Tonari no Seki no Satou-san

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What I really liked about Tonari no Seki no Satou-san (Satou-san Who Sits Next to Me) is the relationship progress between Yamaguchi and Satou. Yamaguchi is a boy is the silent but cool type and Satou is basically just a bubbly girl who is also a klutz who tends to talk to Yamachi about whats on her mind. At first Yamaguchi would always be annoyed by Satou's rambling but as the story goes and the more he interacts with Satou he finds himself romantically interested in Satou. A big part of the story is Satou's online relationship with an individual who Satou's never met irl, ... only text messages. Upon Yamaguchi hearing this, he became worried as he thought that this individual couldn't be trusted even though Satou likes this individual. Yamaguchi made it his job to not let Satou's smile go away and become a person Satou can fall in love with. He became more friendly towards Satou as a result. I don't want to go into spoilers so I'll end my review by saying that if I lad to describe this manga in one word it would be 𝙬𝙝𝙤𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚, wholesome enough to make me cry.

STORY:
The story is a simple love story between two classmates who sit next to each other. There isn't much going on aside from the two's interaction. This is something that provides a change of pace from all the other romance manga that exist.

ART:
Art is nothing special.

CHARACTER:
They have that simple character that makes them easily likeable and relatable. Satou is a bit of an airhead, and might be annoying at first, but she gets likeable easily.

ENJOYMENT:
... It was enjoyable for its simplicity and the fact it has some realistic aspects to it, like liking someone who likes someone else.

OVERALL:
This manga gave me the feels and made me want to root for them. It's a nice read for a change of pace. Don't expect too much though, and you won't be disappointed.

This manga is about a high school boy named Yamaguchi slowly falling in love with a girl named Satou. Yamaguchi is popular and smart and good at sports. Satou is plain and clumsy and bad at everything. He originally finds her annoying and dislikes having to sit next to her in class, but eventually he comes to be impressed by her kindness, perseverance, and unfaltering optimism.

The manga does a good job with Satou. Her good aspects shine through really well and it's easy to empathize with her lack of self-esteem. She comes across as really cute. Yamaguchi I didn't really like much. The manga is ... very heavy on emphasizing his thoughts and feelings so he's ultimately fleshed out pretty well. However, he's so grounded that he's actually kind of annoying.

Their relationship arc was a mixed bag. There are a lot of cute and heartwarming moments. However, at the same time the plot can get really weird. One of the major plot threads involves how Satou has a crush on a guy she's never met and only knows virtually. This was just really bizarre and I have no clue what the author was trying to do with it. The manga also ends at a point where they have not progressed enough in their relationship for it to be satisfying ending. I suppose that this was unavoidable for a partial adaptation of a novel series, but that doesn't make it any better.

The art was pretty generic and plain, but decent enough other than that. I would also like to note that while this is listed as seinen, that this overall felt very shoujo. I generally do not like shoujo romance and very rarely read it, so take this review with a grain of salt if you do, as you'll probably like this manga more than I did.

tl;dr: A romance manga that has a cute heroine but that is pretty weak outside of that.