THE MASTER OF ROMCOMS FAILED RETURN!?
Love Agency was written by Aka Akasaka, illustrated by 5mm Nishizawa and was published from 2023 to 2024.
RETURN OF THE KING
Love Agency is Aka Akasaka’s return to the romcom genre which made his career but it wasn’t the grand return you’d expect from the guy who wrote its greatest entry period. Instead Love Agency marks an apparent low point, the lowest actually to many of his readers and a serialisation that only lasted 4 volumes before getting axed with little fanfare. So the question for me was did it deserve it?, Did Aka finally miss and the answer was… hell no, this series has only furthered my love of one of the greatest minds in the medium and definitely holds up in comparison to other Aka works. That’s not to say it’s perfect because lets be clear here this is the least risky, most derivative manga he’s ever done and if you’ve read LIW in particular you’ll feel it in every chapter buuut that is his masterwork so maybe the ever present influence is a good thing. This manga was a genuine treat to me so here’s’s why you should read it too!
KING OF COMEDY
Love Agency follows 4 highschoolers in their pursuit of romance with the catch being that the 2 who like each other, Mari and Seki, require outside assistance to steer their love lives thus bringing in this series’s main gimmick into view, the titular online romance coaching Love Agency. The two coaches that help them navigate the world of attraction are Pon and Kon who have a petty rivalry of their own. It’s love is war by proxy, each side going head to head without the knowledge their opposition is using the exact same service and while the steady results seem positive to the characters the reader knows full well the irony behind this farce and the results are just delightful. This cast is truly remarkable in the context of only 4 volumes of development and if anything they’re why I just can’t accept this as his worst manga, Ib:Instant Bullet simply doesn’t have this quality of writing and even Aka’s recently completed Oshi no Ko falls short for very specific reasons. I believe comedy makes an Aka Akasaka character and this manga displays the sheer power of that tool in the hands of a genius. Oshi no Ko is his most serious, melodramatic work yet and that’s reflected in the characters who are very serious people with very direct motivations but that does mean they’re missing an x factor, the cast despite the sheer quantity to their writing come off as one note and unmemorable due to their very straightforward presentation. Successful character comedy is used both to endear and entertain the audience to any given cast but it’s main strength is that it naturally brings a characters deepest insecurities to light in a over the top but deeply informed way, it’s storytelling tool no other author has such a complete mastery of and it makes Love Agency sing to impressive effect.
Mari is the first character we’re introduced to and she seemingly has it all, she’s the prettiest girl in school, one of the smartest and her multi ethnic background gives her an aura of purity and class, in short she’s the most popular girl in school! But she has a terrible, unbelievable, positively unreal secret, she finds boys terrifying. Their very presence is so intimidating that Mari’s very refined persona shatters on contact and she turns into the most boy shy girl around, totally unable to hold a conversation much less pursue a romance. This has caused her tastes in men to shift completely from expectation as she only really likes shy nerdy boys totally devoid of masculinity and so she sets her sights on the mild mannered and bespeckled Seki, contracting the titular love agency, and getting assigned Kon as a coach. Mari’s boy shy nature is very cute and used to maximum comedic effect but it’s not a simple gag, instead it’s a window into the soul of a girl broken up by a abusive family life, a mentally ill mother and a dead by suicide father haunting her every action. It’s not simple shock value schlock either, Mari is built off the effects of abuse, her people pleasing personality and her outright fear of dominant masculinity all stem from her relationship with her mother whose word has become a toxic gospel but whom Mari can’t simply escape from. Mari is a rich character who exemplifies the tenant of realistic but hilarious character writing Aka is known for and its a genuine shame he didn’t get to fully explore her. But while she is the deepest character she ain’t my favourite.
Kon is the single most relatable character this man has ever written, she’s a mirror Aka is using to describe psychology I live with and goddammit why do I love her so much. Kon is a NEET basically but not out of a dislike of others, in fact she’s got an above average sense of empathy and genuinely likes other people. Instead it’s her avoidant personality type that haunts her, it basically causes her to not form strong genuine feeling bonds with other people and sheesh man I FEEL that. I didn’t know this was a thing, and assumed I suck at people stuff but than this manga’s like no it’s an actual personality disorder and looking it up was kinda eye opening. Other relatable, more negative traits are present in this manga and it just goes to show Aka gets people, young ones specifically and that’s probably the biggest reason I’m a fan. Kons’s coaching of Mari is my favourite dynamic of the series and it propels Kon into more social situations, which really just means more Pon. Time of day she gives him not, tsundere she may well be, entertaining as hell this relationship is. She doesn’t get as elaborate or natural of an arc in comparison to Mari but I’m still happy with it, Kon is the best!
Editor’s Note: She has a cat ears hoodie and that might bias me, okay it 100% biases me omigod I love her.
The boys in this equation are not as strong as characters, they’re definitely likeable but Seki has some muddled writing and Pon is kinda just there. Pon first because I don’t have much to say, he’s a large fellow and as jolly as you you’d expect, with his quirky way of speaking and straitlaced perspective he’s about the most normal a person in his field could be. He’s into Kon and because he’s good with people(hence the love agent occupation) he’s kinda built his outside look specifically to appeal to Kon’s closed off personality. His development isn’t the best written thing on offer, suddenly getting fit over a weekend basically to physically appeal to Kon instead of something more natural like gradually getting healthier and just talking to her more. I like him, he nice, not remarkable though.
Seki is weird because I genuinely believe Aka rewrote him on the fly as his introduction is completely opposed to who he actually is for the remainder of the run and I am of two minds about it. See Seki is introduced as a nerdy type already marked by Mari as the guy to get but that’s problematic because in actuality nerdy Seki is a front and the real Seki is a scummy ass dude who only wants Mari for her body and is using the love agency to obtain her, eww. So are you not supposed to root for this romance, is the initial premise just Aka’s way of subverting our expectations of a traditional romcom!? The answer is confusingly no because immediately after setting up Seki as a scummy guy and this whole romance with Mari as fated to disaster Aka completely shifted his angle, rewrote Seki to be a tough looking guy who’s actually really nice on the inside and turned this into a traditional wholesome romance plot. I was actually very intrigued by the initial angle and it was a big twist on the LIW formula that could’ve made this manga more unique in the broader sense but maybe that was too much of a risk and so we get good boy Seki. Good boy Seki is a very fun character in his own right and at least you can root for him, his conflict stems from a failure to appeal to Mari due to his intimidating looks and his inability to understand introverts so he does the normal thing of going and hanging out out with introverts a.k.a manga fans. He joins a manga writing club and this is when he really becomes a loveable dude because on top of the hijinks than stem from this conflicting setting and the goofy dynamics at play he learns about a passion for art he never knew and this uncovers a genuine side of him never previously present. He becomes a character independent from his romantic pursuits, a guy who delves headfirst into manga despite his nonexistent artistic capabilities and his new nature is so pleasant even a now conflicted Mari takes notice, Seki is a weird character due to his messy writing but in the end you’ll root for him.
Following LIW reaching its conclusion Aka Akasaka announced his retirement from drawing manga and I reacted with shock and horror at that loss…not he’s an aight artist at best. So for this series he teamed up with 5mm Nishizawa and she delivered in spades. Without missing a beat when it comes to Aka’s actually good visual comedy she mainly stands out by with supurior character art, delivering precisely drawn designs full of life. The girls look exactly as good as the story positions them as, the boys looks are purposely deceiving, it’s just an endless barrage of good ass artistry. The storytelling is similarly refined in comparison to his earlier work, even LIW doesn’t have this level of efficiency. The charcter arcs develop at speed but aside from Pon the pacing is just right enough to be electric, jokes don’t get old because characters move past their initial appearances, and real meaty drama comes out of it all. At only 4 volumes the sheer amount of romcom story on offer is really hard to beat and while it’s a shame there isn’t more what’s here is more than enough to make for a worthwhile read.
TIS THE END
With a great artstyle, some of his most impressively efficient storytelling ever and a cast that makes the most of his esteemed character writing Love Agency is Aka Akasaka firing on all cylinders and while its a shame he didn’t get to see it out like he originally planned, this is still an axe worth treasuring. If you love Kaguya Sama you must read this one, it’ll scratch that itch.
FINAL RATING: 8/10
Love Agency has no legal means of reading for a Western audience so go join the Straw Hats, if you catch my drift.
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