Many thanks to Netgalley, Kodansha Comics and the author for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book is what you call an amazing resource, its literally RESOURCE.

Is Love the Answer follows the coming of age story of Chika, who has moved to a new city for uni and also to discover how they feel and who they are. Chika feels like an alien as she doesn't feel any attraction or romantic feelings for anybody and wants to understand how and why this is works. So she choses to study Psychology. After an initial glitch, she makes good friends and finds people who can help guide her through the resources.

This was such a heartwarming story with so much information and beautiful art, found family, amazing narrative.

Absolutely loved it.

Is Love the Answer is a great coming of age graphic novel that can serve as an introduction to the asexual and aromantic spectrum and is beautifully drawn throughout. There’s an attempted sexual assault scene depicted within the first few pages of the story. However, it serves as a jumping off point for our protagonist, Chika, to discover herself. Like many on the asexual and/or aromantic spectrums, Chika feels she doesn’t understand what romance or romantic love is, as most people her age would, almost like instinct. She finally explores more at University, meeting new friends, a quirky professor and encountering new experiences, which helps her grow into a more assured of herself. The info can be a bit much if you’re not familiar with the concepts already, but I’ve been looking at this stuff for a while, so it wasn’t too big of an issue. Since the story was written by a Japanese person living in Japan, not everything matches up to a western understanding of the queer community, but it’s great to see how it’s viewed in other parts of the world. I heavily advise you to look at the post story notes, there’s plenty of info there as well. I know it’s just an introduction, part of me wished there was a bit more to the story, as it’s self contained in 6 chapters. This is a great start if you’re just learning about this aspect of the community and minus the one scene near the beginning, is rather wholesome.

Thank you NetGalley and Kodansha for the DRC! I feel bad that it took me so long to start it but I finished it in a day because it was so engaging.

Though I knew the story was going to focus on asexuality, I didn’t realize it would show Chika during her high school and college years. But, that added to the story quite well. I was shocked at the students thoughts and actions towards trying to force her to do the same things as them. It was interesting to see her meet up with an old friend who apologized for forcing her to do things that the friend herself didn’t even want to do. I just wish people would learn that lesson sooner.

I did enjoy watching Chika learn how many things are a spectrum and can/will change. Whatever decision is made today does not have to remain if things change and she should not feel bad about evolving and learning different things about her identity and how she chooses to express herself. I’m glad she was able to find people who cared to learn to understand her but I was a little confused about her just moving into a professors share house. Is that legal?!

Overall, I really enjoyed this and would love to see more works on the topic in manga. Solid 3.75.

This wasn’t really my thing. I did enjoy learning a lot more about asexuality and the experience that people have this version of asexuality. I i find that the story was a bit dull at times and it seeme like we’re going anywhere besides the fact the main character is trying to figure out her own sexuality outside the perception of what people who aren’t asexual.

Thanks to NetGalley, the Author and the Publisher for this ARC!

I really enjoyed this one.
At first I foolishly thought this was a "romance" but it quickly became clear that it's ore of a "finding yourself" or "coming to terms with yourself" kind of story.
It is clear that this isn't the end and because this was so cute and informative at the same time, I really want to read the next volume!

It's soft and sweet and chaotic and just a perfect feel good kind of manga.

For those learning about asexuality and the spectrum it was a cute read. I know what it feels like to be confused about how you identify so I both resonated and rolled my eyes at her conflicts.

This is an informative and sweet story of a girl trying to figure out how she wants to identify herself. She uses the guidance of friends and college professors to try and understand romantic feelings, attraction and relationships. I really liked that even when she decided to define herself as asexual she still felt like that was flexible. Hearing all the different characters talk about how they define themselves was interesting too. I recommend this one for sure.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my digital ARC.

The book follows main character Chika as she struggles to understand why, unlike some of her friends, she struggles to feel sexual and romantic attraction.
Her friends constantly tell her, "you just need the right guy," but , Chika doesn't share the same feelings as her friends no matter who she meets. She is constantly bombarded with what is considered normal behaviour with complete disregard to how she would be feel.
When she attends University , she begins to explore and understand a little more about her gender identity.

Where was this when I was a teenager? A very wholesome read explaining that there's no normal/ abnormal representation for everyone.

A very good read, for any ages, even though you think you are "in the know".

A very sweet depiction of a young woman discovering the vocabulary to describe her sexuality and the friends and mentors who support her on that journey. The art is beautiful.

I really enjoyed this manga. It’s a much-needed story about a girl on her journey of self-discovery, learning about sexuality, gender, and romance.

Be aware that the manga touches on issues like the subtle aggressions and difficulties caused by sexual normativity. It explores the challenges of trying to understand one's sexuality in a society that lacks information about asexuality and aromanticism.
While sexuality isn't a choice, we can control the language we use to describe our experience and explain it to others. I found this idea wonderful. The manga does a really good job of portraying this, using metaphors and beautiful art. The protagonist explores all the possibilities by interacting with her community. She doesn't represent all aspects of asexuality but is a person within the spectrum, asking questions that sometimes don’t have an answer, seeking to understand how labels or better said, what labels represent her better.
in conclusion, the manga is beautifully done. I highly recommend it—not only is it educational, but the art and characters make it entertaining to read. I'm so happy that it finally has an officially translated.

2/5

This story started off great, the problem is I found it so incredibly boring and repetitive and the plot was completely forgotten after a third of the read.

I think this manga is perfect if you are looking for a very deep self discovery introspective vision of an individual. You will take a trip inside this person, the thoughts, the fears and everything around.

If you are looking for a more "standard format" where you get a mix of both deep dialogues and story, this is definitely not for you, having only deep dialogues but absolutely no story.

I didn't really like this manga.

Folks who are asexual are constantly scrutinized over why they are asexual, with allosexual folks trying to find a reason for it, some sort of trauma that has made them this way. This is a very wrong way of viewing asexuality. I felt like this book sort of leaned into that, by starting the book with Chika being sexually assaulted. I can see what the author was trying to do, but I don't know that it really worked.

I did like that eventually Chika found her people, though it also felt like maybe a little too late? After having had to hear everyone defending her rapist (well, what did you expect if you went over to his place??? YIKES!), as well as having to deal with people asking her questions about who she's dating once she gets to uni. It felt like the trauma and a-phobia were plot devices, and I really hate it when such negative things are used in that way. It feels lazy.

This is a very sweet manga. It does veer into feeling like an Asexuality 101 class, but it seems like it was the intent of the author to both entertain and inform so I think they succeeded! The art is pretty, too!

Speaking as an aro-ace who’s still not sure what all this means for herself, I look forward to seeing more volumes in this series. Felt like we received a solid stepping stone and I want more. Though since this is a manga, it could serve to further illuminate Japanese culture: how would they feel about an asexual woman versus how someone from America might react to it.

Is love the answer was such a good reading experience, I highly recommend it. It contains lots of informative content about asexuality and other lgbtq issues. It was refreshing seeing the characters trying to navigate their identities in a world who’s not kind to them.
I will definitely read other work by the author !
Thanks NetGalley for the arc

Beautiful exploration of asexuality, something you don't see much in fiction. If you're looking for a manga that's fast-moving or has lots of action, this definitely isn't it. It can even seem a little clinical at times. But this was a wonderful way to present this subject as well as other types of sexuality.
3.5 stars

Chika feels weird about romance and sex. She doesn't want to have sex or do romance. But everyone falls in love right? This is story about Chika realizing she might be asexual or on the spectrum and asexual college teacher adopting every stray (maybe) queer folk because she's got a big house and why not.

I really loved the gang. I am sorry I don't remember the names. Always moody emo gay guy who's mad people ask how he knows he's gay if he's never been with a woman. A lady who doesn't know her sexuality because she's too bisy watching anime. They are so cute together.

It resonated with me. I felt weird at school because everyone was doing romance and probably more sex than their parents were aware of but I never cared for that stuff. I didn't have a word for it untill much later. Chika's experiences are in many ways similar to mine (minus queer gang sadly).

I really wish there were more information about asexuality. Unless you explicitly go looking for it you'd just know that it's "a person having 0 sexual attraction" and it's so much more than that.

content/trigger warning:
aphobia/acephobia
attempted sexual assault

representation:
aromantic
asexual

This is pretty much ace 101. Simple explanations for readers not too familiar with the community. Some of the translations and definitions are a little different as various cultures have their own words and definitions, but it's not too far off from how aromantic and asexual are defined in English.

This was such an interesting manga! Thank you to Kodansha for this read! I will admit, I did not previously know very much about asexuality, so I wanted to read this simply to learn. And I feel like this was an excellent intro to the topic! Not being asexual myself, I cannot speak to the accuracy of this manga, but I personally feel like I learned quite a bit. I also enjoyed how each character was exploring their own sexualities in different ways, and I LOVED the overall message that there is really no such thing as "normal." Great read!