The Spring 2025 Manga Guide

You Are My Alpha (18+)

What's It About? 

Shunya and Ryota are honor students attending a prestigious high school exclusively for male alphas. And while their alpha nature places them at the top of the social hierarchy, these two friends hope to one day create new medicines that help omegas instead and put an end to the discrimination they face. But everything changes in an instant when Shunya suddenly manifests as an omega himself and goes into heat! With his best friend now vulnerable to attack by their alpha classmates, will Ryota be able to protect him and realize their dream?

You Are My Alpha has a story and art by Arata Asanae, with English translation by Elina Ishikawa. Toppy letters this volume. Published by Seven Seas (March 25, 2025). Rated M.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Omegaverse stories can, I find, generally go one of two ways: very romantic or highly questionable. That's narrowing things down to an almost ridiculous degree, of course, but it still feels like a very basic pattern within the genre, You Are My Alpha lands on the sweeter end of the scale. It would function beautifully as a plain old friends-to-lovers story without the omegaverse components, and I think fans of that romance subgenre should be able to enjoy this book, even if omegaverse isn't typically their thing.

That's mostly because protagonists Shun and Ryouta have such a nice relationship from the start. The two meet on their first day of school and, perhaps egged on my Ryouta's instant sense of connection with Shun, form a fast friendship. Both boys are alphas (and their school is strictly for alphas), but that doesn't take away from Ryouta's attraction to the other boy. Not wanting to make him uncomfortable and not sure what he's doing being attracted to another alpha anyway, he doesn't say anything until one day Shun suddenly awakens as an omega. Even then, he tries to do everything in his power to keep from messing up their friendship and making Shun uncomfortable, which is both really sweet and a very nice refutation of genre norms; omegaverse stories often lean into the controversial romance subgenre of “rape romance,” where the attraction for readers is that one of the partners “can't control themselves” around the other. (Just so we're clear, it's a fantasy on the part of the reader.)

You Are My Alpha works a lot with the idea that omegas are mistreated by society at large, and often blamed for their bodies and what alphas and betas do to them. Shun, even before his change, is devoted to the effort to find better rut suppressants for alphas to keep omegas safer. The idea behind it is to make alphas share equal responsibility, to take charge of their bodies and stop victim-blaming omegas. It's a good theme, and it opens the door for Shun and Ryouta to really talk to each other and make mutual decisions. They're a couple in every sense of the word, working together and making sure they're both on the same page. There are a couple of close calls (genre requirements and all that). Still, each of them is responsible for one, making it clear that this isn't an “omega problem” or an “alpha problem,” and creator Arata Asanae does a good job of keeping this idea at the forefront of the book at all times.

There are still some issues with the book. Sexual assault plays a role, and some further discussion of what caused the change in Shun would have been nice. But on the whole, this is an enjoyable book, successfully playing with some of the genre's tropes and focusing on a couple we can easily root for.