Hoshino-kun, Shitagatte!
Hoshino-kun Please Follow My Lead!

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When I noticed that this manga was just rotting away in my PTR list, and more so with such a captivating cover page, I just rushed to read it without a second thought. Really, because I didn't even read the premise as to what kind of story it is, didn't even see the tags attached to it, if it is ended or not, not a single thing. So all that I had was my desire to give it a try and an assumption about the kind of story it would be.

Opening the first chapter and seeing the crying face of the girl, I was sure ... that my assumption of it being a deep manga was right on the bat, until I was slapped in the face by all the gags and jokes that were about to follow. Maybe my humor is skewed, but unlike the masses, I very much synced with the humor the author tried to throw at the readers. They expected it to be a romantic comedy, as implied with the promotional material of the manga, but it turned out to be much different, an episodic gag humor where romance was the least of its concerns, at least till the chapters that were published until axe-kun put on a hold to the series. Humor is often hard to master, as there are as much preferences as there are humans. Amplified by the fact that despite the author of the series being a comedian in the real world, he was still not able to please all.

Let's also talk about the art as I am trying wrap up the pros first before approaching the cons, and it is good. Do not believe me? Then ask the people who marathoned this series, dogpiling on the manga but praising the art. Jokes aside, the artstyle was pretty good, but it felt like it would have been way more impactful and praised about if was present in a series with romance as the main plot. But still top tier quality of art.

Now about the cons, and most of this certainly stems from the inexperience of the author. I mean he is a comedian and not a mangaka. Professions do exist for a reason and this manga just echoes that sentiment more. Writing, if I be honest, is downright awful. Its not that the idea or the plot is bad, instead I liked both of them, it is the execution that is the rotten apple. The chapters felt disconnected for some reason. Even though I said earlier that this one is an episodic type of manga, it certainly doesn't give the vibe. The chapters are related enough for it not to be episodic but broken enough for not making enough sense. I know this is confusing but I just gave up at the end and just went with the flow. Another one is that not enough of a thought was put together to develop the characteristics of the characters present in front of the readers. Even though the design of the characters is something I appreciate, there was not even an effort to develop what we call a relation between the characters and the one reading, most of the things were just left for the readers to do themselves. More than subtle amount of suspension of disbelief was required going through the manga, but maybe it can be justified cause of its gag nature. But what cannot be justified is the ending that the author delivered to us. I get that it can be pretty difficult to give an ending when the danger of getting axed is just about taking your neck, but this still takes the cake for an absolutely absurd ending, which looked like the author's "fuck you" to the readers in return for the axe of his manga.

Overall I have mixed feelings about it, despite the bad ending, it was not able to diminish the smile I had on the gags. I do not hate nor like this manga. It had its moment of shine but the darkness surrounding it made the glimmer too hard to notice.