I Have a Crush at Work

I Have a Crush at Work (この会社に好きな人がいます) is a 12 episode romance based on the manga of the same name by Enomoto Akamaru.  The series aired during the Winter of 2025.

    Mitsuya Yui greatly dislikes Tateishi Masugu, one of the employees in the accounting department of the giant confectionery company she works for.  She greatly dislikes his unbending attitude and his extreme adherence to policy and formality.  She doesn't like having to grovel before him to get things done when they need to be done.  Tateishi has a reputation for his sternness but also for being helpful.  He doesn't like having to deal with Mitsuya's aggression, when all hes trying to do is his job.  While these two coworkers hate each other in the workplace, they are dating in secret.  In order to prevent unwanted disruptions in their work life, they agreed to hide their relationship from everyone.  But that means they have to continue with their aggressive rivalry during office hours.

    As time goes by Yui and Masugu work hard to juggle their work responsibilities and time together.  They feed off of each others motivation and strive to push their success at work, encouraged by the others efforts.  But its hard to find time to be intimate when they have to meet in private and avoid going anywhere they may be spotted.  A Golden Week get away leads them to make a challenge, to further their work goals, the looser pays for the return trip to the same hotel.  Adding in the extra effort means that they have less time to see each other after work.  Will they be able to keep up the charade in the office when they become starved of each others attention under the extra workloads?

     This is a straightforward, no nonsense, adult romance.   We begin the series with them already dating.  There is no, will they won't they moments, no plot lines rotating around miscommunications or over active internal dialogues.  There are plenty of times where it delves into the work-life experience.  This is through and through a office life romance about being a normal boring ass adult.  I loved it for that!!  Which is why it was so frustrating that this series was not picked up by any English language streaming services.  This was such a sweet and grounded love story about two believable and realistic characters.  Their situations was relatable and their environment is realistic.  Maybe that's the problem...maybe its too real and too honest to be desirable.  It doesn't present children as sexual objects or fabricate a juvenile representation of romance.  Lets be honest, Rent-a-Girlfriend may be largely about adults, but its no different a story than if the setting was high school instead of college.   I Have Crush at Work is such a needed take on realistic romances its a shame it won't get much attention from the wider anime audience.

    As with a lot of slice of life romance, the artwork isn't the greatest.  But what drives the story are the characters and their situation.  Masugu and Yui are fantastic and developed well enough to carry the story.  We also get side characters that add more life to their environment, enhancing its delivery.  There is even a rather touching side story related to Masugu's direct manager and another underling in a different department.  All in all, this is a top notch romance for those looking for something that doesn't involve unnecessary panty shots, plot lines based on ridiculous misunderstanding or the need for a beach episode.

Sadly...there series is not legally available in North America.  The manga is though!!!