Holy shiitake mushrooms… Where do I even begin on this one?

I came into Takako Shimura’s Even Though We’re Adults blind. Saw it in Previews World, the blurb made me say: “looks interesting enough, I’ll give it a go” and order it.

First up, as you can see from the featured image, the cover is gorgeous. The watercolor design is something I’m not used to seeing frequently in manga, so I was happy to see additional watercolors (albeit black and white versions) as the front pages for Chapters 1 & 5 as well. The remainder of the volume is in typical B&W manga style with clean line drawings, a fair bit of beta, and some screentones.

For the most part, backgrounds are simple and clean. Occasionally, we have a large picnic, bar, restaurant, or interior room ~ but generally they’re blank, beta, or screentone. I tend to like this ~ I think it draws the reader’s attention to the focus of the panel without much distraction, but I do love some of the detailed backgrounds that are scattered throughout.

The Story so far… Our protagonists: Okubo Ayano and Hirayama Akari, an elementary school teacher and bartender, respectively, meet each other while independently out for a drink, end up developing an immediate mutual attraction, and spend the evening making out. The drama begins shortly after as we find Ayano is married (not a spoiler ~ it’s on the back cover and in the blurbs about the series) and Akari has a habit of falling for unavailable women or ones in relationships. Coincidentally, both are also 35 (to let you make some assumptions about where they are in their lives).

Both develop some apprehension, Akari about falling for yet another unavailable woman and Ayano battling her thoughts about what falling for another woman means and what it could do to her marriage. During their respective introspective scenes, Akari ends up invited to a BBQ by her ex-girlfriend-slash-ex-housemate, Yukako, and in turn, invites Ayano.

Okay, a little weird right?

It gets better! Akari then decides to tell Ayano to bring her husband along as well. For some reason, Wataru (Ayano’s husband) agrees, and Ayano messages that they’ll come. All the while, all three four parties are asking themselves ‘zomfg wtf bbq?’

I’m not 100% certain what direction this series is going to take, and I have some apprehension, but for now I’m going to continue reading.

Caveats: The POV switches occasionally within a single chapter ~ this brought me to a *skrrr* a couple times and needed to turn back a couple pages and reread to figure out where the shift happened.

Kali may not skrr, but I found it a little distracting.

I’m interested in a number of the dynamics ~ relationships, internal conflicts, questioning of morality, etc., but again, I’m apprehensive as to how they’ll be portrayed.

As an aside, this isn’t the only current manga I’m reading that revolves around some infidelity… From my scanlations list, I’m also reading The Nighthawk Drifts About by Yashio Goyou (aka Meguru Yodaka). One of the immediate key differences here is that in Even Though We’re Adults, Ayano is upfront about her crush whereas Yukako (from The Nighthawk Drifts About) hides her affair from her husband. As expected, in both, all parties have wildly different views on their portion of the infidelity and how they rationalize, justify, or cope with it.

As for Even Though We’re Adults v1, I’ll peg it at a 7/10 for the time being.

I encourage you to support the author and purchase from your Local Comic Shop or an authorized retailer for Seven Seas Entertainment. (Official Seven Seas series page HERE.)