Kaoru Hana wa Rin to Saku
The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity

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Just by looking at the cover picture, you can tell it is another "Romeo and Juliet", "Delinquent and smart girl" cliche slapped together. However, the mangaka is able to turn these overused tropes into something amazing and wholesome that other mangas with the same plot simply could not accomplish.

The plot is simple: we start of from the perspective of a delinquent guy, our male lead Tsumugi Rintaro from a low-ranked public high school, coincidentally meeting with a petite girl, our female lead Kaoruko Waguri from a prestigious all-girls high school, at a cake shop owned by Rintaro's mom. Both schools are also coincidentally next to ... each other with a unfathomable hatred of each other. It is without a doubt both leads would need to navigate their relationship within the web of animosity between their schools and friends.

What changes the progression and pacing of this plot lies entirely with the characters, and the mangaka sure does know how to write good characters. Tsumugi, who is portrayed as a scary person on the outside, is soft and kind on the inside. He is able to learn quickly from and correct mistakes he made, intentionally or unintentionally progressing the relationship between him and Kaoruko. Kaoruko, who saw past Tsumugi's scary appearance and a love of cake, naturally opened up to him at his family's cake shop (for reasons that would probably be explained in the future). What is truly refreshing is that these two main leads are not shy of expressing their feelings and are able to face the obstacles head on whether it be from objections of their social standing or their classmates. The main leads and side character's honesty and respect for their values makes this manga enjoyable to read as they develop.

The art is nothing to be scoffed at considering the mangaka's first published work. Every character's facial expressions are extremely detailed and can invoke heavy emotions, whether they be upset, crying, blushing, or joyful. Every character is also unique and as a reader can easily distinguish who is who. In addition, the backgrounds of each scene are meticulously drawn to give an adequate sense of the setting of each event.

Within the first 10 chapters, there has been more meaningful progression between the relationship of Tsumugi and Kaoruko than other mainstream romance mangas. Although it is easy to see the general gist to what the ending is, I am excited to see how the mangaka will lead the plot to that ending as every chapter has been full of twists and turns, and heavy emotions that is hard to replicate after reading hundreds of the same genre.

If you are a fan of this type of romance genre, I highly suggest you give it a try. Even if you are tired of other mangas overusing these cliches, I would still recommend you try the first two chapters as it sets a solid foundation of what the rest of the manga will be like.

This is your typical melodramatic romance manga where nobody seems to act like human beings, but rather like actors in some larger than life play. Something as commonplace as going to the beach with friends is turned into an absurdly cathartic, life-changing event, with hearty and sobbing speeches about friendship and how much life has changed and how much they've been through in just those few chapters. And everyone is constantly on edge about something or other, and then nothing can be solved in a subtle or simple manner, everything should and will be aggrandised for dramatic effect. People are constantly walking on eggshells, blushing, ... looking away, overthinking. A smile is never just a smile, it's a grand display of happiness. A sad face is never just a sad face, it's a tragedy.

And I get it, that's the appeal, and I'm sure that people who enjoy melodrama will also enjoy it. Personally, I don't think there's anything here that sets it apart from similar works, apart from the art, which is great. But the story and characters are just fine, and the romance aspect quite weak and dull, and as soon as I put it down I forgot about it completely in a matter of hours.

Deeply mediocre anime with bafflingly high rating. I guess people rate it high because the characters in this anime are all incredibly nice. Everyone is nice. Whenever you think there might be some tension, it turns out there was a misunderstanding.

And this niceness is the only character trait that any character has. Other than apologizing. Everyone apologizes for the weirdest non-infractions. Did a character not share a minor detail about their personal life with their friends - they will apologize for this, and then their friends will apologize for expecting details, and the main character will apologize for... Just endless apologizing.

The main female character ... is nice. Very nice. Implausibly nice. We learn how nice she is because every other character tells us. Because this is a manga that doesn't trust us to make up our own minds about characters. We're also told that the main boy is nice, but misunderstood because people mistake him for a hooligan. Except he isn't particularly nice (just kind of dense), nor does he look like a hooligan. He is tall, and apparently in Japan this is terrifying.

Clearly this manga is aimed at middle school girls, who are shy and bookish. Why anyone else would rate it so highly is a mystery.