The Spring 2023 Manga Guide

A Complicated Omega's Second Love

What's It About? 

Sakura, an office worker at the top of his game working for a major company, has a complex over being an Omega. He hates that Alphas are always oppressing Omegas and has resolved to be Mate-free for life. One day, however, he loses his memory in a freak accident, and finds out that somehow he and his colleague — an Alpha named Narushige, whom he's always thought of as a rival — have become mated! At first, Sakura is adamantly against the arrangement, but by and by, Narushige's steadfast compassion, trust, and affection as his partner leave Sakura finding himself attracted to him...

A Complicated Omega's Second Love has story and art by Kichi Uekawa, with English translation by Christine Dashiell and lettering by Vibrraant Publishing Studio. Tokyopop has released its first volume both digitally $7.99. The volume will release in print on May 16 for $13.99.

Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Oh, if only I'd had this book's handy guide to the Omegaverse back when my mother asked me what “Omegaverse” was. That conversation would have been a lot smoother. I'm not entirely sure if the guide is original to the volume or something that the English publisher Tokyopop arranged, but all things considered, there are worse introductions to the genre than A Complicated Omega's Second Love. That's because the book acknowledges the issues with Omegaverse in general while still managing to tell a sweet story, and frankly, that's worth a whole star right there.

The bad is the usual with this sort of alpha/omega fiction: as an omega, Tasuku Sakura is at the mercy of his “heats” and is at risk for sexual assault by alphas. In the book, he narrowly avoids being raped in middle school, and from that point on strives to hide his status as an omega. Things get weird, though, when he gets hit on the head, suffers two weeks of amnesia, and wakes up to find that he's formed a mate bond with Iori Narushige, a coworker. He's understandably upset.

At this point, things could have devolved into something much less palatable. The saving grace is Narushige himself; he hadn't realized that Sakura was suffering from amnesia (he was acting normally otherwise), and when he learns about it, he immediately steps back. He respects Sakura in all things, and the two don't resume a sexual relationship until Sakura himself is 100% on board with it. The “second love” in the title, therefore, refers to Sakura re-falling in love with Narushige, and Narushige mostly giving him the space to do so.

The book doesn't ever paint Narushige as being unfairly frustrated by Sakura in the physical sense; he's sad that the man he loves doesn't remember being in love with him, but he doesn't pressure Sakura to resume their previous relationship. Honestly, that's what makes this a standout in its genre—there's enough of the dub-con stuff to satisfy readers looking for it, but on the whole, it is about having a healthy emotional connection alongside the physical. I don't think it's going to convert anyone to the Omegaverse genre, but it's still a surprisingly nice story.

MrAJCosplay

Rating:

I don't read a lot of boys' love manga to know if this is just a story outline that's used a lot. This is maybe the second or third boys' love series that I've seen that focuses on giving a character the title of Alpha, Beta, or Omega for the sake of creating this word commentary on privilege and primal instincts. It just feels a bit weird that there is more than one story like that. I'm not gonna try to compare this to the other ones that I've read even though it would be very easy for me to do so because everything plays out almost exactly the way you think. But I won't because I do want to draw attention to probably the one glaring issue in this story and that's the fact that the overall premise and foundation of the main relationship in this book is arguably based on a very uncomfortable contrivance.

Our main character gets amnesia and apparently wakes up to living together and being physically imprinted on by their coworker. Amnesia stories have been done to death but I've never read a story that takes place after a person recovers their lost memories while also conveniently forgetting exactly how they were like while they had amnesia because I'm pretty sure amnesia doesn't work like that. What we have is an interesting setup for making me question the moral implications of somebody that gets into a relationship and forms a lifelong biological pack with somebody who clearly doesn't remember every aspect of their past and who they are. Yeah, I'm not gonna mince words here, I didn't really like this one because right after the setup, very little actually gets done to get me over that initial bout of discomfort that I felt after the opening inciting incident.

I respect a story that's compact enough to do everything it wanted to do in a single volume and the pacing is actually pretty tight. I didn't feel like any time was necessarily wasted but that's just it, the story felt like it did everything it wanted to do and that includes not elaborating on why these two are forced together in the first place. I can understand some elements such as being caught in the heat of the moment and there is a very vague physiological component to it, but I personally wouldn't do any lifelong commitments with somebody who clearly doesn't remember who they are after just a few weeks. I end up feeling terrible for the main character who wakes up in bed only to find out that he has no knowledge about the partner he apparently committed himself to. This just makes the relationship feel just very one-sided in how it was trying to portray a wholesome passionate romance and it left a bad taste in my mouth that really doesn't make me want to return to it ever again.