It’s 2020, the Covid pandemic has hit Japan and even the black company Nokoru Mitsuhashi works for was forced to send him to work from home. Working from home has its perks for Nokoru: no more commuting, not being forced to wear a suit, getting to slowly know and having a chance at romance with his graduate student neighbour, Natsu Izumi…
Telework Yotabanashi is a short, twenty chapters long adult romance manga by Yamada Kintetsu. And when I say adult, I mean this is a romance story about actual adult with actual adult concerns and which is honest about how actual romance works in the real world.
What I like about Telework Yotabanashi is how realistic it is in how Nokuru & Natsu’s relationship evolves from casual acquaintances to lovers. They get to know each other, there’s a bit of romantic tension almost from the start and when they make it official, it’s by talking about it like adults. She borrows his manga, he her books on Angor Wat. The snacks she brings him as ‘payment’ for the loans he starts stocking himself as finds he likes them. When they’re playing games together, she brings her chair over. Little things like that.
It also impressed me that there were no over the top romantic gestures or impulsive actions that made their relationship official, but rather that they talked about it to make it so. It makes so much sense considering their characters. Nokuru is one of those people who need to understand things completely before committing himself — he works in IT after all — but he’s not willfully ignorant. Natsu is the more forward one of the two, more of an extrovert, but not a manic pixie dream girl by any measure. From the start you know these two will end up together even if Nokuru, who’s narrating all this, hadn’t announced this was the story of how he met his wife.
In all, a smart, cute little romance story you can read in an hour or two and one that feels contemporary. The usual high school romances that manga is full off can give off the feeling of being set in a largely unchanging world where only the model of cell phones (or lack thereof) betray in which year the manga was created. Here, you’re in no doubt that this is set in 2020. I rarely felt so seen too as in that panel above, because that’s one of the main benefits for me too, that extra time not spent commuting.
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