Reviews with content warning for Acephobia/Arophobia - I Want to Be a Wall, Vol. 2

I loved this one even more than the first book! I really appreciated the fantastic conversation about ace and aro experiences and a lot of the nuances about how different people experience it.

I was grateful for the additional cultural context about asexuality in Japan that they offered in the glossary of this book. I'm guessing it's there perhaps because a lot of American readers had the exact same reaction to it that I did. (Need to go update my review of book 1! 😅) "Asexual: The term "asexuality" in Japan is commonly defined as a lack of both romantic and sexual attraction. Readers from English-speaking countries might be more familiar with the two being separate orientations-aromanticism and asexuality respectively."

Back to the story of this book. I thought it had a good depiction of someone baffled by their own jealousy, and how intellectualizing it doesn't actually make the feeling go away. Jealousy is often rooted in a fear of losing connection with someone we care about, and I am so glad they showed it in the context of this unique marriage. You don't need to be sexually possessive of someone or madly in love with them to feel jealousy.

The thing that bumped this up to a 5 for me is getting to see how these two are defining their own relationship, what they want from each other, how they're making it work as a family. That's one of the best, and sometimes the strangest part of having a non traditional relationship. In my review of book 1, I mentioned how it felt to read it as someone who's been polyamorous. Well, part of that is the blessing and challenge of figuring out new scripts and structures for every new relationship and extended polycule. It was a joy to see that represented on the page.

Spoiler explanation of what I mean:

I think their relationship could loosely be argued to be ethical nonmonogamy/polyamory depending on how you define additional emotional attachments ouside a given relationship, even when that attachment is one-sided and unrequited. Even though they don't call it that, there is at least one scene where Gaku does the internal relationship math of "wait, are we exclusive? Do I want that? Why am I feeling jealous if we're not exclusive?" And eventually comes to the conclusion that he'd be happy for Yuriko if she found someone else, and at the same time he still wants a meaningful relationship with her. That is exactly the kind of emotional excavation and internal conversation that polyamorous people tend to have a lot. Especially when you're first starting out. I truly love how it's depicted here in such a healthy way!

Content Warnings

erictb's review

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emotional informative lighthearted

Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

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