A new relationship full of loving aromas makes a weird obsession both sweet and sensual in the popular romance manga Sweat & Soap. Manga readers can catch up with the quirky story in a new collection coming soon.
The rom-com manga originally ran in Kodansha's Weekly Seinen Manga Magazine from October 2018 until February 2021. The first series from mangaka Kintetsu Yamada follows the story of an office romance between coworkers Asako and Koutarou, who meet under strange circumstances. As part of Kodansha’s latest English translations, the eleventh and final volume of the romance manga was released in Japan in May and is set to release in the US in January 2022. In addition, Kodansha’s is releasing an official new manga box set of all 11 volumes soon, along with other romance series Wotakoi and Rent-A-Girlfriend.
Sweat & Soap's Asako Yaeshima is a 26-year-old accountant at a high-end women's cosmetics company called Liliadrop. She also struggles with excessive sweating that requires her to buy a range of hygiene products frequently. In fact, she chose to work at her job after falling in love with their soap line. Self-conscious of her sweating, Asako lives a life of worry with vigorous hygiene routines that seclude her from making meaningful relationships. That all changes upon meeting her coworker Koutarou, a hotshot fragrance developer with a keen sense of smell. After catching Asako's natural scent and asking to sniff her for work-related reasons, the two coworkers develop a steamy new relationship with hilarious and romantic moments, often with Koutarou profusely enjoying Asako's scent.
Unlike the psychological romance in Kaguya-Sama: Love is War, Asako learns to accept Koutarou's "gift" and helps him develop new products for the company with her knowledge of hygiene products. Unfortunately, Koutarou's intense urge to sniff Asako (during work hours) causes hilarious and awkward interactions that help nudge the relationship forward. Eventually, Koutarou instinctively adopts his unique ability as part of his love language for Asako, leading to intimate moments that the lovers share privately. Asako also learns to overcome her anxieties about her sweating, thanks to her boyfriend's continued support and love for her natural scent.
Sweat & Soap also shares insightful knowledge on the science of smells and natural aromas as Koutarou learns to understand Asako, who struggles with communicating through her body's natural scent and his ability to pair scents with emotions. This forces Asako to open up more to Koutarou and create lasting memories with the man behind her favorite soaps and who enjoys sniffing her. Scent is very closely tied to emotions and memory, and the sweet romance of Sweat & Soap is a tale that manga readers will not soon forget.