If you’re looking for a cute, feel-good yankee romance story that you can finish in one sitting, this one is for you!
Before we start the review…
What’s the Japanese level?
I rate this as an intermediate series. To see my reasonings for my rankings, please click here!
Who wrote this manga?
This manga was written by Akebi.
Info about the series
- This series is complete in Japanese at 2 volumes.
- There is currently no English version.
You can check out this series for yourself below!
What’s it about?
This is a series with a rather simple premise. We follow our protagonist, the manga-ka who goes by the pen name “Takoyaki Maru”. As she’s a little bit slow when it comes to drawing, she often has to rely on the help of an assistant. One day, her regular assistant isn’t able to make it in due to a cold, so she refers one of her classmates to go in her place. This classmate, Ashizawa, just so happens to be one of Takoyaki Maru’s biggest fans. As he’s a yankee, and a little bit intense, his deep feelings of appreciation for her go unnoticed.
Though he’s a somewhat scary assistant, he’s helpful to an insane degree: he cooks, he cleans, he draws intricate backgrounds in the blink of an eye… He can do it all.
We follow Takoyaki Maru as she quickly learns that he’s not as scary as he seems. The two quickly develop a rather positive mentor-mentee relationship, but this isn’t enough for Ashizawa, who wants to be Takoyaki Maru’s equal. So, we get to watch as their relationship quitely grows into something new.
My thoughts on this volume
This volume, much like volume one, is told in a web-comic format. That is, while sometimes the story is told in longer chapters, other times the story is told in one-off singly page mini-chapters. These one-off pages are rather repetitive, and while I do think I would have been able to appreciate them more if I had been slowly following the story online, I did still enjoy them overall.
It’s in this volume that both Takoyaki Maru and Ashizawa understand that they have romantic feelings for the other…but neither wants to confess. So, we watch as they attempt to awkwardly navigate around the other without letting anything slip. Honestly I did really enjoy this, as both characters are very endearing to me. Takoyaki Maru is very easily excitable, so all of her emotions show very quickly on her face. She’s honestly a very relatable character. Ashizawa on the other hand doesn’t really let his emotions show outwardly. It’s because of this that when his true emotions are shown, it’s very impactful. Both characters are very funny, but in their own ways.
I was also glad to be shown more of both characters in their own respective worlds, and we were even shown a little glimpse into the future! I was worried that as this series is only two volumes I wouldn’t be satisfied with the ending, but I actually think it was done perfectly.
Things I particularly enjoyed
❤️ The “I caught a cold in the rain but hid it until I passed out in front of you” trope. Honestly, I think every romance mange should use this trope.
🧡 The full colour art page of them wearing each others clothes!! So cute!!
💛 Takoyaki Maru overhearing Ashizawa complimenting her, and basically confessing his feelings about her to his friends… But not realizing it was him talking about her.
💚 Being shown Ashizawa’s reaction to when he was first invited to work as Takoyaki Maru’s assistant!
💛 Them both reaching out to text each other about how it was snowing… They’re on the exact same wavelength and I just love it so much.
🧡 Ashizawa in a suit!! Takoyaki Maru with her bangs down!!
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