Having sweated every sweat and soaped every soap, Asako and Kotaro have finally arrived at the big day. First came love, then came marriage… but what exactly does the future have in store for these two?
When Sweat & Soap started it was an absolute breath of fresh air - a story of two people coming together as a couple and having an appreciably healthy, fetish-forward sex life, and all the stages of a relationship.
If anything, the series portrayed this a little too well - showing that, as oft happens, once the newness is over, most relationships trend toward taking a more simmering approach with occasional fanning necessary to get the heat back to previous levels.
Still, through crises both serious and silly, Asako and Kotaro have triumphed and gotten married and this is basically a victory lap as they celebrate with all the characters who helped make this story what it was.
And it does it well. There are some very lovely moments here and even as somebody who is not one for ceremony, this shows the joy inherent in such an event quite satisfactorily. The sequence featuring Kotaro’s mother in particular is a real highlight and definitely causes dust to get in one’s eyes. It’s a very real moment.
The wedding proper is definitely a mostly serious affair, but prefaced by a lot of opportunity to see how close our leads have become. The bridalwear at this volume’s opening is quite fun and the shaving sequence starts off with some of the best eye acting I’ve seen in a book of late.
For a glimpse to where the future goes, the bonus ending is perfectly fine and very full of warm sentiment. As I kind of groused about before, it’s not what I would have chosen, but I do admit that I was projecting a little in my desire to see a less ‘societally perfect’ couple and the finale does make sense for the two of them.
(I will say that the final moments have an odd focus on Kintaro and another character that kind of sideline Asako in a strange way.)
As far as one last hurrah with all your typical characters, it might have been nice to see a little more for some of the more important side characters (a couple definitely have their moments), but the focus is ultimately on our main couple where it admittedly should be.
5 stars - I won’t say every volume of this was a triumph, especially as it eschewed sex for stability and the traditional family unit towards the end, but it was a pretty good journey with a solid sendoff that was well worth taking, so I’ll be very generous with this final scoring.