It Takes Two Tomorrow, Too Volume 1 Review

It’s no secret that One Peace Books’ last debut, Usotoki Rhetoric has been a big hit with me. Their latest debut It Takes Two Tomorrow, Too promises a sweet romance story revolving around adult characters and I’m a fan of this genre Does it prove as delightful a read as it sounds? Let’s find out!

The story revolves around 25-year-old Yuya Aida and his girlfriend 28-year-old Rio Aihara who, after dating for one year and three months, decide it’s time to move in together. The manga begins two months after this event when the two have settled into their new routines. They go to work, come home, cook, watch TV together and have a falling-out when someone eats the other’s milk pudding without asking. 

The two are no longer in the honeymoon phase of their relationship. They’re not yet engaged or married, but they have a firm bond and there’s none of the tiptoeing around each other that you see in many similar series. They have arguments, grumble to their co-workers and have misunderstandings but they always communicate with one another and come out the other side better for it. 

Volume 1 includes 19 chapters (including one labelled a bonus) ranging from 5 to 10 pages long. There’s only one two-part storyline with the rest being snippets of Yuya and Rio’s daily lives. It’s a style that reflects the popularity of web manga and 4-page-a-day serialisations on XTwitter. These bite-sized storylines are perfect to start your day off but they don’t hold together as well here in a compiled volume. 

I think it’s telling that the chapter I came away from liking the most was the two-parter, where Yuya and Rio have a falling-out after Yuya attends a mixer hosted by a colleague and comes home late. It’s something Rio wouldn’t have thought about before they moved in together but now that they have, she knows the pain of waiting up for him, wondering what he’s getting up to. This story in particular gave us a deeper understanding of the concerns that creep up from being in a long-term relationship, as well as how to navigate communication surrounding them. 

I think it would have been nice if there were more consistent storylines that continued to creep up in later chapters, but the only thing that does recur is the fact that the two like milk pudding. I enjoyed reading about Yuya and Rio’s day-to-day, but it’s difficult to get invested when chapters are so short and then immediately change track to a completely different subject or event. That’s not a bad thing, depending on what you want out of it, but personally, I was hoping for something more akin to Daily Report About My Witch Senpai (which, yes, has a bit more drama and the main duo are far earlier in their relationship) that carries more with it as the story goes on. 

Readers may recognise mangaka Suzuyuki as they’re the creator of Springtime by the Window, a romance series released by Tokyopop toward the end of 2021. It Takes Two Tomorrow, Too is their most recent work but it has a similar issue to their earlier series when it comes to the art. I found Yuya in particular to be quite inexpressive, always drawn with the same faraway uninterested look on his face. Yes, some of that fits his character, but because there’s so little variation, it doesn’t work particularly well in this format of short instalments. Rio does fare better on the whole, but also often defaults to the same handful of expressions. 

Reassuringly, this work also has the strengths of Springtime by the Window. Backgrounds are detailed enough to be interesting to the reader but don’t get in the way. Comedy scenes land the jokes well, even if they are few and far between in comparison to the previous work. I think the panels could stand to be a little bigger on occasion, but in the same breath, the creator is trying to convey quite a lot in a relatively small page count so I can understand why they’ve opted for filling up pages with smaller panels instead. 

As mentioned earlier, It Takes Two Tomorrow, Too Volume 1 comes to the West thanks to One Peace Books. This release has been translated by Emily Balistrieri and reads well with no issues. Although no one is credited for handling lettering, I will also say that there is a lot more variation in the lettering than usual for this publisher and the book is so much easier to read because of that. Hopefully, that’s a sign of good things to come, going forward! 

It Takes Two Tomorrow, Too is complete in Japan with 5 volumes having run on the Kurage Bunch website between 2019 to 2021. In English, One Peace Books has Volume 2 scheduled for a release at the end of December but currently nothing beyond that.

Overall, your mileage will vary when it comes to It Takes Two Tomorrow, Too Volume 1 depending on what you’re hoping to get out of it. Some people like these short chapter series and others wish there was a bit more to it, so depending on where you stand, that’s going to be the deciding factor on whether you go for it or not. It’s enjoyable enough, even if not compelling.

Our review copy was supplied by the publisher One Peace Books.