There’s all sorts of manga where boy meets girl, man meets woman, etc. At least for teens and young adults that’s generally in high school and college. Adults? A number of ways but it’s generally either through work, at certain parties, or the use of a dating app. For Kenta, he’s been using a dating app for some time now with little success, and it looks like based on how things have gone in prior dates that this time, things won’t work out either — the woman he’s supposed to meet at a fancy restaurant, Chihiro, says she’s going to be late. Joke’s on him though: despite him assuming she’d never show, she arrives, right as he cancels the restaurant reservation and is about to give up and go home. So the date’s still on, but this time at a yakiniku place.
At this point for Kenta, the date’s already a bust. Fortunately, going to a yakiniku place allows him to show off his major passion — grilling — Chihiro finds this comforting and ends up enjoying being in his company. They then choose to continue eating together on occasion, until Kenta learns he will be transferring to a different department in another region. Fearing many things, including forcing Chihiro to adjust to his new lifestyle, he chooses to try and quietly end things by telling her absolute zilch. Chihiro ends up demanding an explanation anyways as she shows up at his current office, so he can’t sneak out of this one! After explaining the situation, she concludes the way to resolve this is marriage. I suspect this was not on Kenta’s bingo card after cancelling the fancy restaurant reservation…
How to Grill Our Love is pretty much what the title says: two adults attempting to love each other with grilling as the main focal point to keep them together. To put a deeper meaning into it, both our main leads have certain personality quirks that tend to clash with others…or so they think. But because of their worries and what they each do for a living, it’s been tough to find the one person in their life to be together with. That said, leaping from going out to suddenly getting married is wild, though as there are numerous ways all sorts of people can start a relationship in this world, it’s probably not totally out of bounds for this to happen. That said, you could certainly believe this series is a more idealistic showcase of relationships that’s unlikely to happen in real life, so you might have to try and sell yourself on these two being together.
Kenta and Chihiro do understand that since they’re marrying each other in an unusual way they have to approach things a bit differently. From enjoying being together, understanding proper boundaries, etc, they’re making it work, and so far it’s been fairly sweet and low key. Also kind of has to be since they’re currently doing long-distance, which does produce issues, namely related to work. For Chihiro, it does eventually get to be too much, which is one of the few challenges these two have to deal with in this series.
The other part of this series is the grilling and for sure, actual grill enthusiasts will know more than me if what’s being depicted is correct. All manners of food (meat of course is the main one) have been put on grills, whether it’s in Kenta’s home or next to a river. It gets descriptive on where to place the meat on the grill depending on heat temperature. The importance of marinating meat and how it can make things quick on short notice. There will be more grill tips and tricks that Kenta will impart on Chihiro and the audience…and maybe just like Chihiro in one of the chapters, we’ll break out a grill ourselves.
Now whether the art captures this will be up to the reader. In general what gets shown seems fine to me. Character designs in general are solid and work out as well, but it’s hard to say they stand out in any major way. The manga has nailed the scenes when Kenta and Chihiro want to get touchy-feely with each other though, managing to convey a married couple who skipped steps while having to navigate their day-to-day responsibilities.
How to Grill Our Love has been a pretty sweet read that doesn’t seem like it’ll dig too deep into relationship drama. Maybe it’ll be for the best it stays that way due to the one argument the pair did have (nothing too crazy, but as these chapters have been somewhat short, this too was simple and short). Think anyone aiming for something quaint instead of something dramatic wouldn’t want things to be this heavy anyways. Instead, you’ll want to read these two continuing to get closer than ever before while also putting all manner of food on a grill. If that sounds like your thing, you’ll want to dig in to this manga.