Synopsis
Harue Shindo is a chief engineer during the day—the hours are long, and he’s tired at the end of it in his 42-year-old body. He’s never had much experience with love or romance because he’s spent his entire life trying to ignore the part of himself that wants it. His company helped develop a dating app where it plays a noise when someone that matches you is nearby. After accidentally dropping his phone and accidentally pressing “like” on a profile that looks like a catfish, he ends up meeting that same person in front of a bar near his work when the app’s notification goes off. The other person is Yoshitaka Fujishima, another gay man in his 40s, who is a wedding planner.
The two of them have a good time and accidentally miss the last train, requiring them to have to spend the night together at the love hotel. Harue is drawn to Fujishima’s confidence and sexy looks, but is unsure about wanting too much since he considers himself plain, too old, and inexperienced.
The Good
Fans that like to see stories about tired office workers in fashionable suits, jackets, and ties, rejoice! Lovers on the Last Train is a manga that is about wanting to make time and space in one’s heart for love, and because the main couple is an overworked chief engineer and a busy wedding planner, the dates they can initially fit in are, at first, more spontaneous. They often appear in fashionable business clothes while at work, or just after. Fujishima, who is sexy and very confident in himself, even wears glasses for work to dim himself a bit next to his clients. Older men in glasses, check!
Lovers on the Last Train opens with Harue being introspective about his romantic relationship with Fujishima, and then circles back to explaining how the two of them get together. It’s immediately apparent that his own age and mortality is a big factor in his thoughts about time, not having enough of it, and what kinds of public displays of affection are appropriate for his age. Out of the couple, Harue is the more inexperienced one, and that makes Fujishima a really good match. The two have to contend with the reality of working life, and that means occasionally being too tired to go out and have a date…but sometimes, you just need to run out and see the person that you love.
The conversations that the characters have are rooted in reality. In some ways, it could have been a downer considering that Japan doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage. The story’s framing acknowledges the existence of what it says in the Japanese constitution, but as Fujishima says, he wants to live in a way that doesn’t require him to quiet the parts of himself that don’t match that. A lot of the story deals with different characters and how they have chosen to live until now, while portraying that one gay person’s experience is not universal. Fujishima talks about how he would have chased Harue if he was younger, while Harue, until very recently, tried not to acknowledge that he wanted love for himself, and instead attempted to ignore his desire in any way he could.
Somewhere In Between
I’m going to get this out of the way: that despite the synopsis mentioning “spend the night together,” the two main leads do what any exhausted 40-plus-year-old overworked men do in bed after a long day. This manga isn’t about the sex; it’s very much about the joy and doubt that come from meeting someone that you really, really like when you’re older. It doesn’t make it lesser, and in fact, I enjoyed the introspection between the two characters and their experiences with men that they loved or could have loved in the past.
The Verdict
Lovers on the Last Train is a contemplative read that warms the heart in a comforting way. Watching Harue and Fujishima both reach for happiness brings me so much joy just from reading it. I like that Fujishima is the one that leads Harue to be more bold, and to fear less about what society thinks they should be doing at their age, or who they should be with. I really felt it when Fujishima, a wedding planner, talked about sometimes working with clients that are same-sex and how he goes all out on those events, as well as his defiance in the face of the Japanese law that says that someone like him shouldn’t exist. It’s a manga about reaching for things that society indirectly says aren’t for you and going for them anyways in the face of possible rejection, feeling too old, or just overcoming the fear of being alone forever. The story is self-contained, and everything wraps up neatly at the end of the volume. Lovers on the Last Train leaves you full of hope for the future, and the warm fuzzies stay with you, even as you arrive at the last page.
Lovers on the Last Train is available in print and digitally from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, and Indigo.
If you like Lovers on the Last Train, you might also like…
- Old-Fashioned Cupcake by Sagan Sagan
- I Didn’t Mean to Fall in Love by Minta Suzumaru
- What Did You Eat Yesterday? by Fumi Yoshinaga
Credits
Story and Art: Dayoo
Translation: Kat Skarbinec
Adaptation: Hayame
Lettering: Rebecca Sze
Original Cover Design: TUMMY
Cover Design: Mariel Dágá
Copy Editor: Leighanna DeRouen
Proofreader: Kendall Jennings
Production Designer: Melina
Editor: Suzanne Seals
Published in English by Seven Seas Entertainment
Thank you to Seven Seas Entertainment for providing a review copy. Receiving this copy did not affect the reviewer’s opinions as expressed here.
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