Yukino is a receptionist and rumored to be a quiet, timid beauty with low self confidence. But in reality, she's just putting on an act, and is hung up on her unforgettable first love.

Just when she's about to give up, she runs into her first boyfriend from high school, Haru! He's grown into a handsome salesman, and he pursues her wholeheartedly, teasing her with passionate kisses... She can't contain her excitement!

Is it okay to fall in love again...?

EX-Rank Lover: My Doting Ex-Boyfriend Wants to Make Love to Me Again and Again! has story and art by Pyoko Asahina. English translation is done by Carissa Tenorio with lettering by Vibrant Publishing Studio. Published by Tokyopop (February 17, 2026). Rated M.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

The most important trick to crafting a single-volume manga is, in my opinion, the ability to make it feel like the story only needed one book to unfold. That's something that Pyoko Asahina hasn't quite mastered in EX-Rank Lover. All of the plot points are there and we understand the characters well enough, but it just doesn't feel complete. It's hard to really get behind Yukino and Haru's relationship when it feels like there's a lot of backstory missing, especially since this is a second-chance romance.

According to what little background information we get, Yukino and Haru dated back in high school. Was it brief? Probably; Asahina never spells it out. Did she break up with him? Probably, but again, we don't know. All the information we get is that they dated, he was a year behind her, and she thought she wasn't particularly bright or attractive, something she still believes as an adult. There's no reason given why he should still be in love with her at least a decade later, and that really hinders the romance. It's great that this handsome guy is so desperately trying to get with her, but knowing why would really help the story itself.

It's a shame, because there are other components of this book that I really appreciate. Haru understands consent (well, for a romance hero), taking care not to push his own desires on Yukino before she's ready, even if he does move to get her in bed pretty quickly, which is par for the course for a subset of genre romance books. He waits until she explicitly tells him she's ready for more before moving on, which is pretty good for this type of fiction. They also seem to genuinely like each other as people, even if readers don't get a good description or portrayal of why. Asahina's art is attractive and only moderately censored with everyone's favorite light-emitting genitals, and the translation does a good job of keeping terrible lines from sounding too cringey. It's a perfectly adequate book.

And that's the problem, really. EX-Rank Lover could have been more than merely adequate if it had more space to breathe, or at least chose to focus a bit more on the characters' history together than yet another manga depiction of an aquarium date. (Even if Asahina has a decent reason for why they go to the aquarium.) This is stymied by its own adherence to basics, which makes it readable, but not as good as it could be.