There are a few things to like about Tomorrow, Make Me Yours.. The story is simple and self-contained within one volume. It covers the major grounds of romantic progression from infatuation to confession to dating to sex. Its stylistic flourishes are heavily inspired by other light-hearted romance stories, with cute little lighting effects to punctuate specific moments and a simple yet fairly understandable page layout that in some ways reminded me of a lot of shojo manga. Our two leads are extremely simple in their design, yet the story emphasizes specific differences between them that allow each to stand out from the other.

Yuki is not only the shorter partner of this pair, but the manga does a good job of subtly conveying that size difference with him often being looked down upon but not in a demeaning way. His face is generally a bit more rounded with more expressive eyes while Hayato is better scaled in the manga panels with a sharper jawline and more subtle features. Exaggerated expressions are only used during the scenes where he's embarrassed or flustered, and the resulting contrast ably conveys how off guard he is to this obviously new experience. Overall, the art is effective in drawing attention to and highlighting the likeable qualities of our leads. The problem is that some of these qualities aren't as developed as they should be, and the overall pacing of the romantic development between our leads does more harm than good.

Without going into specifics, this manga volume starts with an initial infatuation and ends with a rather intense yet tasteful physical affirmation of love. That is a lot of real estate to cover in just one volume, and while I can appreciate the story for not really wasting time, this pace did hinder my ability to appreciate some of the book's more heartfelt emotional beats because I couldn't help but wonder how we got to this point so quickly. While some elements of the relationship-building are believably reactionary, others developments are presented as if a significant amount of time has passed between them occurring. The passage of time isn't always properly communicated in the text, and nothing about the story implied this vague sense of time was intentional.

This would make more sense if the story was framed more as an intense sexual or physical infatuation tied into adolescence. The groundwork was kind of there. I will say that the book does do a good job of depicting sexual progression in a new relationship as consent and consideration for your partner does ironically lead to probably the most believable and interesting character dynamic between the two. However, the story also wants to have this very strong sense of mutual love between these two, as if they had gone through multiple hurdles to preserve their relationship, and I just don't really buy it. There are even moments where I was left wondering what the impetus was for one of our leads' romantic feelings which the book spends an extremely long time getting to and when it's finally revealed, the payoff feels rather weak. The story does lean heavily into that idea of love at first sight, and while that lends a sense of purity and innocence to the central relationship, it can also feel a bit of a cheat in order to progress it as quickly as possible. It does come off like the author just wanted to hit all of these major beats so we could get to the climax as soon as possible.

Maybe there is a charm to that simplicity. This is a volume that you could pick up and read through within an hour all the major relationship beats you would see in other more involved romances. Unfortunately, it also makes the book somewhat disposable. There's very little here that I feel stands out from other romances and specifically other boys love stories that I've read. I feel like this is something that I would read casually in a bookstore, enjoy my time with it and then move on to something else to buy. There's not a lot to dislike with Tomorrow, Make Me Yours.. However, there's also really nothing extraordinary about it either.