Otomo Kyoichi thinks that everything is going fine with his wife, until he’s invited out to dinner one night by his old college classmate Imagase. There, Imagase reveals to Kyoichi that he’s been hired by his wife to find all of Kyoichi’s affairs and if Kyoichi wants to keep them under wraps, well, he’s going to have to commit some more infidelities with Imagase first.
Imagase and Kyoichi both individually have personalities I’m not fond of and when these two personalities mix they create a couple that I would expect to flame out quickly and have both parties bad-mouthing each other for years to come. Imagase has carried a torch for Kyoichi ever since the two of them were in college and, now that he has Kyoichi on the ropes, is willing to destroy everything (including his own, current relationships) just to bonk him. While Imagase leans quite close to being a “predatory gay” stereotype at times, Kyoichi is a little tougher to categorize; it’s clear that at first he has absolutely no interest in copulating with Imagase but as the story goes on I wasn’t able to tell if he was starting to enjoy it, in a tsundere kind of way, or if Kyoichi’s refusals still did mean “no.” Perhaps even more baffling, Imagase makes a comment that Kyoichi’s personality is the kind that women love and this is backed up by the number of women who seem interested in Kyoichi (and that he’s had affairs with) and I could not fathom why — he’s neither attractive nor a good conversationalist!
Imagase’s aggressive pursuit of Kyoichi is what really turned me off from the relationship and, since this relationship is the focus of the story, turned me off the story as a whole. I doubt that I would have liked Kyoichi in any kind of romance because he’s such a wet noodle throughout, and for each affair Imagase uncovers Kyoichi always claims that it’s not his fault, the other person seduced him, or swept him along! The ways that readers connect to characters is important in all stories but romance in particular lives or dies based on how invested the readers become and from the very first chapter I was just put off by the characters.
And all of this was before I was surprised by just how explicit the sex is! (Please don’t make my mistake of trying to read it on public transportation) I genuinely did not know and find it a bit funny that the Japanese version of the manga won’t be for much longer; due to the R15+ rating for the upcoming live action movie in Japan, all future printings of the manga will be revised so that they are appropriate for 15 year old readers. English-speaking readers should have no fear however, as Seven Seas cheekily mentioned in a recent newsletter that they do not plan on changing the content in either this volume or in it’s sequel, The Carp on the Chopping Block Jumps Twice, and frankly I’m not sure the volume would work at all without the fornicating (especially given how much time it takes up!).
Perhaps Kyoichi and Imagase become more “likable” in the sequel, perhaps their relationship is on more even footing, but since I didn’t get anything out of this volume I can’t say that I’m sticking around to find out! I suspect that this fan-favorite title will be a hit or miss one for many manga readers and it was a miss for me.