The 2 main characters are Soichiro Kominami and Yuta Mori. Soichiro is a total people pleasing school nutritionist, and Mori is a college student who seems to have little to no interest in eating. One day, Soichiro notices Mori sitting outside their apartment building wet from the rain and hungry. He takes him in to care for him and provide healthier food than what Mori admits he usually eats.
Right off the bat, I absolutely loved Soichiro’s character. He was written very humorously and likeable, I was often compelled to feel pretty bad for the guy throughout as well lol..on the other hand I don’t have much to say about Mori, but he compliments Soichiro nicely.
While the manga was admittedly very enjoyable to read I did have some problems with this causing me to have mixed feelings, and this is where we get into slight spoiler territory so just a heads up.
Around chap 2-3, Soichiro hooks up with a very strong lookalike of Mori. The manga treats this with some suspicion, which it did appear to be very much so but then never actually explains what the deal was. We don’t find out if it was a brother, a simple lookalike, something more sinister, etc. Relatively big plot hole if you ask me…
Quickly after that when Mori and Soichiro begin dating, Mori lets his ex-girlfriend sleep over at his apartment like the next day and this is very quickly just skimmed over, and doesn’t seem to be much of a problem to Soichiro? Which just felt weird.
(Major spoilers here)
Finally, the age gap. Honestly, the age gap isn’t weird at all, if it wasn’t for the fact Mori has been pursuing Soichiro (and honestly, stalking him) since he was around 9…and Soichiro was already in his 20’s by that point. Soichiro is honestly pretty innocent in this situation and didn’t know it was the same kid till (adult) Mori brought it up. But man, this is just..super weird from Mori’s side.
The author does admit in the afterword that they wanted to show that Soichiro and Mori are an unstable and co-dependent couple, but that they can be happy regardless of that. Well I definitely respect the honestly lmao.
Overall, I would recommend ‘The Neighbor I Desire’ if you can look past the weird age thing and the slightly stalker-ish behavior. The manga has a happy ending and although it made me a bit weirded out at parts generally I enjoyed reading it a lot.
