The Spring 2025 Manga Guide

How to Deal When Your Intimidating Neighbor is Actually an Omega (18+)

What's It About? 

Kota is a college student, and an Alpha. Still, he dreads bumping into his neighbor, a super-intimidating hunk with big, black tattoos. He always assumed this mystery man was an Alpha, too, and avoided him like the plague…until, one day, a scent wafts in so powerful it puts even the dull-headed Kota in a daze. It's the scent of Omega pheromones, from next door! He assumes his neighbor's brought an Omega home, but when he tries to leave, what should he find but the source of the pheromones: his hot neighbor! How will he get out of this situation unscathed, and without his neighbor finding out he's a virgin?!

How to Deal When Your Intimidating Neighbor is Actually an Omega has a story and art by Nikuya Inui. English translation by Adrienne Beck. Sara Linsley letters this volume. Published by Kodansha (March 11, 2025). Rated M.

Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

I've sometimes wondered what it would mean to be asexual in an omegaverse world. Are such places strictly allosexual? Are only betas ace? It's probably a silly thing to think about, given that omegaverse stories often slot into the dub-con realm of romance fiction, but I am who I am. And fortunately for me, Nikuya Inui seems to have been wondering, too, because How to Deal When Your Intimidating Neighbor is Actually an Omega has the closest I've seen in the genre: an alpha variant where they can only smell a mutual love interest's pheromones. It's basically demisexuality, omegaverse style. Despite what my writing history might suggest, I actually don't read a ton of omegaverse fiction, so I'm not sure if this is unique to Inui's book, but it's certainly a variation I can get behind.

The story also plays with more established tropes of the genre. Kouta, the story's alpha, is the more outwardly submissive of the main couple. A first year in college, he's both baffled and annoyed by the way all of his alpha friends seem unable to talk about anything besides sex, omegas, and sex with omegas, because he just doesn't see what the big deal is. He's not interested in any of it, something his friends try to understand, but really don't. He's also terrified of his tattooed, pierced neighbor – and suddenly realizing one day that the other man's an omega doesn't really change much…although he does get his first whiff of pheromones from him. The two fall into a relationship that neither of them quite understand, least of all Kouta, who feels mildly violated by this sudden shift in his worldview.

This is, hands-down, the most explicit book I've ever read from Kodansha. There's lots of uncensored nudity and sex, and even more body hair than we often get in non-bara BL, by which I mean both pubic and underarm hair. But the story is largely devoid of the “can't help himself” dynamic that can be prevalent in omegaverse, instead focusing on Kouta as maintaining control of his mind and body as a point of pride for him. He's not like other alphas, and even though it makes him uncomfortable at times, it's also something that he feels defines who he is. While I wouldn't call this particularly nuanced, it is different in a positive way, giving more space to characters sexualities than an alpha/omega dynamic. It's not going to convince you to like the genre if you never have before, but for omegaverse readers who have ever questioned the allosexuality of the genre, it's worth checking out.

Lauren Orsini
Rating:

Finally, a traditionally published Omegaverse story that is told in the spirit of the trope's fanfiction origins. A concept for society that was designed to explore gender tropes mainly (but not exclusively for) horny reasons, the Omegaverse gives characters secondary sex designations of Alpha, Beta, and Omega. Some of the characteristics, like Alphas' predatory pursuance of Omegas, and Omegas' cyclical “heats,” allow fans to explore different types of romantic dynamics. But most Omegaverse stories make one big assumption: that everyone who lives in them is allosexual. This story about a demisexual Alpha breaks that mold.

Kota is a college-aged Alpha who is fed up with his Alpha friends always obsessing over Omegas. He doesn't get all the fuss over pheromones, which he can't even smell. That all changes one day, when there's a scent wafting into his apartment from his scary-looking next-door neighbor's place. Could that tough, intimidating guy be not only an Omega, but the first person Kota has ever been attracted to? This manga's suspenseful storytelling style slowly teases out Kota's awakening desire, cracking through the layers of his (nameless, for most of the story) neighbor's prickly exterior before finally revealing his inner vulnerability. Their story is told through an uncensored string of steamy encounters, where physical intimacy comes long before the romantic leads admit that they've caught feelings. The eleventh-hour twist, in which the leads' biology and emotions converge, was surprisingly tender as well.

Since the Omegaverse is first and foremost a horny thought experiment, I never thought much about the way every character that occupies it is pansexual and down to clown 100% of the time. How to Deal When Your Intimidating Neighbor is Actually an Omega is refreshing for exploring a new side of it, mainly, “What's it like to be a demisexual, asexual, or aromantic person in this highly sexually charged world?” This is still porn, to be clear, and because it's porn it can't escape being primarily formulaic. But the world in which this porn takes place, with its well-considered structure of biological maxisms (that aren't always true) and its social norms (that don't always apply) make it a stand-out success amidst the crowded Omegaverse trope.