Tags: Comedy, Romance, Drama, Slice of Life, School Life

(This Review will contain spoilers from the first volume of the series)

Will Kuroya Survive Kasumi’s Teasing to Win the Game Called Love?

Tentai Books’ latest title, You Like Me, Don’t You, is a teasingly-sweet, drama-lite romcom that features the challenges of first love between Kuroya and his senior Kasumi.

The prologue sees Kuroya in one of the happiest moments of his life, what was once thought to be just another day spending time with his senior as part of the Literature Circle, has turned into a confession of love and the start of their dating life together. As a result, sugar and sweetness are abound as the novel spares no moment of their flirting act together, something that’ll surely delight any fan of fluffy romcoms or just someone looking for a cute novel to read.

One of the best selling points of the series comes from the entertaining interactions between the two main leads, Kuroya and Kasumi. Both the author and the translators have done an amazing job of making their interaction both fun to read as well as feel natural given their past relationship as good friends. Kasumi, plays more towards the unflappable teaser, always trying to get a funny reaction out of Kuroya. Meanwhile, Kuroya aires more towards the side of a typical tsundere, unable to be truthful towards his feelings for Kasumi only for her on point guessing game and constant teasing to worm those sweet words for her right out of his mouth. This character pairing always does well in adding a little extra when it comes to some of the major plot events of the story, from their first going home date to their ineffectual attempt at hiding from Kasumi’s mother as they visit his house for the first time as a couple. The best way to describe their characters and the series as a whole is like a cross between a role reversal version of Toxic Classmate with the signature teasing elements found in other romcom series such as Seatmate Killer. Both great series in their own right and these elements only serve to enhance the experience here in this novel.

An aspect that has a large focus upon it during the first volume is the growing romantic feelings felt by Kuroya towards Kasumi, from their first meeting, the moment they knew it was love, to the present state of the relationship. The reasons for Kuroya’s love towards Kasumi feel well and truly fleshed out throughout the volume. The moment they truly fell in love feels brilliantly executed as Kasumi gives her true and honest bookworm opinion on the professional book that he’d written that had ended in failure. Given the trauma he’d experienced due to the hammering his book got and the false hope from editors, he’s been unable to trust the opinion of others. However, through his eyes, even though Kasumi’s praise was a little generic he still believed her due to her personality, awakening in him the need to write once again. The novel also provides a few point of view changes towards Kasumi’s side of the events, which gives the reader a good starting insight into her overwhelming feelings for him as well as a good set up for development in the upcoming second volume.

Finally, I’d like to give attention to the overall translation of the series and the amount of effort that had gone into the localisation specifically in insertion of western memes whether intentional or not. This is something I’ve come to notice especially when it comes to Tentai Books’ latest titles is the insertion of memes and more modernistic vernacular. In this series we see the addition of the recent handholding is sinful meme whilst in others e.g., Popular Side Character, we get examples such as pogchamp. This is something I really appreciate and always gets a little chuckle out of me even if that’s more to do with the cringy nature of the reference.

You Like Me, Don’t You, is a wonderfully sweet and wholesome romantic comedy series that places fun interactions instead of major plot events as part of the major stage. I would highly recommend this series for anyone who enjoy’s similar fluffy romcom series that have started to rise in popularity recently such as Angel Next Door or Toxic Classmate. Hopefully, in the next volume we’ll get a closer look at why Kasumi fell for Kuroya at last year’s cultural festival.