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I Seriously Can’t Believe You…
Japanese Title:
君ってやつはこんなにも
Kimitte Yatsu wa Konnanimo
Twitter: @fumikawajimi
Publisher: @BPilz_Label
Link Tree: Jimi Fumikawa / B.Pilz
They say young love is the purest. I firmly believe it’s also the dumbest, silliest, and most awkward, and nothing captures that truly absurd “first love” feeling to me quite like Jimi Fumikawa’s I Seriously Can’t Believe You… with all its cuteness, cringe, and yearning.
The manga starts out with a ridiculous and innocent, but nonetheless cruel, joke that truly highlights how dumb and young these teenage boys are, with them not even considering the consequences of their actions until they’re already happening. Kon, our adorable main character, and his friends are wondering why the incredibly hot and popular Iida rejects every girl that confesses to him.
“Is he gay?”
“Wanna look into it?”
“What? How?”
“There’s only one way.”
Next thing Kon knows, he’s been suckered by his friends into confessing to Iida just to see how the other boy reacts. However, rather than accepting him—but still not offended or rude about it—Iida replies that he supports Kon’s inclination toward men but can’t return his feelings.
Kon, who has always seen himself as straight and actually likes huge tits and creampie porn, feels horrible for pulling a prank on such a nice guy. As he notices Iida looking at him more and more often by the day, the guilt eats him up and he drags Iida to his room to apologize. After a huge string of misunderstandings between two incredibly dumb boys—Kon thinking Iida is staring at him because he can see through Kon’s guilt, and Iida thinking Kon is continuing to catch his eye because he’s hoping to win his affections—they two reconcile and decide to bond over the quest for understanding Iida’s sexuality (to help him find a girl he’s actually interested in enough to not reject).
However, plot twist: chapter two is a complete replay of everything from Iida’s perspective, and he’s very much gay, and now he’s also very much interested in Kon. Their love story just gets more and more cutely bizarre as Kon misunderstand everything Iida says and does (Iida still being entirely closeted) and finds himself accidentally riling Iida up with his idiotic cuteness, kind personality, and constant skinship.
I don’t want to spoil too much of the manga, since I sincerely believe it’s worth reading yourself. (To be honest, it kind of kills me to give away the chapter two twist, since that chapter hit like a ton of bricks the first time I picked up the series, and still just feels so satisfying when I read it now.) Just know that this is sincerely one of my favorite BL of all time, and even though I’ve probably read it upwards of thirty times at this point, even when I was rereading it to write this review I couldn’t stop smiling. Kon and Iida are just that cute and wonderful.
Kon, in particular, is… 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️ As has likely been well-established at this point, I’m a huge sucker for uke characters, and I just love Kon. He’s so unbelievably simple-minded and cute and pure—shockingly so for a teenage boy obsessed with creampie porn. He’s truly the epitome of the “beautiful cinnamon roll too good for this world” meme. Even when he does something mean, it’s because he doesn’t even realize it. He’s constantly so curious about his budding feelings for Iida, asking bizarre questions to his friends and family like “is it normal to want to hold hands with your friends?”
Plus, through the entire manga Iida has a background monologue about his thoughts on the situation and on Kon, and it’s so relatable. His constant internal screaming and crying over just how fucking cute Kon is mirrored my own feelings exactly, and it was so fun to kind of put myself into him as a character as he slowly fell deeper and deeper into love with Kon. Every cute moment, little smile, hand touch—it killed Iida, and me as well.
Also, Jimi Fumikawa just has such an incredible knack for conveying the small, gentle, unsure intimacies between the two of them, from their first moment of touching each other with Kon awkwardly and stiffly sitting in Iida’s lap, to their incredibly unsure but tender hand-holding on the train while not being able to look each other in the eye, to them sitting in bed silently holding hands while both trying to internally make sense of their feelings. Every moment like that is so important to the stage their relationship is at in the scene, and it elevates those moments from cute to just incredibly potent and memorable.
Her art is also just… /chef’s kiss… Iida is so perfectly balanced between being a big dumb teenager, and an incredibly handsome young man. Kon’s design is also just perfect with his little snaggletooth and his dumb grin with his gentle, soft features. The art so consistent and clean and only ever adds massively to how great the story is. Whether it’s crowded trains or quiet bedrooms, every scene has just the right amount of detail.
As for ero scenes, they’re actually relatively minimal. While the two are still horny teenagers at their core, most of the focus is on their relationship and feelings for each other, and the conflict that arises from that. Funny enough, the scene that’s most memorable in their initial sexual encounter is when Kon—not even realizing what he’s doing—gently nuzzles Iida. That’s not to say the ero scenes aren’t good—they’re wonderful. But even within them, there’s more of a focus on how cute Kon is (and jfc is he cute), how awkward both of them are, and how wonderful it is that they finally understand their feelings for each other.
Some other small things I really love about this book:
★ Once Kon realizes that Iida is, in fact, gay, he actually feels terrible about how a prank like jokingly being asked out by a male classmate would make Iida feel. I thought that was a really wonderful moment of empathy after what could have easily been brushed off as “just a joke” or “a silly gag” and it makes me so happy Jimi Fumikawa included in.
★ In a similar vein, it’s really easy to write Kon’s friends off as jerks since they were the ones who put Kon up to “confessing” to Iida in the first place, but it’s really clear through the manga that they really love and care about Kon, and are surprisingly protective of him. The moments where they were mad at Iida for his (highly plot-relevant) poor treatment of Kon were sweet and heartwarming, and they were never jealous of Kon spending time with Iida, and always willing to give the two space.
★ The attention to detail in chapter two is so fun–there’s a lot of dialogue that matches up between chapters one and two, so please make sure to look out for those when you read it!
Actually, Jimi Fumikawa announced in late August that her book for this year’s J.Garden (if you don’t know what that is, don’t worry, there will be a post on it soon! 😉) will be a continuation of Kon and Iida’s story, and I can’t wait. Any extra content I can get from these to is a huge bonus in my book. If you aren’t in Japan and can’t attend J.Garden, hopefully the book will get posted to Toranoana or Animate so the global community can enjoy it as well! (Sometimes they’re also released digitally later on, though I’m not sure we’d be able to license it since it’s not an officially published work… sorry…😥)
I hope I was able to convince you to give this manga a chance! If I didn’t convince you, please look at the 70+ (!!!!!) reviews on Renta! that all say the same thing. This story is simple, but it’s so incredibly cute and packed with gentle, bittersweet emotions of first love and attraction. It’s an absolutely wonderful read, and imo belongs in every person’s “BL starter pack” for what great things this genre has to offer.
Plus, I timed this review specifically to match up with when the manga is on sale, so at the time of publishing you can get the first chapter free!! Please read it!! It’s worth it!!!!!
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