The Spring 2022 Manga Guide

Irresistible Mistakes

What's It About? 

After waking up in a hotel and having to rush to work before she finds out who she was there with, Komatsu realizes she has no memory of the night before. Not only that, but the company darling Tachibana has taken a sudden interest in her. Was he the one she was with that night? And if so, what happened between them...and where will they go from here?

Irresistible Mistakes is based on the original game by Voltage. The manga is drawn by Mika Sakurano with English translation by Devon Corwin. Kodansha Comics released its first volume digitally for $10.99.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Christopher Farris

Rating:

Irresistible Mistakes might start off on even more of a misstep than its supposedly self-aware title would indicate. Opening with our female lead having been apparently taken advantage of while blackout drunk, racing into work blaming herself for it, isn't the most endearing way to open a story. The visual-novel adaptation structure of this thing lays out all of Komatsu's potential date-rapist co-workers like the spread on the back of an otome-game box, before the ultimate revelation that, for the route this one is tackling anyway, it was in fact her boss who took her to bed for the night. Komatsu's reactions to the whole affair are a mess of self-blaming apologia in the face of poorly-predicated power dynamics (going on as she does about how much she already admired Tachibana, specifically coming to work at this advertising agency because of his involvement) coupled with a staggering amount of retroactive justification based on the fluctuating amounts she can remember about that night. It is an exhausting way to kick off what is ostensibly meant to be a steamy, yet breezy escapist romance.

Look, I get it. Boundary-pushing and complicated encounters can be components of these kinds of fictional funtime fantasies. But a story has to have awareness that it's doing that sort of thing, and Irresistible Mistakes can't even muster a Fifty Shades of Grey level of understanding on how to dial up any of the involved power imbalances or murky questions of consent for that taboo energy. Instead this is just any halfway self-respecting human's personal and professional worst nightmare presented as a mildly distracting sitcom misunderstanding. Even when the writing finally (over seventy pages in) has Tachibana admit that he might have been somewhat in the wrong taking advantage of a subordinate while she was blackout drunk, it doesn't come off as sincere as the writing is trying play it, since his efforts at courtesy and boundary-respecting afterwards only make him feel more manipulative in the face of it.

It's frustrating, because I can see the appeal in this setup and where it goes for the rest of the story, and how it could have worked with just a few tweaks to that initial framing. The idea that the dude you had a drunken hook-up with turned out to be your smokin'-hot awesome boss who also thought you were super-cute, and genuinely respected you and your talents afterwards? That's fun, but it's a fun that's undermined pretty much the whole way through by the hangover from that initial morning-after. Granted, the rest of the book isn't amazing at supporting it, with Mika Sakurano's art mostly doing a workmanlike job at presenting the characters and their flush-faced conversations. Just getting to the revelatory portions of the story can feel like an unbelievably tedious task (unless seeing the two leads spend twenty pages sitting at a bar slowly describing the events of the night that led to the opening is your idea of thrilling). Plus I have to laugh at the framing of this business-based bodice-ripper being based around the emotional power of advertising for the Tokyo Olympics. Like obviously I'm not expecting this Harlequin-ass romance to be a font of nuance or depth, but I can at least ask it to meet me halfway. And maybe ask for consent first too.

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Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

The reason why this one shoots itself in the foot is clear the minute you read the author's note at the end: it's based on a visual novel. Now, I love both manga and visual novels, and the two do often feed quite nicely into each other. But the issue with this one is that as a romance game, it's got specific routes, and the manga's opted to barely touch on the common route (assuming this is one of those games with one) and hop right into one of the character stories. That means the whole mystery setup is basically lost – Komatsu figures out right away which of her four hot coworkers she slept with and the story proceeds along his path from there. It's perhaps not fair to punish it for this, because based on this volume, Irresistible Mistakes is about to embark on a perfectly fine office romance story. But it still feels like we were cheated out of the more interesting mystery with sex instead of the crime tale that the cover copy set us up for, and that's a shame.

On the other hand, at least we don't have to keep track of all of the characters! With Tachibana firmly established as the sex partner in question, the plot can get right down to the business of being mostly about him and Komatsu as they embark on a more solid relationship, with a dash of “never meet your heroes” thrown in for good measure. And while he seems mostly nice (although getting her drunk because it was “cute” is pushing it, even with his apology), he is unrepentantly smug, so the sailing may not be as smooth as the sex. Komatsu's definitely got a fair amount of hero worship for him, which could end badly, so there are still plenty of bumps for the relationship to weather. And things could still turn around and end up being less straightforward than they appear, although I have serious doubts about that. At least the art is nice, and I'll probably check to see if the game is available in English, though I don't love playing on my phone. And I'll finish reading the series, hoping that we get the other routes too – it's not great, but it's more or less good enough.

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Jean-Karlo Lemus

Rating:

Ayumi Komatsu wakes up after a one-night stand only to discover that her paramour the previous night was her boss, the handsome bachelor Tachibana. When he brings her aboard to work on an advertising campaign that could get her agency's foot in the door with the Olympics, she not only has to come up with a brilliant commercial, but also navigate the lingering feelings in her heart for her boss.

Workplace romances can be a lot of fun and it's been nice to see so many of them come out. But you need a little something to stand out, and while Irresistable Mistakes doesn't do anything overtly wrong it doesn't do anything particularly memorably either. When you dedicate your first chapter to investigating who your romantic male lead is, even with all of the promo art spoiling who it is from the get-go, you know your pacing is in for some trouble. There's a good will-they-or-won't-they dynamic between Komatsu and Tachibana, but there isn't much else. Komatsu frets over her attraction to him, while Tachibana is aloof and mysterious and has Komatsu eating out of the palm of his hand. It's a good-enough also-ran, but I do wish it had a bit more to it.