Kanojo mo Kanojo
Girlfriend, Girlfriend

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Kanojo mo Kanojo succeeds as a romcom as it consistently delivers laughter in almost every chapter. The series works due to the interactions of the main characters with each other and the absurd situations they find themselves in, and the underlying tension that lurks beneath every harem story.

The whole thing starts because the main character, Naoya, is straightforward and sincere to the point that an ICBM has less impact when it hits a wall. After confessing to his childhood friend Saki every month for the last ten years, he has finally gotten her (always was going to be given but she felt shy) consent to ... a relationship. Then the first wrench is thrown in when Nagisa confesses to Naoya, revealing how dedicated she was to that moment. Being a sucker for hard work and sincerity, Naoya falls for her, and rather than engage in infidelity or secrecy, goes directly to Saki and asks for her permission to two-time her. He gets punched in the face, but Naoya manages to overcome her objection via that same straightforward sincerity that made Saki and Nagisa fall for him in the first place.

Does it end at two-timing? ....no. The whole thing is over the top comedy, and it being limited to just two would limit the quantity of jokes, which follow a fairly reliable formula. Under the thick layer of comedy, the manga is surprisingly considerate of the characters and their feelings. Saki is, both in her eyes and those of Naoya and the others, the "legal wife" here: this entire situation continues at her say-so and hers alone. She can at any time terminate it and a handful of time threatens it to force the other girls to work harder for the benefit of the entire harem. Nagisa, the first girl added, is so considerate and tender that despite the situation, Saki instantly befriends her. Really, if Nagisa had not been the first girl, the whole situation may never have occurred. The other two, Rika and Shino, have competing goals: Rika wants to destroy the harem and dethrone Saki, taking Naoya for herself alone, while Saki's best friend Shino wants to either destroy the harem for the mutual benefit of Saki and herself or (and only with Saki's express permission and blessing) join as Naoya's third girlfriend.

With these contradictory motives, there also comes the problem of not being someone's number one. Late in the manga, the frustration the girls have quietly expressed is thrust out into the open, as the problem in a harem is that time is not infinite, each one has a limited amount of time to be Naoya's focus of attention, and the girls must sit on the sidelines when someone else is the focus of all Naoya's attention and not inconsiderable affection. Counter-intuitively, the girls develop friendships and relationships outside of the one they form revolving around Naoya - while he is the center spoke, they all connect to each other as well, so the entire relationship also means being thoughtful and considerate of your friends who happen to share your boyfriend.

Make no mistake, this is first and foremost a romcom. It's about the humor, but there are moments of tension and drama to prevent it from becoming rote. I recommend reading it, as it's a fun way to enjoy yourself with a silly read.

This manga is a romcom which does what most other romcoms fail to do, which is making a lighthearted story.

Romantic Comedies were made with the specific two genre's in mind so when reading a "Romantic Comedy" people would expect to read a lighthearted comedy with a mix of romance or the other way around. Now to the explanation of the scores.

Story is not that deep and should be that way given my previous statement and because there was no drama in the tags. Don't force drama where it should not even exist.

Art, generic at best not that new or particularly stand out.

Character, again generic, does ... not create anything new in the genre.

Enjoyment though is something is honestly a 10, I dunno about other people but reading a lighthearted comedy without worry of dark drama in the background especially when it wasn't even to be expected. I mean twist are good here and there but when a story is not aiming for thing like drama etc. why even add it?

Overall, a story does not need to have a manga or any form of entertainment does not need a big story or great dramatic twist to make it great. As long as it does what it aims to do then it is enjoyable.

Will recommend to people who just want to enjoy a lighthearted story, if you want complex stories with many twist and turns just don't search romcom and search drama instead. Don't look for things in places where it obviously wouldn't be in - just saying

Kanojo mo Kanojo is another of those romcoms whose main focus is the comedy and every character is a single joke and none of them are funny. But this series is intended to be stupid, right? Well, yes, but the jokes are still terrible, and it’s not like I can’t enjoy some dumb comedies, but every time I got to the punchline of a joke in this series I honestly wasn’t impressed, nor I was laughing at how bad the joke was, it was a joke that wasn’t even funny because of how bad it was, sometimes I could hear the characters scream, maybe because ... I picked the manga time after watching the anime so I already knew how they would say their lines, but these characters are really loud. The show goes about how this bunch of characters are stupid and how much stupid they can get, that is their character growth.

I mean, when you have an MC like Naoya who is an idiot who won’t shut up nor stop saying anything no matter how dumb it is because he is so focused in doing anything that is going in his mind, it’s difficult to not find the MC annoying. Across the manga, he easily is the one that growths less, because his dumbness is what gets him through absolutely everything, well, that isn’t exactly true because to surpass one of his obstacles he spent a lot of time studying, but he didn’t get smarter with his decisions either way, he is straightforwardness itself. I mean, Naoya is definitely someone who will leave you something to think about him if you pay enough attention to the series, you will either admire his boldness, straightforwardness and his way of not thinking through anything, or you will dislike him exactly for those reasons, because he is just so dumb you can only stand him for so much. I mean, just take a look at how the series began, this guy apparently was asking the girl he has liked a bunch of times to be his girlfriend and eventually she accepts, we start at that point, then suddenly a second girl comes out of nowhere, tells him that she wants to be his girlfriend and what’s his best idea? To go to his girlfriend and ask her if he can date her too, he gets rightfully punched in the face for that but because of peer pressure Saki accepts.

Now, harems usually aren’t the best place to find a realistic way for someone to fall in love with others, and I’m conscious of that, but in other series they had this bare minimum of “he helped her in a time of need”, which you can just go and credit the suspension bridge experiment or some shit that will make you feel there is a justification, but in fact, these girls literally fall in love with him because the guy fell too strongly for another girl, that is literally the case with both Nagisa and Shino. And I mean, telling you Nagisa is interesting in any possible way you look at her is pretty much wrong, she is the first one to be introduced and is completely devoted to Naoya since the first moment, she is there to be quite perfect in what she does except in having a brain, she goes from this girl that doesn’t know what she wants to do to a girl who wants to cook, and I just summarized her whole character across the entire manga, I don’t dislike simple characters, but the fact I can barely talk about her despite being the actual reason why the plot existed in the first place comes out as a little sad.

Shino is the only one who appears to have a brain, until she is in the same screen as Naoya and falls in some dumb way for fanservice, she is the only girl who gets this treatment and I honestly don’t know why, I’m not even bothered by the fanservice that comes from the dumb falls every harem or ecchi series has, but she is really the only one that gets this treatment. Aside from that, as I said above, she also fell in love with Naoya because he fell in love way too hard for Saki and his determination to be her boyfriend. It’s not difficult to see why people love her, because she is the shy girl that opens up, she is the girl that everybody seems to like in series of this type. She really starts restricting her love for Naoya because she doesn’t want to hurt her friend Saki, but she keeps getting involved more and more with them to the point she cannot take it anymore, and also confesses to Naoya. She goes all the way supporting him even more after feeling free of saying her feelings, even if she wasn’t her girlfriend.

Saki, whose nickname is also Saki, way too creative I know, is a girl who lacks self-love, and that is the best way for her to accept the relationship because she also gets overwhelmed by the peer pressure she is subject of, she really cannot get around that in any single way. And I know, we need her to accept other girls for the harem and she actually gets to like Nagisa in a way, but she really only accepted her because her boyfriend has his head way up into his own ass alongside Nagisa’s pleads. This girl seriously needs to think by herself, she is seriously overwhelmed by the most minimal petitions if many people tell her to do it, she never overcomes this, which makes sense because she never gets time to work on it as people keep pushing it into her. I honestly feel a little bad for her for this reason, but I guess that stuff usually happens.

And I left Mirika left for a specific reason that I will get to in the next paragraph, without a doubt I’ll say she was my favourite, but definitely not from the start. The why is very easy to see, because she has a reason to be with Naoya that’s not as dumb as the other: because she already wanted to be his girlfriend. That’s it. She did it on a whim, and that honestly made me think of her as bad as the others, however as time passed, I was getting more endeared to her. I mean, isn’t this girl a bad person? She literally kidnapped the MC 2 times and drugged him once, this girl is crazy, but aside from that stuff, I noticed that whenever she went on a date with Naoya, it seemed like the moments were a bit less comical, in fact, those were maybe the only dates I could take seriously even before getting a fondness towards her. And at this point, I’m overselling her to you, because she is as dumb as the other characters too and has as much self-love as what you would expect from a girl in a harem series, but here’s the catch, after she actually fell in love with Naoya for actual reasons, she wanted to monopolize him, she wanted Naoya for herself, which is natural even in this kind of series, but when your competition are these other girls, then maybe being of a regular kind isn’t that bad.

Up to this point I haven’t said anything good about this series, because I really don’t think this series was something good, not even over 100 chapters in. But actually, the series proved me wrong in some way, chapter 124 appeared and it was completely focused on why a harem doesn’t fucking work if it is made completely out of love, because you won’t be able to love everyone equally, people will get their feeling hurt because they know that sometimes they won’t be the preferred one, this whole speech made by Mirika is honestly what makes me think these over 100 chapters of absolutely nothing but bad jokes happening was worth something. This was finally a completely genuine, competent, non-idiotic, factual dialogue that made perfect sense and said why most harem series are dumb no matter if you enjoy them or not, because what Mirika said in there was true, and I honestly wasn’t expecting this from this manga of all things. There are other harem series that I like more that don’t have this kind of speech which actually makes sense out of why harem endings are not the norm. And this whole thing came when Saki actually decided to break up the two-timing specifically because she feels bad for it because she sees Naoya loving another girl the same way as her and it hurts her. And let me tell you again, I’m overselling you this, after that chapter the manga didn’t become good, it just became readable in some way I could at the very least pay attention and engage with this, the only thing I can wonder is why did it take over 100 chapters for something that I genuinely enjoyed to happen? I honestly don’t know, but if I had dropped this earlier as I had considered, I wouldn’t have the appreciation, even if only minimal, that I have for this series now, because this was the best dialogue scene in the entire series.

Of course, after this comes the conclusion, which is Saki accepting that Naoya is a shithead that won’t rest until he gets his harem ending, which is in character for him, Nagisa supporting him no matter what because it is in character for her, Shino wanting to be there too because it is in character for her, and Saki accepting by getting overwhelmed by peer pressure because it is in character for her. This whole mess was actually solved in the same way the manga has been going, but I was in fact paying it some kind of actual attention. Of course, the whole thing of Mirika getting rejected goes as well as you would expect, after all, the whole manga was created under the premise of “what if I write a story where everyone wins?”, and so after some chapters of drama with Mirika, she also accepts being part of the harem, which feels forced as that is against her whole character across the manga.

What? Knowing the harem ending isn’t some kind of thing that ruins the story, it is the whole premise that the manga was going about, even said by the author Hiroyuki himself long time ago. Something to note is that in the last chapter, Naoya explains why he is the way he is, why he fell in love with Saki so much, they have a nice little conversation, and I can just wonder why it took so long, it makes me feel as if I could have liked this series if it wasn’t dumb shit after dumb shit again and again and again and again.

Maybe I’m not fond of the comedy in any way, I can’t promise one day I will open up to the comedy featured in most anime series which I just think is terrible, because comedy has always been a big problem for me in general, so I cannot say this was good in any actual way even if those two dialogues save it from being abysmal.

Thank you for reading.