As Saeko and Miwa continue dating, now out to most of their group of friends, the two of them continue to struggle with the usual ups and downs of relationships. Jealousy, communication, and even conflicting emotions aren’t something that disappear as soon as you start dating and while the two girls are doing their best, sometimes it can be a lot to handle!
I was so distracted by Miwa and Saeko’s interaction with their homophobic band club member in the last volume that I completely forgot that the band club’s training camp had actually ended and was quite confused when picking this one up! I am a bit surprised that Kan, that side character, didn’t reappear in this volume at all since it felt like Tamifull was building to a bigger moment with him but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if there’s a “deeper” reason for his homophobia in later volumes.
As has been the case for the past few volumes, while we don’t see them actually doing a lot of club activities, the band club has become Miwa and Saeko’s entire social life and it’s where most of the supporting cast comes from, for better or for worse. I simply found it really hard to sympathize with how much time this volume was giving to Tsuruta, their fellow band member who had (and still does) a crush on Miwa and even though he knows she’s dating Saeko and not interested in men at all, he’s still having a tough time making himself give up the crush. While I understand on an intellectual level that yes, you can’t just “turn off” your attraction for someone even when you know they won’t reciprocate it, I still felt like How Do We Relationship? was trying to make me feel bad for him because of it and I’m simply not! I’m certainly concerned that if he keeps brooding over these feelings that Tsuruta might unleash some nasty, homophobic remarks like Kan did but I’m not sure that’s what the story wants me to think. It might just be my own wariness as a queer person shining through. Regardless, I hope that Tamifull lets Tsuruta fade into the background for a little bit and lets the other side characters take center stage instead since it really doesn’t seem like there’s anything more they can do with Tsuruta at the moment.
Of course, it’s not as if the story needs the side characters to fill up the page, Saeko and Miwa still have plenty of interesting characterization to work through! So far we’ve been privy to more of Miwa’s internal thoughts and feelings than Saeko but we’re starting to get some of them here and it’s clear that Saeko needs to first admit to herself that she has a lot of baggage before she can start working through it. It’s clear that something from middle school burned her badly and, given the subject of the story, I wonder if it was a first relationship gone wrong. We also see that she deeply doesn’t want to be the “bottom” when having sex with Miwa, she’s practically disassociating during it (although that’s not something she wants Miwa to pick up on), and I’m not sure if those two areas are connected but they’re both certainly areas Saeko will need to deal with if she wants to have happy, comfortable relationships in the future.
Going back to the past again, we also see a bit more of Miwa’s past and her “gay awakening” in high school with the tennis club senpai she had a major crush on. Poor Miwa has no idea, but the readers do, that it seems like her senpai Shiho is probably deeply closeted herself and the encounter between them that this volume leaves off in the middle of is certainly going to get only more awkward in volume 4. It’s nobody’s fault, not really, but that doesn’t make it any less uncomfortable for Miwa since she was desperately hoping to avoid this senpai at the alumni meet-up in the first place! As a side note, it’s a good thing that both Miwa and Shiho have changed their hairstyles since high school; Tamifull’s characters suffer from a bit of same-face syndrome to start with and with both girls having long, loose black hair in the flashbacks there were a couple of times where I had to double check I hadn’t gotten them mixed up!
How Do We Relationship? continues to be satisfying in the way Saeko and Miwa earnestly go through their first serious relationship which is both awkward, sweet, and sincere all at the same time. It’s definitely a relationship that could magnificently implode if the two stop trusting each other or don’t work on growing up in the process but I’m hoping that doesn’t happen and that they continue to make it work!