is a seinen

Seinen

is a subset of manga that is generally targeted at a 20–30 year old male audience, but the audience can be older with some manga aimed at businessmen well into their 40s. In Japanese, the word Seinen means "young man" or "young men" and is not suggestive of sexual matters...

 manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

 by Mochiru Hoshisato

Mochiru Hoshisato

is a Japanese manga artist. His simple drawing style reflects the gentle nature of his often romantic tales of modern young Japanese salary-men. While Living Game has been favorably compared to Rumiko Takahashi's Maison Ikkoku, Hoshisato's Yume-ka mo Shinnai and Honki no Shirushi contain fewer...

, originally published in Big Comic Spirits

Big Comic Spirits

is a weekly Japanese seinen manga magazine published by Shogakukan and aimed at males 20–25 years old. It originally launched on October 14, 1980. The culture of food, sports, love relationships, and business provide the themes for its featured series, which often question conventional values...

 between October 1990 and April 1993. It is a romantic comedy that also examines some of the absurd effects of the rampant real estate speculation

Japanese asset price bubble

The was an economic bubble in Japan from 1986 to 1991, in which real estate and stock prices were greatly inflated. The bubble's collapse lasted for more than a decade with stock prices initially bottoming in 2003, although they would descend even further amidst the global crisis in 2008. The...

 brought about in Japan in the late 1980s and the subsequent recession in the early 90's.

Story

Raizo Fuwa is a 25-year-old salaryman

Salaryman

refers to someone whose income is salary based; particularly those working for corporations. Its frequent use by Japanese corporations, and its prevalence in Japanese manga and anime has gradually led to its acceptance in English-speaking countries as a noun for a Japanese white-collar...

 living in a cramped home and working in a crowded office in Tokyo. His hopes for improved conditions are dashed when the new office building his company is supposed to move into is condemned as unsafe because the construction company has been cutting corners. Since the old building is already being demolished, they have no choice but to "temporarily" move the office into Fuwa's new flat. The final complication arrives in the form of the new employee Izumi Hiyama, a high school dropout the boss has promised to take care of as a favour to her family. No landlords are willing to rent to a 15-year-old girl, so she too has to move into Fuwa's home/office. Fuwa is instructed to be Izumi's 'Senpai

Senpai

and are an essential element of Japanese seniority-based status relationships, similar to the way that family and other relationships are decided based on age, with even twins being divided into elder and younger sibling...

' or senior both in terms of work experience and age. Fuwa begins to develop a close relationship with Izumi, and very early on in the series, Izumi admits that she has fallen in love with him. However, he does not respond initially, feeling that he should be more responsible and should first achieve his dream of buying (or, as suggested mid-way through the series, designing and constructing a house manually), a spacious home to call his own. Both Izumi and Fuwa struggle with their own maturity and very small network of relationships, and the 10-year difference in their age is dismissed as an unimportant factor in their romantic relationship.

Main characters

Raizo Fuwa a 25-year-old man is the main character in this manga. He is certainly a reckless and irresponsible person. He lives in a very cramped apartment. He works in a small office which later will change into a home office, because the building that was supposed to be used as an office is condemned as unsafe because the construction company has been cutting the expenses for making it. His life started to change from this point, he had to give up his own room in apartment to be used as a temporary office and then he had to live together with Hiyama Izumi a 15-year-old girl that his company hired. He thinks like he was in some kind of hell to live with a girl 10 years younger, he must able to control his every desire as an adult. There were times that he couldn't control his desire anymore, but luckily there were always breaks that stopped him from doing anything to Izumi. He has a dream that he can have his own house, but he knows that such things were only a mere dream, but his passions never run out. With the help of Izumi he lived his life the to fullest.

Izumi

She is an inexperienced 15-year-old who moved from the country to Tokyo to find work. She develops a romantic relationship with Raizo. The two of them ultimately help the other realize their dream.