Rudy Recommends? - A Rare Marriage: How To Grill Our Love (Patreon)

There's this manga that just started serialization not too long ago that I've been keeping up with that has me thinking a LOT about it's very strange premise and execution. I'm going to talk about all of the story that's been posted up to now (chapter 25) and this functions half as a "hey check this out" and half as a review of where it's at so far and why I even care enough to write a giant blog post about it. A Rare Marriage: How To Grill Our Love by Hanatsuka Shiori has the makings of something that would be completely up my alley: cute characters, a mature and subdued romantic relationship, a real world setting and set of problems. After reading the first few chapters, I look at some comments about the series and everyone keeps calling it this specific phrase that stops me for a minute.

Centrist BBQ Manga.

Trying to dissect that at first had me like, "Huh???" but after thinking about what that means in my view, I can start seeing this very obvious structure that feels flawed from the jump in a way that I haven't stumbled on in a lot of manga. I'll explain what I feel about that, but first I need to get into what the basic premise of this story even is.

How to Grill our Love is a story about a 30 year old IT engineer named Kenta who has had no luck in life to find a partner, despite having desires to get married. He's been trying a dating app a friend recommended to him and has only had bad experiences, being stood up multiple times to the point that he has hit his limit. He believes the date he is currently waiting for is another case of the same thing and leaves before coming face to face with a beautiful woman named Chihiro who apologizes for being late. They end up going to a Yakiniku restaurant where you self cook your meat and the two awkwardly fumble through first date small talk and getting a feel for each other.

We learn that Kenta has a passion for grilling by his enthusiasm for cooking their meal and he opens up about his lack of success with the dating app, confessing his personal thoughts that he was going to put up a front and take her out to a fancy tea place but is truthfully more comfortable in the casual style environment of the yakiniku restaurant. He has a fear of rejection but thinks he should be truthful in who he is as to establish a relationship based on honest communication. Chihiro seems charmed by his honesty and passion for barbecue and the two exchange numbers to try another date.

Not long after, Kenta learns that he is being transferred at work to a new location and will have to move to make it feasible to commute to his new workplace. He feels bad that he was hitting it off with Chihiro well but will sadly have to stop seeing her as he moves to a new location. Chihiro messages him at night and he never responds, prompting a surprise visit at his workplace the next day where they talk out the details and Kenta tries to let her go nicely, not seeing their relationship being worth pursuing from her end based on the new circumstances. Chihiro drops a bomb and suggest that they should just get married (???) because she doesn't want to stop seeing him. She confesses herself that she feels similarly to Kenta in that she is very closed off and guarded but wants to try to break free of that and find a connection with someone that she can be her true self with. They figure that she will only get to see him on weekends and she accepts it with the mindset that it is a mild early inconvenience in a long journey of married life together with someone she wants to build trust with. With that, the two get married and Chihiro drives over to Kenta's new home every weekend to start their relationship out of order and learn more about each other.

I think what people are getting at here when they call it a "centrist" manga is the idea that it feels like there's a theme of giving something your best try and you will find success, like a "just put your nose to the grindstone and everything will work out for you in the end". It's the type of idea that a centrist would say is based on pragmatism but it is so detached from so many people's experiences that it just comes across as naive idealism.

I think the concept is pretty fresh for the portrayal of what is a real problem for a lot of Japanese people in the modern age. Japan has had an incredible increase in people just not trying to find partners anymore because everyone feels so socially isolated most likely from their work culture causing burnout among other factors. It has become such a prevalent issue that they have even appointed a "Minister of Loneliness" to try to tackle the nationwide problem. This manga feels like it wants to be a self help book, creating an entryway for someone suffering these issues to feel like finding love is possible, and here's what it could look like.

In fact, this feeling is so strong that I find it is one of the biggest flaws of the comic. It feels so direct that Kenta is a vector for adult men that are probably dealing with this issue, having trouble finding a partner, maybe having hyper-specific hobbies that they form an attachment to as a way to feel something unrelated to the stressors of work when they're at home. It is with Kenta's lack of any deep personal inner life that makes it hard to suspend disbelief in this what-if romantic premise. Kenta seemingly has no goals, no motivations, no real strong beliefs in anything other than grilling and being honest to his new wife. He works hard, but has no attachment to work in any capacity so it means nothing to him. He doesn't even have motivations for wanting to work as hard as he does for how little he cares about it (but then again, maybe that's a cultural thing that I just can't relate to on a personal level). There really is no world where Chihiro would think "let's get married" over something like "let's try long distance dating (even with the INTENTION of marriage!!)". The only thing that makes him stand out from a lot of the current generation of romance manga getting churned out is that Kenta is not just a mob, or a person who sits on the sidelines and has no agency of his own. Kenta is very proactive in his attempts to build a strong relationship with Chihiro, asking her out on dates and thinking very consciously of the steps he wants to take that will naturally bring them closer together as people. Again, this feels like a self-help type of thing where the author is almost saying, "you just have to try these steps with someone and things might work out well!". I don't believe they truly think that if you just try, you will be rewarded but I think they want to show that it doesn't have to be so overwhelming to form a relationship with someone and even if it doesn't work out, the steps are quite simple.

The story follows a basic structure of Kenta and Chihiro spending time together on the weekend usually doing some form of grilling where Kenta is able to shine, and they improve their relationship little by little dancing around the awkwardness of what being married means for a couple that have not established a strong connection of intimacy yet. I assumed the comic was going to just do this same loop for as long as it was serialized until it would be cancelled, but the author decides that they want to actually build on these characters and add a mature depth to them, starting with Chihiro. I do wonder if they wanted to attempt to humanize her first because with the way things are, she really doesn't seem like much other than just a reward for Kenta because he decided he was going to be honest on his date and take the lead.

The author doesn't ignore the fact that these two characters really don't know each other almost at all. In the way that Chihiro is trying to drop her guard around Kenta, we as readers start to see how she feels her real feelings past the stone cold expression and what the relationship means to her. Chihiro is actually quite shy but desires to move their relationship to a more intimate level, seemingly a romantic at heart. She is proactive in making advances physically in a way that feels organic for a awkward adult woman, carefully showing she is interested but also not crossing the line into sexualization for the reader that feels undeserved. I actually find it quite refreshing that the author doesn't do any explicit gazing shots of her body because that's just not where these characters are at. I could imagine in the future that we may see some sexy Chihiro based on some of the playfulness of her attempts at intimacy but it would be entirely on her terms and not until she feels comfortable sharing that with Kenta in their relationship.

After a few chapters we also get our first glimpse of Chihiro having meaningful interaction with someone other than Kenta (finally) with her guardedness being a problem that plagues multiple relationships in her life. She tries to put in her resignation at work and can't assert herself enough with her boss (that she has a great relationship with) to get the words across because she fears she's going to make her boss sad. She gets in a squabble with Kenta who playfully mentions that she has a tendency to get in her own head and this upsets her. It's a really believable problem to have if you're closed off and guarded all the time. The relationships Chihiro does have are very important to her and she definitely seems like the type to spend too much time in her own thoughts, so she would definitely form some types of expectations of how people would react to her. I'm sure a lot of her thoughts are filled with ideas of how people would react to her if she did this or that. It's usually the reason someone ends up as closed off as her! I personally found an attachment to Chihiro by this point and I do think she's a fun lady that you want to see have a successful love life, but maybe that's just my personality where I attach love to any decently written lady thats cute, haha.

The comic still had a major problem with not having Kenta be someone you could form an attachment to for any reason. At this point I thought that Chihiro was cute but the story was just missing some pieces to feel like it had momentum to be leading to anything. I still wanted to keep reading because there was still enough charm and we get to see something interesting about Kenta. He has a fear of intimacy! Sometimes people that have trouble forming relationships can be plagued by this and I thought this was an interesting path to take for him. Chihiro continues to establish physical intimacy and while the two are holding each other, Kenta repels from Chihiro in a snap reaction that comes completely out of left field. He apologizes and tries to make it clear that it's not her fault, and as she desires to continue with physical affection Kenta dips out of there and feels intense guilt and shame.

We learn as Kenta reflects on the past that in high school, a girl he had a crush on had asked him for a kiss and he obliged. He wanted to date her and she said ok, but when summer vacation ended and they returned to school she never spoke to him again and the abandonment sort of festered and led him down the path of leaning into his hobby and not reaching out to try another relationship until he met Chihiro.

There was a layer here that felt like it gave some color to Kenta's character. He jumped in head first and got married to a woman he barely knew and as things were starting to ease into a nice flow, his doubts from a childhood trauma are keeping him from living a happy life. He has baggage that has stopped him from accepting love and now that he has jumped so far into a relationship that he is legally married, he needs to confront his fears so that he can love Chihiro because he knows she deserves it.

With this dynamic I was really invested in both of them working through their issues so that they could truly love each other with no fears in the way. It gives a great overarching problem for them to tackle in contrast to the fun backdrop of their tasty meals they cook together. It finally creates a driving narrative that has some pull. They share a few more attempts at intimacy with decent success, like sharing a kiss as they watch a movie in the backyard on a projector. Kenta really tries to overcome his fear and the story doesn't try to keep him perpetually stuck in a loop of running away from his problems.

The entire reason I felt compelled to write this post was from a chapter that just came out, chapter 25. Chihiro is staying at Kenta's for a full 10 days and towards the tail end of their week together, Kenta has taken her out on a date at the river and is reluctant to take her home. She senses something is up and gets him to open up about it. They talk about both having expectations that if they were going to have some deeper physical intimacy as a real husband and wife (maybe actually sleeping together?), they both would have thought that this week was the time for them to do it. Kenta voices that he has his fear of being rejected by someone he loves and Chihiro wonders if he's afraid of her. He says that he might be, but more than that, he wants to hold her and be close to her.

I have to drop the play by play for a second and say THIS IS MY SHIT RIGHT HERE!! This really struck me in a major way for a few reasons. First, I looooove a good discussion between characters that gets them to open up with really vulnerable feelings. This is such a huge moment for both of them because it's here that everything has been communicated properly like healthy adults should do. He doesn't even pretend that he's not scared of her because he needs her to understand where his mind is but reassures her that more than anything else, she is his wife and he really wants to love her and meet all her emotional needs and be a good partner. 

It's a great thing to tackle in your Centrist BBQ manga if you are trying to get people with these issues to consider a better world for themselves. You have to be ready to have the conversation that is going to be scary and painful if you want to be loved and communicating your truth is how you find contentment and move on, even if things don't work out how you expect them to. The issue of it being a bit idealistic doesn't feel as strong of a critique by this point because they are putting the truth of what it takes to have a successful relationship front and center. Their circumstances for how they got together may be paper thin but it kind of all falls to the side when they make real efforts to get closer than involve fights, compromise, reciprocation and effort!! The end of this chapter is not some incredible cliffhanger, I think we all know what to expect to come from this even if the pacing may end up different. 

What I get from this chapter is an immediately burst of thoughts of what I want to have happen for them and to see them get closer and do more proper relationship things and establish a true feeling of comfort between one another. My imagination was running wild and it makes me want to write things with my characters!! THAT is was ultimately is my shit, I want to write stories about the feelings you have when you have a truly comforting relationship with someone that you can be 100% yourself with and getting to see this manga make real progress in that aspect has gotten me completely on board with where this story goes. I do think that the only weak point still is that Kenta still just doesn't do much! He cooks and he tries to take care of Chihiro but I would love to see him develop more as a person. I could see the author having Chihiro be his support in this way. She could enable him to try to do more for himself and just develop individual motivation and beliefs in the same way that Kenta is trying to get her to open up to those around her. I could see that being a good arc too! Kenta has been seen to be able to speak well to his coworkers, I think having Chihiro develop her interpersonal skills would be a great exploration of character.

I have a strong desire to see what happens next, but I know this type of romance is pretty dry and mundane and won't be everyone's cup of tea. I developed my attachment to Chihiro pretty early so I WANTED to like the story more than it had earned and really just wanted to toss my feelings out to see if it resonates with anyone else or if they think the whole comic is just a goofy time waster than really isn't doing that much. Maybe by writing this out and talking about things I felt were issues gives a better sense of the types of stories I want to tell and if those resonate with you, maybe they'll get you more interesting in checking out the things I want to make in the future.

With that said, try giving How To Grill Our Love a read and maybe you'll start following the weekly updates like I do!