Sometime between 2013-2014, Mari Okazaki took an essay by Mami Amamiya called Will I Be Single Forever? and made it into a serialized manga. The title informs you what it’s all about: it’s about stories involving older, unmarried women and their experiences, good or bad, about their current lives.
The manga follows 3 women: Mami, Yukino, and Shimizu. They each have their unique circumstances as to why they’re specifically single, whether it involves breaking up (and later randomly seeing) their ex or dealing with an annoying man. Okazaki shows us not just what happens to them, but what we can also take from it. After reading the 4 chapters, there’s an interview done in October 2015 with Okazaki and Amamiya. They discuss the essay, how people perceive women and mothers, and even discuss one of Okazaki’s motivations for writing a blog post about one of her works, Suppli. Also yes, there are spoilers for it.
It honestly will come down to where you stand on relationships and your lifestyle, among other things, on enjoying Will I Be Single Forever?. The title is pretty self-explanatory, so it’s fair to wonder about that. But overall, the manga gives a pointed take at how women are routinely judged because of their age, not getting married, and not having kids. A good example of that is at a funeral, where our first lead, Mami, runs into relatives at a funeral. As soon as she mentions her relationship plans, she immediately notices the effort they take — you can see it text wise and visually — in trying not to be rude.
There’s also a focus on how work ends up sustaining you, but even despite all of that, it’s not enough if you don’t have a partner with you. Like, you can have a stable job, good place, and feel capable…but here’s why you need X, Y, or Z next to you. Now, you certainly can question if work should completely dominate your life, but if it feels rewarding and you’re set, maybe it’s not anyone’s place to question it.
As you can figure, Okazaki takes more inspiration out of Amamiya’s essay while keeping a few parts the same, but for the most part you understand where each of the three women we meet are at mentally and physically. You can indeed have one page where the sex looks messy, but suddenly a woman is all alone in a big hotel bed, and then realize, oh, work made her super tired. Or you can have moments where you fret about the future; Okazaki displays this with a woman walking into an endless pit blindfolded, unknowing of what’s to come. You get a clear sense of what’s occurring, and also the types of personalities that can be seen, in a lot of the drawings.
Will I Be Single Forever? is a good look at issues that still feel relevant today. You can understand what points wanted to come across in how older, single women are looked at, and what moments might’ve led to this being the case. Honestly, there’s enough here that people can read and learn from as well, so if you’re up for buying something digital or can find this in your library, it’s worth a look.