Release Date February 25, 2020 Publisher Kodansha Story and Art Kintetsu Yamada Letterer Sara Linsley Translation Matt Treyvaud Amazon BookWalker

Asako Yaeshima has a perspiration problem. She sweats a lot – far more than most women – and her life revolves around controlling her constant perspiration. As a result of her condition, she’s socially awkward and keeps to herself, leading a quiet, solitary life. That all changes, however, when she draws the attention of a very strange man with a very sensitive nose. Sweat, sex, and soap combine in Kodansha’s latest rom-com, but is Sweat and Soap volume 1 worth reading?

Soapy and sweaty characters

Asako Yaeshima A twenty-six-year-old woman who works for Liliadrop, a manufacturer of high-quality soap. She’s a big-time fan of Liliadrop’s products, which isn’t surprising, given how much she perspires.

Kotaro Natori A star soap designer at Liliadrop. He has the nose of a bloodhound and seems to move at a hundred miles an hour at all times.

A stinky story?

Asako is admiring some upcoming Liliadrop soap products in the company’s lobby. When Kotaro, with his almost supernatural sense of smell – detects her scent and is immediately drawn to her. When it comes to scents, Kotaro has no concept of boundaries, personal space, or normal human behaviour. He claims he isn’t a weirdo, but then tells Asako that he wants to study her scent. When she (understandably) runs for her life. Kotaro drags her to a storage room and sniffs her while she cries and wonders what level of hell she has somehow plunged into.

Afterwards, he demonstrates his superhero-level smelling powers by correctly guessing the soap she used that morning, as well as the hygiene products she uses throughout the day, based only on her scent. He also tells her that he’s the designer behind the company’s latest soaps (products which she loves). Kotaro then drops his biggest bomb yet. He thinks she smells amazing (something no one has ever said to her) and needs her for inspiration. He has a presentation on new products due in a week, and he’s hit a creative wall. So he’s now going to come and smell her every day until the presentation is finished.

And the positions he puts her into as he smells her are all just a bit suggestive. Definitely the kind of behaviour that would get him fired in the West for sexual harassment. But it seems Japan has different rules about this sort of thing.

Eventually, Kotaro gets the presentation done. Asako thinks this is the end of their relationship, but Kotaro has other ideas, and steps over the line in a big way. Asako runs away, with no intention of ever seeing him again. Kotaro feels awful about what he’s done, but he’s determined not to let Asako out of his life so easily. However, he also knows that he did a terrible thing. What is he going to do?