The title says it all as far as major content warnings go with this one: it's a romance manga about a woman who becomes involved with her boss. It's hardly novel in the genre, but it's also one of those tropes that doesn't work for all readers, so the good news is that you can tell almost immediately if this is one of the romances you'd rather avoid. To be perfectly honest, there aren't really any situations where Samejima exerts any power over Natsumi in a work setting, so it's more window-dressing than anything, but it still merits a mention.

The other major thing to know going into this is that creator KamuC consistently undercuts their own plot. On the surface, the story is meant to simply be about Samejima asking Natsumi, better known around the office as “Hamu-chan” because she reminds people of a cute, busy little hamster, to date him and them forging a relationship, office politics notwithstanding. In that, this two-volume omnibus does just fine; it sure is an office romance manga racy enough to be published under Seven Seas' Steamship imprint! But if you're looking for something more than fairly non-graphic sex scenes in your romance books, this ends up being something of a disappointment. KamuC sets up several more in-depth plot points that ultimately get tossed to the side, and that undermines the volume's enjoyability.

Chief among these abandoned plotlines is the idea that Samejima needs to factor in what Natsumi likes in bed rather than just doing his own thing. He stops when she asks him to, which is great, but he's also a lot more focused on what he likes touching on her body than what she enjoys. For example, when they first start sleeping together, he plays with her breasts, something she doesn't particularly find pleasant. Instead of moving on from that area in future encounters, he procures some sort of ointment online that purports to make breasts more sensitive sexually. On the one hand, okay, he's trying, but on the other, it's still very much about what he wants rather than what she wants. She uses the lotion, and because this is fiction it works, but that's not the point, and it ends up turning her body into a vehicle for his pleasure rather than making it a shared experience.

KamuC almost certainly does not intend for that to be the message. As a genre, romance has a fairly rough history, and even today it's difficult for many authors of all nationalities to shed the so-called “old school” tropes made popular in the 1970s and 80s. (And, if we're totally honest, started in 1919 with the publication of E. M. Hull's The Shiek.) The idea of the woman's body primarily existing for the man to play like an instrument that also provides orgasms is hard for the genre to shake, and that's on full display here. Natsumi comes to enjoy their physical relationship as the book goes on and Samejima learns to work with her more on that front. Still, My Boss Is a Giant: He Manages My Every Need With Enormous Skill! never quite manages to live up to its title, nor does Samejima ever truly think solely of Natsumi without factoring in his wants, although it must be acknowledged that he does try.

But even without that particular romance trope rearing its head, My Boss is a Giant struggles in the plot field. Two no-chance rivals are introduced into the story, one male and one female (and both going after Natsumi.) Their parts are so underdeveloped that they never feel at all threatening to the central relationship. Even the emotional trajectory of the story is stymied by the need to throw as many sex scenes as possible into the mix, and those two things – emotions and sex – in no way need to be mutually exclusive, particularly in the romance genre. Samejima and Natsumi don't have any reason to be in love, and that hampers their story, unless, of course, you're just reading for the sex scenes. But even that aspect falls a little short; it's not as explicit as other Steamship releases and the art isn't anatomically comfortable enough for that not to matter. We've all seen worse, but perspective and basic anatomy are off enough to be noticeable.

On the plus side, the chibis are adorable, and the use of a shark to stand in for all things Samejima (“same” means “shark” in Japanese) is very well done, particularly when it's representing his penis. The pages are also cleanly laid out and easy to read, and the translation reads smoothly, with the only cringe bits being the standards of the genre – occasionally ridiculous “dirty” talk. And really, the chief complaint here is that it isn't as good as other TL manga to get a mainstream English release; it isn't bad, it's just more average. It doesn't feel terrible to be at a point in these steamy-for-ladies releases where we can afford to be picky, because it means that they've become much more of a norm in English-translated manga.

My Boss is a Giant is a perfectly average book. It lacks plot development and the art isn't always great, but it still delivers on what it promises: a racy romance between a tiny woman and a large man who happens to be her boss. If there are better things out there, there are also worse ones.