#Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko!

[hokkienmee]

📂 Ayaka-chan wa Hiroko-senpai ni Koishiteru (2024) ↳ 📂 Episode 3 (subtitles by Furritsubs)

[sweetbottletops]

"Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko!"

Live action drama

One of my all time favorite GLs is getting a live action drama. !!! [x]

Sal Jiang's "Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko!" 「彩香ちゃんは弘子先輩に恋してる」 Official Twitter

The mains they cast look so good. Them in the office. *screams into pillow*

[cloudytomboy]

Sal Jiang knocks it outta the park again…

[lancevance]

she is an idiot and i love her

[g-oblincat]

The other manga I've been keeping up with that recently just ended! And I'm going to talk about it!

Ayaka-chan wa Hiroko-senpai ni Koishiteru (Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko!) by Sal Jiang

A lesbian office drama written by a Twitter artist I really like! Ayaka has a crush on her senior at work, Hiroko, and constantly tries to make Hiroko notice her. Hiroko is a lesbian who’s closeted at work and trying her hardest not to fall for Ayaka, who she thinks is an oblivious straight girl. The appeal is the comedy of watching two women made stupid by love freak out over each other, underlined by queer angst.

Things I like about it:

Charming characters! The main couple is SO easy to fall in love with and root for- they are so earnest and funny and have great chemistry. It also doesn’t hurt that they’re drawn REALLY well with fun, expressive faces and cute designs.

Themes of queerness as identity and community! More in the spoiler section, but my favorite scenes in this story take place in in a gay bar with a character’s WLW friendgroup as they talk about being gay. The community is my favorite part of being queer and I never see it reflected in manga, and I love how much fun and love is put into the scenes with the friendgroup.

You can read the official English comic online here! I think this is the most affordable I’ve ever seen a manga actually, so it’s definitely worth a buy! I will admit I am using the Dynasty Scans pages in the spoiler section of this post, since that’s the version I read before finding out about the official English version.

Expanding on my two points above in the spoilers section!

Time for the section where I play show and tell

That’s the premise!

Great characters and chemistry

Ayaka is SO cute. I love pretty femme girls who are kind of bratty, and she’s portrayed in a way where you know the author’s having so much fun with her.

Some random out of order/context Ayaka faces from the earlier chapters! I forgot how cute and sweet she comes off in the earlier chapters, she’s a total goblin later lol

Hiroko is also such a fun character! I love the contrast between a really serious, straight laced, determined-to-not-fall-in-love person at work to uhhhhh womanizer at night lol.

Speaking of fun, a character interaction trope I’ll never get tired of are “characters who comedically overreact when they’re in love with someone” and that fits this couple to a T!

What a cute sequence….

Both characters’ POVs from the same chapter. Hiroko focusing on how hot Ayaka is, and Ayaka imagining wedding bells when Hiroko looks at her LOL.

I could keep showing screenshots of these two until I basically go through the entire comic lol.

But even outside the main two, I really like the side characters as well! A standout is Risa - Ayaka’s colleague who’s also a baby gay and has a crush on her. I’m unusual in that I usually like love triangles, but I do think this one is written really well! She’s sympathetic, her doomed longing for Ayaka is delicious and relatable. (Spoilers) I love how her selfishness and selflessness is balanced- her crush and competition with Hiroko makes her sabotage Ayaka’s crush in small ways in the beginning, but she fundamentally cares for her friend and roots for them in the end. Also, (BIG SPOILERS) she and Ayaka end up dating and breaking up but still remain friends, which is another favorite trope of mine. (HUGE SPOILERS) I love this page, any manga that includes a scene like this is top tier for me…. She feels realistic and her story is really sweet!

(Left) Baby gays smashing braincells against each other and (Right) Risa’s eyes wander….

Queer community and identity

This section has more spoilers than the last one!! If you haven’t read this comic but plan on it, I recommend you not read this part!!

In my last post, I said that Yuri as a genre doesn’t need to have anything about queerness as an identity to be good, but then I realized that most of my favorites did have a focus on identity…. Yeah IDK what to say LOL. But the identity aspect is a big plot point/theme of this story, and it’s written SUPER well.

First of all- Hiroko’s backstory centers on homophobia and her being super closeted at her workplace. I’m iffy on homophobia stories (just cause I’ve read a lot of them and they tend to hit on the same points), but the homophobia theme leads to one of my fav scenes:

Context: Risa knows Hiroko is closeted and rants about it to the bartender at a lesbian bar who knows Hiroko.

I love this focus on how queer people interact with the straight world, and the generational divide between older and younger queers. I can only speak from a US perspective, but progress around LGBTQ acceptance has come so far and so fast the past few years that if I was born a few years earlier or a few years later, I’d have a radically different life experience. It’s something I think about a lot when reading memoirs and articles by older queer people, and contrasting that with my life and the observed lives of people younger than me online. This theme is explored well in this story- the cultural tensions between Hiroko and Ayaka and Risa, how straight people may react more positively to queer people now but it’s still not perfect, and how Hiroko has changed her workplace for the better.

Also speaking of the lesbian bar- I love the girls at the bar lol. Right after the scene with Risa, a gaggle of lesbians come in and comfort her and it’s SOOOO heartwarming and cute. I love how this friendgroup is written- supportive, but also will call you out.

It’s so fun to read these guys gossip, give each other relationship advice, bicker with each other, and be horny at women together.

Hiroko’s relationship with the girls is more bickering, but Risa and Ayaka end up going to them for advice a lot which is so sweet and the elder/baby queer relationship I need (not portrayed because I can’t find a screenshot that doesn’t reveal a big plot twist)

Anyway…that’s it…. If you’ve read this comic please talk to me about it…if you haven’t please read it. Thank you.

[scarlet-riot]

funniest possible reaction to being blatantly hit on by a hot woman

[animelibera]

"Ayaka is in love with Hiroko!" by Sal Jiang will be getting a live action TV show

[b---e-nch]

colorized silly

[alexissara]

Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko! Quick Review

I really enjoyed this story, Hiroko is a useless lesbian boss who doesn't realize the extremally explicit signals she's getting from Ayaka. I really wanna see where this story is going, I find the miscommunication at times to be frustrating but I think there is potential for a very great pay off in volume 2. The characters are so well written and cute and I think given the revelation we get in the last chapter my biggest like "why doesn't she just say this" is answered very clearly.

I feel bad for Risa for being in the unrequited love club but she is really sweet and I loved seeing her gay out for another woman near the end.

The character designs are fantastic, expressions are top tier, solid comedy that is displayed clearly through visuals. It's a story you could understand without being able to read it but is amplified so much by being able to read it. I think it's doing something really cool with actually introducing lesbian identity and everything to the formula which is always a rare but nice treat in a story.

Overall, I really enjoy this book and I look forward to reading volume 2 when it releases.

[If you enjoy this review consider sending me support on Patreon so I can make more gay art and read/review more gay art.]

[celia-witch]

[beatnikbedlam]

just readin’ some yuri

[hokkienmee]

📂 Ayaka-chan wa Hiroko-senpai ni Koishiteru (2024) ↳ 📂 Kato Shiho as Usaida Ayaka (subtitles by Furritsubs)

[sweetbottletops]

"Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko!" #YuriDay Illustrations

"求め合う女たち💋" Sal Jiang [x]

"Black and White: Tough Love at the Office" #YuriDay Illustrations

[algrolo]

On her way to beat up get her woman

[lonestatus]

_

[mangaacoverss]

✦ 📓 VOL 1 (1- 9)