I was going to go with 3 stars because I'm always so impatient with setup chapters, but Yuriko's backstory chapter almost had me crying, so ohhhh I can see the glowing potential for this one and I'm sorely tempted to immediately start on volume two.
I Want to be a Wall centers on an aroace woman obsessed with BL and a gay man in love with his childhood best friend who marry each other in order to get their parents (and the rest of the world) off their back. And this premise is all it took to suck me in, because sweetie, I need me some central queer friendships and I need more aspec characters who like fictionalized romance and/or sex because as an alloace woman myself with friends across the a-spectrum... Bro, do you know how many aro people delight in writing romance, and how many ace people delight in writing smut? Hell, ace writers not being able to shut up about their taste in smut was the reason one of my writing servers needed to add an NSFW chat a few months back.
Both Yuriko and Gakurouta are well-established in this. We are introduced to their circumstances, the reasons they both agreed to this arrangement, and how they are attempting to navigate the dynamic of being married to and coexisting with each other. (Unfortunately, neither can cook, so RIP to their kitchen and their stomach linings.) Gaku is pining for his (straight) childhood best friend, and Yuriko has been followed her whole adult life by people encouraging her to find a man... woman... anyone??? You can't really want to be alone forever, do you???
Truthfully, Yuriko's experiences are a lot more compelling to me at the moment, because even though I'm ace and not aro, a lot of those sentiments reflect a shared experience between both aspects of the a-spectrum. I especially appreciated that they spend time discussing why Yuriko likes BL so much. Basically, she enjoys the idea of romance... just not for herself. But because of her experiences as a woman who is constantly pushed toward her "need" to pursue romantic interests, it is extremely difficult for her to interact with romantic stories that include women despite liking the general content of romance stories. So she sticks to BL, where there's no chance of being reminded of what everyone regards as her "deficiencies" because, well... The characters aren't women. She also finds comfort in the similarities between her and stories about queer men, because like her, they exist in a way that society deems abnormal.
Gee, it's almost as though being aspec is inherently queer and our struggles line up with other queer identities due to not fitting into established social narratives and that exclusionist movement that persisted for a couple years when I was a teen was full of shit and needed to shut up and actually listen to us about our experiences and no I'm not still haunted by that, it's not like I ran an aspec blog during the height of that bullshit and had to field terrible shit when I was sixteen, nope, not at all.
Anyway, I am really happy with this set up and really optimistic about its handling of aspec identity which is so, so nice since there aren't many honest explorations of those experiences. And I want to establish - the English translation does simply refer to Yuriko as "asexual," though it is established through conversation that she experiences neither romantic nor sexual attraction. I've been informed that this is likely a translation thing that they don't seperate aromanticism and asexuality, but Yuriko IS aroace, there is no denying it.
(Also Gaku is so earnestly sweet trying to show interest in her hobbies to make her more comfortable with living with him, and I can't help but laughing that he actually starts getting into her books and that she has to live with the embarassment of answering questions like, "Hey, Yuriko... What's omegaverse???")
I'm very excited to see what this story has in store!