Koi iji

 Koi Iji (こいいじ) is a slice of live romance by Shimura Takako.  The manga was written between 2014 and 2019 and has been collected into 10 tankoubon.

    When Akai Haruko passed away, after a long illness, everything changed.  Ohara Mame didn't know how to process Haru's death.  The funeral was held on Mame's 30th birthday.  Haru's husband, Souta, grew up with Mame and she has harbored feelings for him since they were teenagers..  Souta, Sou for short, had stomped out the last of Mame's hope when he told her he was going to be a father and husband at her coming of age ceremony.  When he married Haru and their daughter Yu was born, Mame thought she was done with her feelings for him, understanding they would never be returned.  But Haru is no longer part of Sou's life.  As Haru was dying Sou went ahead with their plan to open a cafe.  The spot they chose filled a vacancy in the buness next to the bath house that Mame's parents run and she works/lives at.

    A year after Haru's death, Mame's older sister, Yume, returns home after living in Brazil for more than a decade.  Mame knows that Sou had feelings for Yume, who is three years older than him, and fears that her return will once again take him away.  Sensing something brewing with Mame, Sou tries to tell her to forget about him once and for all, that he can only ever think of her as a younger sister and that he doesn't want to forget his dead wife.  He wonders at why she never got together with his younger brother, Shun, who is the same age as her.  Mame brushes that off, not thinking of Shun that way, only and always focused on Sou.  Yu further complicates things, sensing something as well, and begins to encourag Mame to pursue her father.  Mame has been a part of Yu's life since she was a baby, helping to care for her while Haru was in the hospital.

    While Sou thinks his brother Shun would be a better option for Mame, Shun has his own plans.  He begins dating a much younger woman named Chika and they quickly get married.  Chika's father runs a business painting murals in bath houses and Shun agrees to take on the family name and take over the business when he retires.  More and more people begin to prod Mame about her feelings for Sou and she decides its best to move away to suppress those feelings, recognizing that Sou is not interested..  She works with a realtor, Kawada-san, whom she has dealt with in the past to find a new apartment, away from her childhood neighborhood.  She begins to entertain the idea of dating him to get ride of her feelings for Sou.  Kawada is recently divorced and in a rather strained relationship with his young daughter and ex-wife because of it.  Looking for some companionship as well, he suggests test dating to see where it leads, not having any set expectations for further development.

    Mame is blunt about her twenty year crush on Sou and Kawada struggles with lingering feelings she has for the other man.  As their relationship begins, Sou is forced to find a new location for his cafe, leading him to seek out the services of Kawada's realty company.  The two learn about each others relationship with Mame quickly, further complicating Kawada's courtship of her.  Even though she has tried to get away from him, he continues to land in her life.  The new location for his cafe is near her apartment, causing them to interact almost as much as when she lived at home.  Yu is still clinging onto the idea that Mame and her father can become a couple as well and unintentionally inserts her self in between Kawada and Mame's relationship.

 

    Yu continues to pester Mame about dating her father, working to convince her that he would be open to the idea.  But its not as simple as that, Mame fears that Sou still harbors feelings for her sister Yume.  With Yume being eight years older than Mame and having lived out of the country for so long, she recognizes that she doesn't really know who her sister is or what her motivations are.  But she knows that Sou had an unrequited crush on her for a long time and Yume may be willing to reciprocate that now.  But that matter its self is complicated as Haruko was one of Yume's best friends and the reason Sou even met her.  Unknown to Mame, Yume and Sou dated when he was in high school and she broke his heart when she left for Brazil. 

    Mame's heart grows weary as she spends more time around Sou.  Sou struggles with the love of his dead wife and how Mame's continued infatuation with him is preventing her from find happiness outside of him.  He is also troubled about her growing relationship with Kawada, who inadvertently confessed to Sou that he has been seeing his ex-wife while dating Mame.  he chooses not to interfere, but is relieved  when he finds out that their relationship came to an end on its own, largely do to both of them realizing they still had to deal with feelings for other people.  With Mame now focused wholly on Sou again will he be able to continue to reject her feelings for him.  He doesn't know what to do about the memories and legacy of his dead wife coupled with the urging of his young daughter.

    With out spoiling a lot of other context and further plot, the synopsis will have to stop there.  This has been a very rough look at the first 4 volumes of this fantastically melodramatic manga.  And what drama there is!  This is absolutely a soap opera romance.  There are a lot of interconnected relationships and a lot of muddied water when it comes to who feels what for who.  This pool is very small and some people just like to piss in it to amuse themselves, shaking up the entire foundation in the process.  I picked this series up to fill in some space while I wait for the next volume of Even Though We're Adults to come out, craving more Shimura-sensai adult drama and boy howdy, did that drama come in spades.  This series hit the spot and did a lot of work to push me further away from the typical high school romance fare.  There is a lot of interconnected emotion and characters frequently have some pretty open lines of communication, but their convictions are far stronger than their words.  At times you just want to strangle some characters or even Shimura-sensei, but the payoff in the end is well worth the back and forth and round and round.

    By the end you get to see a lot of story about many of the characters and deeper explanations about how everyone is connected while building on their personalities and motivations.  At times the narration  can be murky as time jumps can be random and not apparent at first.  I had to back up a few pages at times to reset my bearings on the story when a flashback took place.  I reread the first chapter of the first volume twice before I fully understood the implications of what was going on, as you are dropped right into the thick of the story and have to learn about everyone and everything as it progresses.   I then reread the first chapter after finishing the manga to look for anything I may have misunderstood.  In the end, this is a well laid out, realistic, drama about adults being adults and it was a satisfying read...I need more!!  It makes one look at something like Rent-A-Girlfriend with greater criticism and to scoff at its unrealistic and immature story and characters.  This is the real meat of romantic drama about adults and it was very welcome.

    Sadly, this is not commercially available in North America...maybe some time in the future...maybe.  I need to see if this was made into a drama series though.