Ogami-san Can’t Keep It In Volume 1 Review

I think it’s fair to say that I am a big fan of both a good coming-of-age story and manga originating from the Kodansha magazine Afternoon. So, you can bet I was excited when Kodansha announced they’d licensed Ogami-san Can’t Keep It In, a series that fits both of those criteria. Now that Volume 1 has been released, let’s find out if it lives up to my expectations! 

Our story follows high-school student Ogami-san who has always struggled to lead an ordinary school life. Due to the onset of puberty, Ogami can’t help but be fascinated by the male body and spends her days either having racy fantasies or reading anatomy books. Her mind is so consumed by this, that Ogami fears she’ll blurt out her inner thoughts in casual conversation, which has led to her keeping her distance from her classmates. 

Things change for Ogami when she meets Yaginuma-kun, a boy in her class who offers her a towel when she gets soaked while washing her hands in the bathroom. Just like Ogami, Yaginuma keeps to himself which our heroine finds odd, given his handsome good looks – surely the girls should be all over him? 

When Ogami attempts to return the towel, she accidentally grabs Yaginuma’s hand and then blurts out her inner desire to see his penis! Confused and embarrassed Ogami desperately tries to apologise, but in the process, she learns the reason Yaginuma has been staying away from everyone. It turns out that whenever someone touches him, they find themselves sharing their true inner thoughts which has led to him having all kinds of bad experiences. 

Having been an outcast for so long, Ogami understands what Yaginuma’s going through, even if it’s for a completely different reason to her, so she reckons perhaps the two could be friends, provided they don’t judge one another for their quirks. And perhaps they can find a way to put Yaginuma’s ability to use for a good cause.

Going into Ogami-san Can’t Keep It In I wasn’t sure what to expect. With the sexually charged premise and title, I was prepared for this to be filled with raunchy comedy and little else. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that what we have here isn’t too dissimilar to Mari Okada’s O Maidens in your Savage Season. There’s a lot of social taboo around young adults growing interested in sex and romance, so it’s always nice when a manga comes along that addresses how this is a perfectly normal part of growing up and no one should be shamed for it. And although the jokes are quite sexual, they’re not particularly explicit which makes it suitable for teenage readers (Kodansha rate it 16+, which seems right for a target market). 

And while this series might be built on the premise of Ogami having sexually charged fantasies, the story is eager to help misfits of all types. Throughout the book, we meet other students who feel like they can’t fit in for other reasons, such as Hikaru Matsukuma who is often mistaken for a thug due to his well-built profile and “scary” face. He’d long given up on making friends at school, but inspired by Ogami and Yaginuma’s budding friendship he puts himself out there hoping to join their group. So it’s bigger in scope than just Ogami and Yaginuma’s relationship. 

While not their first work, this is Yu Yoshidamaru’s English debut outside of being a part of one of the Syrup: Yuri Anthology and on the whole, I’m impressed. Not only is the story entertaining with a great message to share, but Yoshidamaru’s artwork is great fun to flip through. The characters are very expressive and each panel is lively, filled to the brim with the boundless energy of the cast. While a lot of the story is contained within quite small panels, the mangaka has a good sense of when to break out into half-page or even full-page panels for the more impactful moments. The story isn’t particularly heavy in subject matter, which I think the art does a good job of conveying – it’s fun. 

The only minor concern I have at this point is that it feels like, as Ogami-san’s world expands with more characters, there’s not as much focus on the sexual jokes. And in the later chapters, some of these gags did feel a bit forced, which I’m hoping won’t be an ongoing problem and was simply Yoshidamaru finding their feet as the world grows. At the very least it wasn’t enough to be a problem for me, just something I noticed.

As mentioned earlier, Ogami-san Can’t Keep It In comes to the West thanks to Kodansha and has been translated by Max Greenway with lettering by Dietrich Premier. The translation reads well and there are translation notes at the back of the book to explain some of the references and also the meaning behind the characters’ names. One thing I was surprised by was to see “gyaru” translated to “girly girls” (as referenced in one of the notes) as we more often see it translated as “gal” or left as gyaru in other works, but that is a very slight issue rather than a problem. 

One problem I had with my copy is that the colour pages at the beginning of the book have been put in upside down (and read the wrong way round because of that, even if you turn the book over), but I’m not sure if that’s a widespread problem or if it’s simply an error with my copy. 

The series ran in the seinen magazine Afternoon between 2016-2019 and has been collected into seven  volumes in Japanese. In English, Volume 2 is scheduled for a release later this month with #3 set to follow in late February. 

Overall, Ogami-san Can’t Keep It In is off to a promising start. The series offers a light and entertaining read while conveying the message that no one should have to worry about or be an outcast because of their inner thoughts and desires. Fans of coming-of-age stories will definitely want to check this out.

Our review copy from Kodansha was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.

A free preview can be read on the Kodansha website here.