who typically hangs up her winter coat on the office coat rack rather than place it behind her chair. Through a series of coincidences, Kayoko finds that a co-worker, outgoing twenty-six-year-old Mizuki Kaori, has accidentally placed her apartment keys into Kayoko’s coat pocket. After this chance encounter, the two women begin to see each other frequently after work, keeping in touch and planning outings by leaving each other notes in their coat pockets. As these meetings progress, Kayoko finds herself surprised to discover that her feelings for Kaori extend far beyond friendship, and, in a moment of courage, confesses her feelings to Kaori. Thus begins this series focusing on the tender romance between two working women.

Inui Ayu’s If We Leave on the Dot is the yuri manga equivalent of cotton candy. Kayoko and Kaori are two extremely cute, nearly permanently blushing, women who wear consistently adorable outfits and eat consistently delicious-looking food together. Every chapter had at least one moment that made me feel at ease, thanks to the various expressions of love felt and displayed by the couple and the embodiment of that love by enjoying the pleasures of everyday life together.

Kayoko and Kaori are probably one of the sweetest pairings I’ve read in a romance manga, yuri or otherwise. Their relationship is built on mutual love and trust that is palpable with each chapter of the manga. And when the few instances of low self-esteem and jealousy creep up on the pair, instead of letting the negative feelings fester for an absurd number of chapters (as some romance manga are wont to do), they have emotionally honest discussions about their feelings, which help maintain and strengthen their partnership. It’s refreshing to read such a wonderful example of an emotionally mature relationship, with a couple able to weather through such relatable insecurities and doubts.

This is made even more intriguing by the fact that the majority of the series focuses on the relationship between two women who are very clearly adults who are established in their careers. While there are quite a few examples of yuri manga focusing on the lives of adult women, a lot of series focus on the lives of university students, or women in their early twenties. For Kayoko to experience her first major romantic relationship at thirty-one, is very reassuring for any readers in their thirties, as it can still be rather difficult to find romances focusing on women older than twenty-something.

Alongside If We Leave on the Dot’s many positive achievements, it is also noteworthy for how it addresses the topic of Kayoko and Kaori’s sexualities. When the series takes time for the couple to think about sexuality, it is typically are less about Kayoko and Kaori’s individual sexual identities and personal self-discovery, and more about how other people will react to or perceive their relationship. One example of this occurs during a company celebration, where Kayako mentions that she is in a relationship and loves her partner very much, but aside from those vague mentions, cannot go in-depth in describing her partner to her colleagues, despite sitting right next to the person she loves. Instead, Kayoko and Kaori have to share a quiet, tender moment, holding hands under the table, hiding in plain sight from their co-workers. Not long after this Kaori goes to meet up with her close friends, despite feeling happy talking about her relationship with Kayoko, she feels “Tired…from dodging their questions”, as she had to misdirect her friends by calling Kayoko her “boyfriend”.

This is a rather massive contrast in comparison to a lot of fluffy yuri romances, where the closest thing to an examination into LGBTQ+ issues is the main character(s) briefly getting confronted by the heteronormative expectations society places on women, and even then it is only there as a cursory issue. Instead of placing her characters in a bubble separated from the struggles of the real world, Inui’s If We Leave on the Dot takes time to showcase and legitimize the frustrations and exhaustion that queer women experience on a regular basis.

With its relaxing and down-to-Earth depictions of the everyday life of a same-gender couple, If We Leave on the Dot is one of my all-time favourite yuri romances that I highly recommend.

Ratings:

Art: 7.5

Story: 8

Characters: 9

Service: 0 for the first three volumes, 2 for volume 4 (due to a bathhouse trip and the couple beginning to sexually explore each other’s bodies in a manner that is sincere rather than salacious)

Yuri: 10

Overall: 9

If We Leave on the Dot is currently only available through the online manga subscription service Manga Planet, though the first chapter is free to read. There is a range of options for subscribing to the service depending on reader preference.

Erica here: Thank you so much Patricia! I agree with everything you’ve said. The mood between Kaori and Kayoko is very relaxing and warm. I loved all four volumes of the series in Japanese, Teiji ni Ageretara. That was my first taste of Inui Ayu’s work  – work that I continues to enjoy. Her autobiographical series, currently running in Comic Yuri Hime, Kyou mo Hitotsu Yane no Shita, has much the same warm, fuzzy feeling, with a bit more LGBTQ+ identity.