My Oh My Atami-kun Volume 1
Writer & Artist: Tanuma Asa
Publisher: Yen Press (print and digital editions)
Translation: Amanda Haley
Lettering: Elena Pizarro Lanzas
Publication date: July 23, 2024
Rating: Older Teen
Genre: Manga (Japan), LGBTQ+, Slice of Life, Romance
“My Oh My, Atami kun” is Asa Tanuma’s debut work in the English market and was released by Yen Press in October of this year. This series is currently underway in Japan, with three volumes released. Let’s see if you can make friends with a confused high school boy!
©Yen Press, 2024
Atami-kun thinks he’s too handsome. Since he is interested in men, he doesn’t know how to politely decline women who keep asking him out. He thinks they must have fallen in love with his face. What other reason could there be if we hadn’t even greeted each other before?
Moreover, his own emotions are already a handful. Each time he changes seats, classes, and schools, he quickly falls in love with another boy nearby, adding up enough people to draw a timeline. Any love he has is sincere and he knows it. So why did the one boy he confessed to say he was wrong?
I’ll spare you the suspense, but I really loved this first volume. The art style is simple and never feels sterile or expressionless. The plot relies heavily on the casual interactions between the characters and the occasional narrator. This volume is dialogue-heavy, so you can expect the story to be more introspective and interpersonally focused, rather than following a series of arcs with a clear beginning and end.
The plot of this series isn’t about revealing mysteries, but I found myself turning the pages, wanting to know more about Atami’s interactions with her classmates and the family of her often-talking upperclassmen, as well as the protagonist’s musings. I did. Something that involves love and friendship.
©Yen Press, 2024
As a reader, it’s easy to care about Atami. He is an honest and serious kid who tries to live life to the best of his abilities. Very early in the first chapter, it is revealed that he lives in a single-parent household, and Atami defines their interactions as “business correspondence.” Although this theme has not yet been explored in depth, we get a glimpse of its influence on Atami’s perception of love. Still, Atami doesn’t shy away from trying to build long-lasting friendships with people she’s interested in, and is honest about her feelings and opinions.
Atami’s first love is her senior, Adachi. They sometimes eat lunch together, talk casually, or sit quietly in the same spot on a secluded staircase in the garden. As a result, one day, Adachi invites Atami to dinner, and Atami becomes a regular at the dinner table with Adachi’s sisters and mother, and they enjoy a peaceful meal together.
I was surprised by this demographic because it’s not often that characters’ ongoing relationships with other people’s families get this much attention. It was refreshing, and we’ll see in the next volume if it ends up being a more significant parallel to Atami’s own family situation.
©Yen Press, 2024
“My Oh My, Atami kun” is Atami’s clumsy and honest attempt at relationships. My first impression as a boy’s love fan was that this series would follow a somewhat similar path to works in this genre. What I got instead was Atami’s coming-of-age story, laced with worries, doubts, awkwardness, and excitement as a young gay man who falls in love a little too easily.
I highly recommend this series to anyone interested in coming-of-age stories. But, do your best, Nakamura-kun fans! Both series are most at ease because they are about the sweet longing of adolescence, rather than whether or not the protagonist ends up with a lover. There are still a few months left until volume 2 is released, but I’m really looking forward to it!
The header image was borrowed from Asa Tanuma’s X (formerly Twitter) account.
“My Oh My, Atami-kun” Volume 1 is available in digital and print versions on the Yen Press website and other retailers.
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