By Mitsurou Kubo | Published by Vertical Comics

Although I was originally quite keen to read Moteki, it took me nearly a week to finish this volume. That isn’t due to its length (Vertical is publishing the entire series in two hefty volumes) but to the fact that the protagonist, self-proclaimed loser Yukiyo Fujimoto, is really hard to take in large doses.

The story begins in the summer of Yukiyo’s 29th year, when he experiences a brief flurry of contact from women in his past. Desperate for love and sex, he reconnects with each of them and botches each attempt in one way or another. With Aki Doi, the former coworker who held hands with him at a rock festival until her boyfriend showed up, he’s too passive. With Natsuki, a girl he bombarded with “please fall in love with me” vibes for a year before finally losing his virginity to her older sister, he very nearly scores but can’t perform. It’s with his friend Itsuka, however, that his behavior is the most troubling.

In their first meeting two years ago, their mutual friend Shimada tries to pair them off. Yukiyo is all for this, but Itsuka balks. (We later learn it’s because she was in love with Shimada.) Yukiyo erupts. “Are you one of those girls who acts like a cocktease then plays dumb out of spite, or maybe you act like you’re being generous when you give a guy who just saved you a kiss on the cheek instead of putting out for him?! You are one nasty chick!!” Despite this, they become friends and, in the present day, she invites him on a trip to eat a local delicacy. In their hotel room, they almost have sex before she finds out he’s not a virgin and kicks him out of bed. She promptly falls asleep and his first thought is, “If you don’t resist, that means you want it, right?” Then he realizes that he doesn’t have any condoms. Only after that does it occur to him that she trusts him not to do anything to her. Later, he’s super persistent to the point that Itsuka blocks him from contacting her and calls off the friendship.

Previously, Itsuka had said that she wishes she could find someone to love, and Yukiyo is baffled as to why she wouldn’t consider him. “Could she still not forget about Shimada?” It’s at this point that I desperately wished for some hallucinatory foodstuffs to appear. Like so:

Thankfully, in the second half Yukiyo seemingly begins to change. Despite getting terrible advice from a girl in his hometown, urging even more persistence (and I do worry what kind of message this manga is sending in that respect), when he meets Itsuka again he manages to actually listen to her romantic woes with empathy, realizing they share problems with low self-esteem, and even be just assertive enough to help her get closure regarding her unrequited feelings for now-married Shimada. He’s serious enough to say “I’m interested in you” without going overboard and insincerely declaring his love, and he isn’t pushy about getting in her pants. Just when you think they might finally make things work, however, he ends up hanging around Aki Doi again and getting jealous when a slovenly, struggling manga artist seems interested in her. Make up your mind, dude!

Ultimately, I just don’t know. I’ll read the second (and final) volume, but I worry I’ll end up grumpy and frustrated once again.

Moteki is complete in Japan with 4.5 volumes. Vertical will release the omnibus containing the second half of the series in July.

Review copy provided by the publisher.