My Boyfriend in Orange, Vol. 1

My Boyfriend in Orange is being promoted as an age gap romance but to me this is totally about a teenager crushing on a firefighter who happens to be an older man. I'm currently on volume 9 and there is no romance thus far.

Kyosuke Ebihara and Moe Sasaki first meet during a FIRE DRILL. He does not rescue her. You can't rescue someone during a drill. It was so melodramatic which is fine because manga but it continues to be this way where EbiharaSan (he and I are not on first name basis) keeps talking about how Moe needs to be rescued all the time. His patience with her is so thin. BTW Moe does not purposefully do things to get rescued. She's just a little clumsy in some instances, others she means well but gets caught up and other times it's just she's flustered due to the major crush she has on EbiharaSan.

Also... it's weird that EbiharaSan's friends, who are about his age if not older, are all about pushing him to pursue Moe but aren't willing to do it themselves! Because age... you know??? WEIRD. I'm good with age gap but Moe's 15 at the start of the series and midway turns 16 while EbiharaSan is about 24(?). There is no romance. EbiharaSan is emotionally non-available and you won't find out until volume 9 why and not even by him but a friend. He's a natural grump which is fine but I hate his calling Moe an idiot all the time. That is really making me want to sock him in the mouth.

The weirdest part so far, Moe has really great conversations with absolutely everyone on his team and nothing too great with her love interest. No wonder they all think she's so great. She is! She knows more about EbiharaSan's friends than she does about Ebi and they know more about her than Ebi does.

The plus side, because I like this series as long as Ebi and Moe aren't really interacting or when she sets his ass straight, is that everyone is pretty awesome in this series. There's world building, you get to know everyone's likes and dislikes and personality traits. It's like Moe gaining a whole other family and I love that for her since we quickly find out that she's mourning the loss of her dad. Throughout the series you see the most growth happen with Moe and again, I love it. I'm rolling with it until the end just because of everyone except Ebi. LOL