Assorted Entanglements is about the surprise relationship between an office lady who keeps dating married men and a former juvenile delinquent. Or its about two women trying to fit their jagged edges together into a real relationship despite not knowing what they’re doing. Iori gets dumped by her latest married man, and as usual goes to drown her sorrows at her favourite izakaya… Which is fine until she wakes up next to Minami, the attractive young waitress who works there, with no memory of the night before. And that’s without getting into into Shion, who is overwhelmingly possessive, and Shizuka, who is a current juvenile delinquent.
So what I’m saying is that all of the characters are hot messes and it’s immensely entertaining.
As always: let’s start with the art. I like it and how good it is at contrasting Iori’s almost moe-blob style against Minami’s aura of coolness. The simplicity works great for the comedic scenes! The rare action scenes feel a bit static, but again, they’re rare; it didn’t ruin my experience. And the serious scenes do hit hard for all of the silliness and goofy art leading up to them.
… It’s very funny to me that the characters being shirtless is fine, but they’re not allowed to have nipples.
Discovering that Assorted Entanglements started life as comics on Twitter made the entire structure make more sense to me. Some chapters seemed to be a string of two-to-four page comics with no real flag that they weren’t part of the same narrative, which feels disjointed as a reading experience. Knowing that they were originally released as two-to-four page comics cleared up my confusion! The pacing still feels a bit messy and disjointed, but I understand why now. I think it would have made more sense if the publisher leaned into that and just made the chapters match up with the page count for each story, a la When the Villainess Seduces the Main Heroine. The story itself swings between jokes, the characters figuring out their sexual relationship, and serious drama with absolutely no warning.
But the emotional beats when the story does become serious are fantastic. Iori is desperate for someone who will actually choose her, who wants to spend time with her, which she never got in her relationships with married men. Minami wants someone who she’s safe around; her family is abusive, and she’s got a volatile relationship with a friend from her delinquent days, and Iori is the person who accepts her as is. Going from jokes about who’s going to top to scenes that explore their issues within three pages? Whiplash, but not in a bad way.
(I don’t want to be like “How dare this silly manga drop truth bombs without warning,” but in a very real way I wasn’t expecting the line “People who don’t know how to conduct themselves in a relationship can’t make it work with anyone. In that sense, the other half of the equation doesn’t really matter.”)
That said, I can see the age-gap being a problem for some readers; while both characters are at the same level maturity-wise, one of the characters is twenty-eight and the other is both eighteen and willing to joke about reporting her girlfriend for corrupting a minor. And there is some casual violence between all of the named characters. Avoid if any of that’s going to bother you!
In conclusion: the characters are hot messes, but seeing them trying to fit together and figure themselves out is fun. I have absolutely no idea where the next few volumes are going to take us.
Caution warnings: physical abuse, off-screen infidelity, age-gap relationship, alcoholism
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