The Stranger in the Hoarding House

by Joe Aruku

Genres: Manga, Romance
Pages: 182
Rating:

Synopsis:

After a traumatic incident at work, Kamakura locked himself away and let the trash pile up around him, resigned to his fate as a hikikomori... That is, until the day Katsuyoshi climbed in through his balcony.

At their landlord's behest, Katsuyoshi offers to help Kamakura clean his apartment, insisting that Kamakura stay with him in the meantime. Kamakura reluctantly agrees, wondering why Katsuyoshi would offer to help out a complete stranger. Turns out, Katsuyoshi has his own reasons— and his own trauma— to work through.

As they tidy together, the pair open up to each other and slowly begin to heal in this sweet slice-of-life romance about moving forward, one trash bag at a time...

Joe Aruku’s The Stranger in the Hoarding House is pretty short and sweet; the characters are thrown together when Katsuyoshi climbs into Kamakura’s apartment after someone throws a ball to break the windows, and finds him there locked in with a load of trash. Things went badly for Kamakura and he just stopped caring, but Katsuyoshi tasks himself to get him back on his feet — not just out of the kindness of his heart, but partly in redemption for being unkind to someone close to him who was in a similar situation.

The whole thing resolves pretty quickly, particularly the hoarding problem, and there’s not an enormous amount of build-up to the relationship before it launches sideways into a weird sexual encounter, but the relationship between the two of them turns sweet and supportive, helping both of them make good changes to their lives.

It’s not amazingly detailed or fleshed out, but it was cute, all the same.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)