matcha made in heaven – Manga Report

Matcha Made in Heaven Volumes 7-9 by Umebachi Yamanaka

Time to check in on this low-key extremely slow-burn josei series! Chaco and Isshin are continuing with their faux marriage of convenience, which has of course led them to develop feelings for each other. Isshin is an intense, grumpy tea-making perfectionist, while Chaco is much more free spirited. Despite growing up in a family of tea producers, she’s been away for so long that she’s not super familiar with the business, so her support of Isshin also means that she’s connecting with her roots in a new way.

After a separation where Isshin is working in the corporate tea business, he returns home. Chaco is excited to take their relationship to the next level, but childhood friend Jin appears with a girl named Roa, who happens to be a tea social media influencer! The traditional craft of tea-making clashes with Roa’s approach, which seems to stir up some distressing sentiments against the small business that Chaco’s family is trying to take to the next level with Isshin’s help. The trash-talking is mild, and the stakes are fairly low in this extremely relaxing manga where one can always count on respect for tea to further bond the characters and see them through any crisis. While Roa ends up not be as terrible as Chaco originally assumed, she leads Isshin into accepting a challenge at a high stakes tea blending competition. With Isshin, Jin, and Chaco’s brother who is such a non-entity it is not really worth remembering his name as the main competitors things are surely not going to go very smoothly.

For fans of the grumpy/sunshine dynamic, this series delivers. I find myself constantly rooting for Chaco and Isshin even though they cycle through excuses to not progress in their relationship. The latest barrier is Isshin’s nobility, as he doesn’t want to ask Chaco’s dead father for her hand in real marriage until he has proven himself as a tea master. As always, the illustrations are clear and dynamic. Chaco’s niece is reliable both for comic relief and expressing the readers’ point of view that Chaco and Isshin should just get together already.

Matcha Made in Heaven, Volumes 1-4 by Umebachi Yamanaka

I need to get over my tendencies of forgetting to keep up with digital only releases, I am bad enough about unread manga when I have piles of it to remind me of my backlog, but I’m even worse when it comes to digital releases. However, sometimes a series is so charming that it sizes my attention, I overcome my usual inertia, and I end up absolutely delighted. This was the case with Matcha Made in Heaven!

Chako is a fairly typical big-city dweller, making her way through life, engaged to be married until she starts having reactions to being surrounded by sexism. When she sees her future Mother-in-Law wiping off her fiance’s feet her immediate feelings of revulsion (and the fact that her fiance is seriously creepy) has her fleeing to the countryside to her family’s traditional tea farm. Chako has been out of touch with her family for some time, so she’s a bit startled when she runs across a little girl named Futaba and a giant stern man named Isshin who demands to know what she’s doing in the house. It turns out that Isshin has taken over the family tea business while Chako’s brother works as a writer on the side to earn extra income. Being a writer apparently means abandoning all household duties, as Isshin is basically acting as Futuba’s guardian as well as working in the fields. He makes a comment about how Chako’s not going to be suited to working on her family’s farm and her instinct to rage against sexism and prove him wrong is awakened

Chako’s mysterious yet terrible ex-fiancee shows up at the farm, and in attempt to dodge him, she leaps onto Isshin as he drives a tractor in the fields with Futaba, claiming that he’s her husband. Futuba is absolutely delighted by this development and obviously not over the death of her mother and her absentee father, so Isshin and Chako agree to go through the motions of having a fake marriage. This also has the benefit of all of the neighbors backing off a little bit from trying to set Isshin up. A fake marriage of convenience isn’t a terribly surprising story to structure a multi-volume manga around, but Yamanaka’s execution is top notch. Futuba is an amusing combination of needy 4 year-old and an old soul who is filled with delight about Chako and Isshin’s slowly developing relationship. Isshin is passionate and expressive only about tea, but Chako finds herself more and more charmed by him as she gets to know him.

A fake marriage is nothing without additional obstacles to overcome, and they appear in Chako’s old friend Jin and Isshin’s ex-girlfriend who happens to be the heir to a tea conglomerate. The art is expressive and delicate, with Isshin’s normally stoic expressions only shifting when he’s enraptured by tea or utterly perplexed at how to react to Chako’s presence in his life. I enjoyed the slice-of-life aspect to Match Made in Heaven combined with all the details of tea farming, blending tea, going to markets and trying to salvage a struggling family business. I recommended this series for those who like uncomplicated josei romance.