The Spring 2023 Manga Guide

My Coworker Has a Secret

What's It About? 

Akari is a 25-year-old bookstore worker who lives in Tokyo. She looks like a very normal and stylish office worker, but she has a secret she doesn't want anyone to know: she is a massive otaku for 2.5D stage play actors, to the point that she spends all of her paycheck immediately to support them. She desperately hides this, but somehow her male coworker finds out her secret anyway.

My Coworker Has a Secret has story and art by Mushiro, with English translation by Lena Atanassova and lettering by Claudia Takizawa. Tokyopop has released its first volume both digitally and physically on April 11 for $8.99 and $13.99 respectively.

Is It Worth Reading?

Christopher Farris

Rating:

My Coworker Has a Secret is nominally a romance, albeit one where author Mushiro seems to have completely forgotten to infuse scenes between the leads with anything resembling chemistry or tension. Leading lady Sejima simply experiences events which propel her into proximity with Kazama in a way that could be seen as affectionate. The titular secret doesn't even amount to much beyond an opening volley plot device. Sejima's status as a financially irresponsible actor stan could have provoked questions about her unhealthy habits. Likewise, her worries about being rejected by her friends/coworkers could have explored themes about the place adults occupy in fandom. But like the finer details of anyone's lives in this story, it barely amounts to plot-propelling background noise.

I can get behind a simple fluffy fantasy in something like this, and the manga does occasionally trip into successfully showing how Wife City Kazama is. But apart from those flashes of the bare minimum of storytelling, the series is happy to take up space with inconsistently drawn talking heads going on about nice living situations or trying to convince us of how craaaaazy all this supposedly is. It's ironic when a bonus comic depicting Kazama's daily routine before Sejima moved in claims that his life would be "turned upside-down" afterwards, when what we've actually witnessed is her simply benefitting from being around him while he hasn't really changed anything.

There are a couple of plot-driving misunderstandings partway through that try to momentarily introduce some tension into the central relationship. Most of this is a byproduct of Sejima being shuffled into the break room so her coworkers can infodump background information on Kazama that Mushiro seemingly forgot about up until that point. Similarly, supporting character Rintaro is introduced later and mostly serves to make clear to the audience that Kazama and Sejima are definitely falling in love, since nothing about how they're actually portrayed is convincing of that. "Nothing" really is the prevailing vibe of My Coworker Has a Secret, a loose collection of character circumstances and connective concepts we're told about a couple of times, but with nothing done in this first volume beyond letting them exist on the pages.

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

You know you may need to make some changes when a bird steals your lunch and you've spent too much on musical tickets to buy another cheap sandwich. That's when Akari ought to realize she's perhaps gone a little out of control with her spending. But she's not the most self-aware of protagonists, which is evident in the fact that she was so into her fandom that she completely missed her apartment building being demolished until almost the day of. She's largely painted as the author of her misfortunes, which is a risk, because it may not endear her to readers. Nonetheless, this is a comedy, so her foibles are largely played for laughs. (However, she's shown to be very competent at work.)

As the book goes on, we catch glimpses of how depressed Akari was before she discovered her beloved Ren-Ren, adding some much-needed substance to this fluffy tale. When she casually mentions that she has no savings because her ex-boyfriend stole them, it becomes clear that she's been in some pretty dark places with nothing to cheer her up at the time. Fortunately, she's in the right place at the right time for some help. After a bird flies off with her lunch, she bumps into a lone bento box on a park bench, naturally leading to the man attached to it. It just wouldn't be a romantic comedy if he didn't offer her a guest room in his ludicrously opulent apartment. (See: My Boss' Kitten, Our Fake Marriage, etc.)

My Coworker Has a Secret isn't anything new or exciting, and it does feel like the creator's just pulling tropes out of a rom-com grab bag. But for all of that, it does work and can be a lot of fun.

Jean-Karlo Lemus

Rating:

Oh boy, Akari is truly a kindred spirit of mine. I know all too well the lifestyle of someone who intensely stans their fave, and goes through endless hoops for merch and streams while painfully trying to keep it all a secret from coworkers...although I've never left myself starved and destitute in pursuit of VTuber goodies. While Akari's a bit of a walking disaster, the stoic and supportive Ritsu is a good foil: withdrawn and subdued in comparison to Akari's boundless energy. It's even cute how he doesn't judge Akari for her outrageous fangirlisms.

What fascinates me about this story is how much it keeps Ritsu away from Ren-Ren. I kept expecting some kind of twist where Ritsu would end up connected to Ren-Ren—and it never came. Akari's just a hopeless fangirl, while Ritsu's the guy who helps her out at her lowest. Somehow, the two just end up catching feelings. It's a good, down-to-earth romance, even if Ritsu is loaded with cash.

It does take a bit too long for the romantic tension to appear, though. The first volume is almost over before we see Ritsu finding himself much more infatuated with Akari than he'd even expect. This story is going for a slow burn, but it doesn't quite work when you've got a fireball like Akari as your lead. The art isn't doing anything particularly novel, but it's cute and functional—and that's enough. I mildly recommend it, and I'm genuinely curious where this story will go. I need to know the story behind the Acovado Boy room!

MrAJCosplay

Rating:

Do you ever read a story that reminds you of how jaded you are? Coworker Has a Secret is a very sweet adult romance series about an arguably irresponsible woman being given the opportunity to interact with somebody whom she can be open and honest with. There are plenty of examples of characters taking advantage of each other in stories like this, but that moment never came here. This is the type of story that kind of makes you realize that some people are just lonely and looking for different outlets to be happy with other people.

Our main character is kind of broke and living financially by a thread due to a person whom she trusted screwing her over in the past. Now she spends almost all her income on an online internet personality that seems to provide her with the only source of dopamine in her life. If that's not incredibly relatable, then I wish I was living your life right now. I joke, but I do like the underlying theme here about how it's hard to find a character unlikable when a lot of their boneheaded decisions come from a place of loneliness. It makes me all the more happy that our two leads end up finding each other, with a romance blossoming between them. The pacing is a little slow, and the ending of this first volume does sneak up on you, but this definitely is the type of story that makes me want to hit up my friends and make sure that they're also doing OK.