In I Can’t Stand Stand Being Your Childhood Friend, Aoi and Ryota have been best friends their whole lives. They have always done everything together: same neighborhood, same kindergarten, same bus, same school, same clubs, and same university. Now, they even live together. However, things take a turn in their relationship when Ryota’s latent feelings start to surface. He’s always been in love with Aoi, and he can’t hide it anymore.
Content warnings: graphic sex and nudity. Mild spoilers for Volume 1.
There’s nothing really new or exciting in this BL.
All the tropes are very classic: grumpy with black hair and happy-go-lucky with light hair, one being oblivious to the other’s very evident feelings, a proudly gay side couple that guides the main one in their journey with sexuality, etc.
Aside from the story being simple and boring, I have some major criticisms about it. First, to a less worrying degree, the pacing is too fast. By this I mean the author doesn’t build up adequately to the important events. There is not enough time to process them before the action escalates or the story progresses.
Instead of slowly introducing us to their roommate dynamic and building up their sexual tension from there, Ryota (confusingly) confesses almost immediately, creating an awkward atmosphere between them but not in an interesting way. Then, they move into a physical relationship really fast without exploring what that would mean for their current relationship. I do think this could be realistic, since there are a lot of pent up feelings after years of friendship, but the writing could have done a better job at making the reader feel that. Instead, it just feels gratuitous, which leads me to my next point.
The second main issue is worse, and it’s the feeling of reading a fetishized story.
Some of the things the characters say and do made me immediately feel like the author is fetishizing MLM relationships and all she really wants is to draw them having sex. This makes sense considering how other aspects of the stories feel lackluster. It is truly a shame, because the potential of a really interesting childhood friends to lovers story is there, but it is so poorly executed. I cannot really recommend this, unless you just wanna read porn without substance.
Seven Seas released Volume 1 of I Can’t Stand Stand Being Your Childhood Friend on October 14th, 2025. Volume 2 is set to release on February 10th, 2026.
I Can’t Stand Being Your Childhood Friend Vol. 1
Story & Art: An Momose
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