Yandere Kanojo

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I feel like this manga is very underrated souly for the character development later in the story. its first half if fun and light hearted, very normal and cliché, but acts as a baseboard for the latter half. Usually when a romance author tries to add in a deeper story element it falls flat on its face because they generally don't know how to write characters beyond romcom. but here it feels so expertly done. As it elaborates on familial matters, taking a deeper look into the families of the main character, but also having deeper plot points on multiple side characters. it doesn't feel ... like it was shoehorned into the story, it feels natural, like there was a progression to this point. and the execution is so good its hard not to like it. It even has one of my favorite scenes ever when (Spoilers) Later in the story, the MC finally meets his dad who the story was building up to, and he just acts like a normal guy, and they have a perfectly normal conversation. But at the end, as he's about to leave, he suckerpunches his dad and slams the door, never speaking to him again. At this point in the story too, we see that Reina, instead of solving his problems (Which is usually how these stories go), she acts more as a support for him. As her presence alone is enough to give him the strength to actually face these things.

Overall, very underrated in the Romcom genre, 8/10

tl;dr: Come for the gags, stay for the interesting plot supported by strong character/relationship development. 

Firstly, I should note that though its called Yandere Kanojo, it doesn’t mean traditional yandere (yanguire-dere), but rather yankee-dere. There’s no actual yandere in this series.

Now with that out of the way, I suppose I should start off by saying this series completely surprised me by how much it grew. It starts off as a simple 4koma gag manga with flat characters that aren’t much more than simple tropes and small stories that don’t seem to have much purpose beyond having a punchline after every 4 panels.

However, as it goes on those repeated ... jokes start adding up, small details that are slowly inserted with the jokes start adding up to flesh out characters pretty well, and the characters start feeling more and more developed as not just characters that are amusing, but characters that are easy to sympathize with and get invested in. It isn’t clear to me exactly when things changed, or rather maybe there wasn’t really any single point where things changed, but ultimately the stories started getting really well developed. It takes the characters that had been developed through the gags, and starts telling really good stories with them, ones that involve complex relationships complete with flashbacks, drama, twists, etc. that all contribute to quite a lot of character and relationship development.

And the thing is, it does that for pretty much everyone, not just the main couple. Characters get introduced and feel incredibly flat and like they’ll never be anything more than that, but they too get well developed back stories and good character development. While this is happening, it often drops the 4koma format, but it also keeps it quite a bit, even for the more serious portions. The end result of that is that it ends up moving quite fast. And that combined with the fact that it keeps the solid humor it's had from the beginning with running gags that built up over the course of the 17 volumes, and the fact that it deals with so many characters, gives the series really really good pacing.

This is a series that truly vastly improves as it goes on, eventually building up to an ending that while not epic, wraps up quite a bit more than I ever expected such a series would ever need to wrap up and wraps it up really well, and ultimately left me very satisfied with the series. If there’s one complaint I have with the manga though, it’s the art, in that it starts off not very good and ends barely decent. Still, this isn’t a hindrance to the story it's trying to tell so it's not too much of a problem. The art actually looks pretty good occasionally during covers and such so I’d assume this was an issue of having to get through so many panels per chapter, which was a strength of the manga so I’d say it was worth it. 

although the plot seemed interesting, i was hesitant to read it because it was a 4-koma. Generally speaking, im not a huge fan of story lines that do not have a linear sequence of events, but are instead made up of what will be "fillers" in a standard manga/anime.
However, this manga caught me by surprise by being actually quite enjoyable. If I were to compare it to another work, it would be most similar to the format of Gintama in the way that there is not really much of a linear story but does have important story arcs spread across the span of the story ... and subjects/characters that may seem unimportant at first but grows to be important later.
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One of the things that makes this manga unique other than being a 4-koma is the relationship between the main characters, Takana and Reina. They cut right into the chase being a couple and do not have chapters of stalling or conflicts of "do i like him/her"?
It differs from other shoujo manga by having them star as a perfect couple. They help each other grow, are open with one another, and are supportive and trusting of one another. They do not argue out of jealousy for a love rival, feel the urge to own one another, or make each other feel insecure.
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The typical shoujo gender roles are also somewhat reversed. Reina is a strong, independent, violent lead, contrasting the usual clingy, insecure, crybaby of a female protagonist. If anything she resembles the usual male protagonist being rash, cocky, and arrogant.
On the other hand, Tanaka is passive, kind, and smart. Honestly there's not much to say about him and his strongest quality is his love for Reina and his gramps. He has his fair share of trouble which ends up being a large part of the story towards the end.
The other characters are all fun and and adds a lot to the story's entertainment value.
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The art is simple but it fits the light heartiness of this manga perfectly.
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The manga was a bit hard to read since there are two versions and you have to go back and forth between the two so you dont miss anything. But every chapter is worth it.