Sensei no Shiroi Uso
Sensei's Pious Lie

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-- spoiler free -- (spoilers at very bottom)
The story is honestly pretty interesting, in my personal opinion. I personally think that everyone in this story do end up hurting each other (mostly) voluntarily, obviously to varying extents. Sensei no Shiroi Uso contains many heavy themes, such as sexual assault and violence, unfaithfulness (cheating), mental illness(es), bullying (+ power imbalance) and the biggest theme: sexism. Honestly, I could not put this down at all; I binged it in around 2 days. The depiction of how 'men are always right and strong' and 'women are always wrong, weak and used to only feed men's ... satisfactions' is done very well. There is some slight 'women supporting women' moments, but that's not really the main pointer of the manga.

You follow Misuzu, the main female protagonist + high school teacher, and her experiences, the people around her, what she has to deal with, so on and so forth. Her students, friends and acquaintances, all have complexity and depth to them; even branching off to side characters, but they play a part in helping the reader understand why character A or B has turned out in the way they did. All the experiences that Misuzu goes through, such as blackmail, being threatened, raped, forced to do things she doesn't want to, are so real and exist in real life - probably is what makes the manga extremely hard-hitting.
To reiterate, Torikai-sensei does a really good job in portraying the imbalance between men and women. How men have much more power, are in charge of everything, can cheat if they want external satisfaction but 'will forever have their partner as their main priority', how its okay to rape women because its their duty because dick solves everything, so on and so forth.

my (personal) ratings!
ART: 7 - i found it pretty enjoyable, and it also had a 'raw' feel to it. however, sometimes i mixed up some characters with each other because of some similar designs (eg, some female side characters having long hair and similar facial features). some scenes were also portrayed really well, so props to Torikai-sensei!
PLOT: 6/7 - it may not be the 'best' plot, but it is something that is genuinely very much real and exists in our life. however, the theme of rape is brought up a few - no, numerous times - throughout the manga, which may put off some readers.
DIALOGUE: 7 - i think most of the dialogue was very well written; only in some filler scenes i had to pause and reread certain lines because they didn't really add much to the main point or the story, basically acting like background noise.
CHARACTERS: 4.5 - as much as i really enjoyed this manga, some of the characters felt quite messy; along with the art, i felt like some characters never really got to be explored.
OVERALL FORMAT: 5 - when i first read the manga, i didn't understand why there would be a black rectangle at the top with a character's name in it, but i soon came to understand that the specific section was in the perspective of the character mentioned. but after the first few volumes, that doesn't occur as much (compared to the beginning) throughout the rest of the manga.

Overall, i really recommend this manga. Give it a shot! It really is 'real' (the whole hierarchy between men and women) and 'raw'; which may allow some readers to resonate with some certain scenes more than others. I'm personally not a massive fan of all the rape and the constant cheating, but it is what it is.


-- slight spoilers, but further commentary --
I personally wanted more development between Misuzu and Niizuma as it touches upon a 'forbidden, teacher-student relationship', but of course beggars can't be choosers.
i feel like Misato's brother (the creep who peeps at Misato whenever she has her own 'alone time') never got to be explored enough; we only got a few back shots of the guy, but never provided a reason on why he spies on Misato all the time. Misuzu never really got to use the alarm that Niizuma got for her, huh? tbh i really liked Niizuma lol, i wish he got to actually properly get together with Misuzu. the whole hotel beating up scene between Misuzu and Hayafuji made my stomach churn a little though, mainly because of how she turned out in the end. well, it was a really interesting read anyways. 𖠳 ᐝ ꕀ

The Teacher’s White Lie.. more like “The One where Everyone Keeps Lying to Themselves and their Surroundings”

Okay, let me be honest, unhappy stories where everyone is miserable is my thing. But only when it’s like that for a good reason. However, in this case there is an overall air of “everything sucks and we’re all doomed to repeat our mistakes“. I did not feel anything reading this. Except for the hatred I developed for each character. I despised them all. No one’s motives/actions make any real sense and it’s all a bunch of BS to me. I don’t mind when things are left to the ... audience to interpret but this manga literally doesn’t make sense. If I’m being fair, I don’t know how things work in Japan. Although I’ve read a good share of manga to know that this isn’t it.
Moving forward, I felt so much contradiction. It’s so preachy and annoying and I honestly couldn’t stand it. The only reason I was able to finish it was because I have this urge to go through to the end with everything I start.

[spoilers ahead]

I had so many unanswered questions and the one that bothered me most was who in the hell was that Misato (the worst female character I’ve come upon btw) and why was she changing her mind every 5 minutes. Nothing she ever did was explained and we never got to know what was the deal with her weird brother.

Things aren’t black and white like this makes it out to be. And what was the message again? “Women are destined to be taken advantage of by men??” “The only way to overcome sexual trauma is to sleep with someone you like?” Or was it “If your husband is cheating on you, then it’s a good time to get pregnant??” Literally F all that. I’m hoping the author did not intend for that kind of thing and she only has a bad way of presenting her ideas.

And if you want me to get started on the plot, well, thank god there isn’t even one.
The only redeeming feature was the art, and even that was mediocre at best.

What starts off as an interesting but dark story devolves into a convoluted mess of contradictory preaching.

The author tries to make some sort of nuanced statement about the relationships between men and women and the natural power struggle they're locked in, but ends up implying some absolutely horrifying hot takes such as:

Women may say they hate rape, but in reality they love it!
Trying to abort another woman's baby isn't a bad thing, because a MAN made you do it.
Women have no agency
The only way to overcome rape is to find another man. Good dick cancels out bad dick; it's math!
Emotions dictate everything, and that's a ... good thing!
Men are always hurting women
A woman's lot in life is to be hurt, used and dirtied by men. Lay back and think of England.
The most horrible punishment that can be inflicted on a man is not death, but fatherhood.
Love means letting your husband beat you and sleep around
Society is 100% totally OK with every single behaviour stated above

If the story had just focused on the Teacher character and her struggle with rape/blackmail it would have been a better story, but the author shoves in a shitty romance between her and a student and focuses on some of the worst characters ever put to paper. Every single person in this manga is either a hollow slave to emotion or an irredeemable piece of trash. Since this author decided to take a massive dump all over humanity she made all the women sorry sacks of crying and estrogen and all the men vile tyrants with a constant erection.

On a technical level, the story is awful. It's slow, characters trudge along from one bad scenario to another with no real pacing or motivation, character's actions are not dictated by their previous actions and everything is always rape. All the time. Rape. Everywhere.

Near the end the story devolves into characters giving speeches outlining the author's warped worldview. The bad characters get away like nothing happened (because feelings), and everyone's life is ruined but no one learned anything (other than sensei who learns to stop worrying and love the dick)

The art is competent, at least. Shame it couldn't service a better story.

In conclusion: Over all this was a trainwreck of shallow characters raping/getting raped because nature says men shall rape all women with some nice art and some of the worst writing since Bobo the chimp got his hands on a typewriter. It also manages to set women back 5,000 years. That's an accomplishment, right?