Akihito is a college student obsessed with good looks and carnal pleasure, but he can't stand the handsome-yet-aloof Sae. Things come to a head when Akihito is shot down at a singles mixer by a girl who's set her romantic sights on Sae. Furious, he follows Sae to the hotel district where he learns Sae's secret: he's gay, and he's having trouble enjoying himself in the bedroom. Breaking through Sae's mental barriers is exactly the sexy challenge Akihito needed. It awakens something in them both. Will they ever be able to control themselves again?

Perfect Addiction has story and art by Kaoruko Miyama. English translation is done by Christine Dashiell with an adaptation by Molly Muldoon and lettering by Mina Worth. Published by Seven Seas Entertainment (February 3, 2026). Rated M.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

There is something to be said for a story that just puts its everything out there. Perfect Addiction, from the creator of the much less spicy Tomorrow, Make Me Yours., opens with an explicit, uncensored sex scene and just goes on from there. It's not just for prurient purposes, though; sexual enjoyment is a major piece of the story here. Sae has never had a satisfying sexual encounter and has decided that he's just not cut out for sex. To Akihito, an inveterate hedonist, this is both an unfortunate situation and a challenge. He declares that he, who has many satisfied sexual partners, is the person who will change things for Sae, and without further ado, does just that.

Assuming you're not just in this for the smut, there's a good story underneath everything. Akihito has been very aware of Sae for quite a while, although he hasn't put it all together as why why he's interested. He's fascinated by the way Sae doesn't pick up girls or have any sort of romantic or sexual encounters in the school gossip mill, and there's a sense that when Sae explains that a) he's gay and b) he's bad at sex, Akihito takes this as the perfect answer. If Sae isn't sleeping around, then that means he's all Akihito's, and given that Akihito was grumbling to himself about how annoyed he was with all of his friends with benefits, it starts to look like Akihito just didn't recognize a crush when he had one. The casual hookups aren't working for him because he wants something more.

The story unfolds relatively slowly over this first volume on an emotional front. The two men meet, go to a hotel, and then more or less interact like normal at school, which is to say that they barely interact. Or at least, Sae barely interacts with Akihito; he's not sure how to classify their relationship and is afraid to fall for the other man because he thinks they're just sex friends. But Akihito is clearly falling for Sae, cataloguing his every facial expression and reaction. The trick is to get them both to see what's right in front of their faces: they like each other as people, not merely as sex partners.

It's not a perfectly put together book, but the art is very nice and the emotional content is nicely done. The requisite period of time when they're not speaking to each other for plot reasons is over too quickly, and it generally feels as if the creator thought this was going to be a single volume and was surprised when it wasn't. But I'll give volume two a try, because this is a good combination of spicy and sweet.