“Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko!” (Ayaka-chan wa Hiroko-senpai ni Koishiteru) is an office romance between Ayaka (Kato Shiho) and her superior Hiroko (Mori Kanna). It starts off with Ayaka’s attempts to woo Hiroko and to get her to notice Ayaka’s feelings. Her initial attempts end up in comic failures because Hiroko presumes Ayaka is straight and her gestures don’t have any meaning behind them. As the show proceeds, we find that Hiroko’s supposed obliviousness is actually a defence mechanism of wilful ignorance that she puts up to shield herself.

Their age difference of more than a decade is a barrier to their relationship, because their mentalities have been shaped by their experiences which in turn have been shaped by the realities of how people perceived the LGBTQ+ community in the past versus the present. But, as Hiroko realises, times have changed, and queer people are treated differently now than they were a decade ago, whether it is through wholehearted acceptance or nonchalance. Still, it takes her time to break down the walls she has put up around herself and reciprocate Ayaka’s feelings.

“Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko!” is at its core a sweet, sometimes silly, romance between two women who have had very different life experiences, partially due to their age gap. One seeks happiness with the woman she loves irrespective of how the wider society will see them, and the other wants to protect the woman she likes and thinks that the only way to do that is by hiding who she is. I loved how realistic the development of their relationship was, from their feelings for one another, to the internal struggles they faced. Even the supporting cast did not feel like characters who were simply there to pad the screen- I could imagine them all as people I could know in my life with fleshed-out personalities irrespective of how little their screentime was.

Speaking of being realistic, I would also like to give a shoutout to the costume department of the show. Over the course of the show, we see Ayaka and Hiroko repeat outfits multiple times, including statement jewellery pieces, and also for Ayaka, mixing and matching her tops and skirts. Barring the slight suspension of disbelief where their company doesn’t have any dress codes, I really appreciated that this helped ground them as realistic instead of caricaturistic. It made me realise how refreshing it is to see characters repeating outfits to their office the same way I do, instead of having a completely new outfit in every scene they are in.

The runtime and number of episodes make the show a good option for a binge-watch. It does get a little slow after the first couple of episodes, but it picks up again near the 5th episode, when the plot shifts from Ayaka’s attempts to get Hiroko to notice her feelings, to showing Hiroko’s past and why she is reluctant to get into a relationship with Ayaka and come out at work.

Rating- 4.5 out of 5

Streaming on- GagaOOLala