nathandouglasdavis

I enjoyed the general daily life aesthetic of a romance that is past its honeymoon phase but still filled with love. A lot of the chapters end with a sorta cute joke or with romantic bashfulness (often following a surprise kiss or loving words). The characters consist of Rio and Yuuya as well as their respective coworkers and family members, and it appears they might try to pair up some of the people from these different social circles. Some other recurring aspects are convenience store food, working overtime, playing video/phone games, and Rio's odd taste in faces. We also get several instances of light jealousy, which I'm generally fine with since I realize they need to add some sort of drama to keep things engaging. But I was a lot less interested in their inclusion of a marriage proposal subplot, since that didn't seem necessary for what made their dynamic interesting and it also implies that their devoted, loving relationship is lacking in some way. In fact, the tagline in the splash page says "more than lovers, less than a married couple" which is pretty explicit in saying that cohabitation is lesser than marriage and the story throughout is pretty clear with its idea that marriage should be the ultimate goal of any romantic relationship. And it's not that I have anything against marriage (I myself am married), but I also don't think that every romance is only fulfilled if it ends in a marriage. I suppose I can appreciate how this shows the tension between tradition and reason, with the characters recognizing that they don't need marriage in order to be happy but also feeling compelled to go through with the rituals seemingly because of societal expectations. I just wish that if they were going to grapple with this issue that it was portrayed with more depth or nuance rather than just the simplistic idea of "we're going at our own pace" which, again, implies that all relationships should have marriage as the ultimate goal.

[Originally reviewed at chapter 63]

[Updated upon completion]

Addendum: A solid continuation of what went before. Where it didn't feel like it dragged things on for too long or anything. The proposal scene was sorta cute. I mean, this series has always had some cute and cute-ish moments mixed in, so that's also just more solid continuation.