Bibi loves Peter. And Peter would love Bibi…if not for that pesky girl Peter was talking to in the school hallway! Bibi needs her out of the way, so she invites her new rival over for “a sleepover”. But instead of making sure the girl from the halls won't get in her way any further, Bibi enjoys a pleasant night with her new friend, Amy. As they fall asleep, Bibi wrestles with an unfamiliar and confusing feeling. Something must be wrong, because Bibi loves Peter…right?

I Love Amy has story and art by UNNI. Translation by AH Cho with lettering by Rebecca Sze. Published by Ize Press (November 18, 2025). Rated T.

Content warning: emotional manipulation, physical harm, mental illness and kidnapping

Erica Friedman
Rating:

If you read the synopsis provided for this story from the publisher, I Love Amy seems a bog-standard cute high school first same-sex crush rom-com. It is not at all that, not even a little.

Not to spoil the fun, but content warnings going in to this book for emotional manipulation, physical harm, mental unwellness and kidnapping are very much needed. Protagonist Bibi is not okay. We are told this repeatedly in this story, we can see it in the way she treats Amy as a tool, even when her emotions are shifting. Bibi's jealousy is pathological, her behavior goes right into criminal. None of this is cute and I ached for Amy throughout.

I have a long-time habit of wishing characters stuck in a bad story could be plucked out and deposited in a more pleasant story. I would pay actual money for Amy to be bodily lifted out of this story and put into a narrative where someone takes care of her. It does not help at all, that the course of this story is obvious and I am not at all willing to read another volume to find out the very inevitable ending in which characters will realize that they do love Amy. Because after putting Amy into emotional and physical harm's way for probably three quarters of the narrative I don't care if she's able to forgive…I am not.

I wasn't inclined to be generous about this story when, towards the end, we are privy to a conversation that is supposed to make us sympathetic to Bibi. I just shut down at that point. I know plenty of people who were robbed of a decent home life as a child and none of them stalked, manipulated or kidnapped anyone.

I was so happy that Ize Press decided to license a GL title, but wow, this feels awfully like poison in the well. There is so much better out there.

Kevin Cormack
Rating:

At first glance, I Love Amy's cutesy, colorful art looks like something your twelve-year old niece might enjoy reading: a seemingly sweet story about high school boys and girls and their dating troubles. Yet its deceptively simple, cartoony aesthetic belies a story about psychologically damaged individuals making sometimes terrible choices, battling their inner demons before inching towards a chance at happiness.

The titular Amy herself barely appears in the first chapter, where we're introduced to intense blonde 17-year-old Bibi, whose irises and pupils are replaced by deeply unsettling pink heart shapes. Immediately the reader is placed on the back foot with her. Is she meant to be cute… or sinister… or both? Bibi is capital-O obsessed with fellow student Peter, with whom she has barely interacted. But he's totally her destined lover, right? Bibi's life seems laser-focused on inveigling herself into Peter's life by hook or by crook, no matter whom she steps upon to achieve her goals.

That's where the quiet, mousy Amy comes in. A socially isolated orphan who lives with her aunt, Amy's like a deer caught in the headlights whenever the radiant yet terrifying Bibi is involved. While Bibi initially views Amy as only another stepping stone on her eternal quest for happiness with the hilariously oblivious Peter, gradually they begin to form a potentially unhealthy emotional codependency on one another. Much to her surprise, could Bibi be at the beginning of her own yuri love story?

Almost everyone in this story has suffered some kind of deep trauma or loss, and by the end of this first volume, we're only just beginning to understand each character's background. Why does Bibi live alone, and what made her such a broken human being? What's the story behind Amy and her former best friend's breakup? Why does Bibi's house have a torture dungeon, and why does she keep her dead pet bunny rabbit pickled in a jar?

Ever since reading the twisted works of Junko Mizuno in Pulp Magazine a quarter of a century ago, I've found myself drawn to the dark, creepy-cute aesthetics of these kind of comics. I Love Amy is compellingly strange, and Bibi is a magnetically mysterious character, while also being both pathetic and disconcerting. I couldn't put this book down, and I'm desperate to know where the thoroughly loopy story goes next.