Miwa enters college having never had a relationship before, although she does already know that she likes girls. Saeko, her new classmate and band club member, has already had some relationships but none of them have been really satisfactory, especially since most of them were with men and Saeko also knows that she only likes women. Their personalities aren’t the kind that you would immediately think would match up in a relationship.
But, maybe if they’re honest, with each other it’ll work out?
Creator Tamifull mentions at the end of this volume that she wondered why so many romances [stories] end right when the couple gets together. Sure it’s the most “dramatic” part but then you don’t get to have stories about anniversaries or the self-interested calculations that don’t happen until the characters actually start dating. So, How Do We Relationship? joins a growing number of romantic manga available in English where the main focus of the story is Miwa and Saeko navigating what their relationship means to both of them after they start dating, and it’s nice to have this kind of variety available!
There are a few little details in How Do We Relationship? that stuck out to me for being unusual in a yuri manga — like the fact that both Miwa and Saeko already know that they like women surprised me since I’m used to seeing the trope where one, “more experienced” lesbian has a relationship with someone who is just now coming out. And speaking of coming out, they end up coming out to several of their new, college friends. They are even out to a few family members, something I can’t recall seeing frequently outside of “LGTBQ+ manga” (which is a nebulous distinction from “yuri” but I think of those stories as being more serious and often autobiographical).
This is something I have thought about in yuri and BL manga before. A major part of my own life has to do with my (intentional and unintentional) groups of queer friends, but I feel like I never see this occurrence in manga; I’m curious if it’s because of a lack of time in the story or if it says something about the differences in queer culture in Japan vs the US. It’s noteworthy when a series like Bloom Into You features an adult, queer couple in addition to its high school aged cast, but since the two groups barely interact it’s more a “bonus” for the reader than a part of the characters’ lives.
Similarly, in the upcoming series Love Me For Who I Am, a large part of the cast is queer but the story mostly focuses on their interactions within its core group of characters, not with outside, side characters. Saeko and Miwa are the only queer characters that we know of in this story but the manga still spends an incredible amount of time with them interacting with their straight friends and acting independently of each other. Talking with friends about relationship woes is something you see all the time in straight romances, like Horimiya, but since yuri series so often focus on just the couple, like in Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl, it immediately stood out to me and in a good way.
With as much time as you spend in Saeko and Miwa’s heads it’s hard not to like and sympathize with them, even as they fumble through some typical, early relationship hurdles. Miwa wants to do things “right,” Saeko doesn’t think that’s fully necessary but also wants to be careful that she’s not pushing Miwa into doing anything she doesn’t want to do, etc. This series is also more explicit than the last few yuri titles from VIZ that I’ve read; the older teen rating is appropriate since the manga makes it clear that the two of them are having sex (with even a very short explanation of how they have sex since other characters keep asking) but nothing is shown past the “warm-up”. I ended up falling for these characters and their budding relationship far harder than I expected and can’t wait to see where they, and their club band, go.