Kimi wa Midara na Boku no Joou

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This is only my second review so please be easy on me :^)


This review might just be short, but it will be containing what I have felt was right in my own judgement.

Yesterday marked the end of Kimi wa Midara na Boku no Joou, although it is short, it is beautiful and had me fangirling at the end,

Storywise, it is decent, at least for me,

The Art is somewhat mediocre or its decent as well to say.
...
Character, well for me who doesn't like sweet things like this, the development of the Characters was done good in this short of a series.

Enjoyment, I enjoyed this quite a lot, even if it was just 13 chapters long, and even if updates have pretty long hiatuses, it was a fun, diabetes causing read.

Overall, I loved it, just simple words from an ordinary Reader, Have fun reading it fam.

Listen man, I read the synopsis of this Manga and saw that it was 2 childhood friends who end up falling in love with each other so obviously I was in.. But what in the hell did I get myself into. I got a few chapters in and realized "oh shit, this is fucking smut" LOL. listen, it's essentially hentai. I actually think this is the closest thing to Hentai I've ever read. The plot line is a bit weak, and the art isn't over the moon fantastic but it gets the job done. The ending is wack though. It's pretty abrupt. At the same ... time, what should I really expect with this kind of Manga?

Minor spoilers follow.

"Kimi wa Midara na Boku no Joou" is a half-decent romp, but fails to live up to its potential as most of its plot points are poorly set up. The work's poor plot setup also hurts the characterization present.

The plot centers around a god who grants our main characters a wish (which allows for their dorm rooms to become conjoined) in return for stealing the female main character's, Subaru's, self-control for one hour every day. This forces her to act on instinct, so for one hour every day, her well-refined facade breaks down and she speaks her true mind, and she unashamedly displays ... her lust for the male main character, Akira.

The plot doesn't always develop very well. To be more specific, when the plot wants to go from Point A to Point B, the manner in which it bridges the gap is usually a little questionable, even when Point B itself isn't all that bad. For example, there's apparently a rule where if you spend the night in another student's room, you get expelled, which prevents Subaru from spending the night at another girl's room when her room is conjoined with Akira's. There are other times in which you'd expect the manga to naturally end up at Point B from Point A, but the plot thread is dropped or skipped over for some reason. A lot of plot points are also just rushed over in general. I'm aware of the meta reasons as to why that's the case, but that doesn't change the fact that it is the case in the first place.

Regarding the aforementioned god, he steals self-control from humans to use as some form of energy or currency -- sure, whatever. The main issue with this plot point is that it, and the rules surrounding the collection of self-control, don't appear to be entirely consistent. For example, as the plot progresses and Subaru begins to let herself go wild of her own accord more often, the god complains that Subaru has no self-control while in her (and Akira's) room, so there's nothing to collect. As such, he'll start to steal her self-control in public places as well (which he hadn't done before out of consideration). This would, on paper, appear to be an escalation of the plot and stakes, if not for the fact that the god had *already* stolen her self-control in public places (and other places aside from Akira's room, such as in front of family members) in previous chapters. When the reader notices this, they will not be pulled in by the increased stakes, but will instead be pulled out of their suspension of disbelief due to this inconsistency.

Another example would be the mechanics of stealing the self-control. At one point in the plot, the god gives the main characters an hourglass and explains that the sand will fall whenever Subaru's self-control gets collected. So, she loses her self-control for an hour one day, and the sand falls a bit. However, at later points in the manga, the sand falls while she's explicitly *exercising* self-control. It then becomes a plot point to have Subaru find ways to exercise a great amount of self-control to make the sand fall faster. But I thought that the sand would fall as the god was *stealing* her self-control? The entire premise is that her self-control gets stolen and she reverts to her primal instincts. Wouldn't it make more sense if, upon exercising immense self-control, the god would swoop in to steal it and then she'd revert to "acting on instinct" against her newly-attained great self-restraint? Or are there unexplained mechanics to all this, e.g. maybe the act of exercising self-control just allows it to (somehow) build up in a metaphorical container which is represented by the sand in the hourglass falling, and then the god collects it after the fact when she stops exercising restraint? Or maybe the god only takes some of the self-control while she's exercising it and that's why she doesn't totally break down. Doesn't really any sense, but at least it's an attempt...on my part. It doesn't really help that the characters seem to understand exactly how the hourglass mechanics work, even though there was nothing to lead them to believe that it would work in such a manner.

Keep in mind that, despite my digressions into talking about the mechanics of the plot in detail, the issue isn't that there's some absurd plot device to drive the romance and comedy along, but that the utilization of said plot device is not internally consistent within the work itself. The self-control plot point is also not the only one in which there are inconsistencies, but it was the one that stood out to me the most.

The comedy in the manga is alright, at least, and somewhat makes up for the plot not making a lot of sense. Certain plot points introduced in one part of the manga are played off for jokes in later parts, which is some nice and funny reincorporation to see. The jokes surrounding Subaru's lewdness can be funny, though sometimes her attempts to discretely masturbate in front of others are a bit much. Sometimes she'll think that the other party won't notice, but it's so clear that they can that it's a bit hard to laugh at. And then there are the times where they actually don't notice, despite the fact that she's as conspicuous as she always is. Still, it's not all bad, and there are other times when the jokes are set up fairly well. The comedy was the main reason that I kept reading, though even the better jokes manage to get a little repetitive over the course of a mere 13 chapters. There could've been some more creative jokes with a premise like this, and I think that if the aforementioned "stealing self-control" plot device were better utilized, there could've been better comedy.

The manga did not handle exposition all that well. During the early parts of the manga, the beginning of every single chapter started with the main character narrating his backstory and how he and Subaru ended up where they are today, with the same amount of excruciating detail every single time. I think this manga had a slow release schedule which might explain why this happened, but the exposition was just ridiculous regardless and definitely kills a lot of the potential reread value. One positive about the narration is that during a short portion in the middle of the series, Subaru takes over the narration for a while, and this was a good way to see things from her perspective and to better understand her character.

Speaking of character, the characters are a mixed bag for me. Subaru is a tsundere and pretends to despise Akira at the start of the series, but deep down she loved him and was working very hard to convince her father that she should marry him. I think the joke is that she tried to stay away from him so that she wouldn't be tempted by her lewd fantasies and so that he wouldn't find out about them, but how did she expect to actually get together with him when she completely avoided him and said that she hated him whenever they actually did interact (much to his dismay)? If not for the supernatural elements of the series, they would've never interacted with each other and realized their love for one another. I realize that this is sort of the point, but it's a bit much. Although some of the romantic developments and declarations of love later in the series are somewhat satisfying, it can feel a little out of left field at first due to Subaru's behavior at the start of the series. Akira himself is unremarkable as a character. He was nice to his childhood friend and worked very hard to see her again and be with her, and that about sums it up. There are a few interesting moments where he realizes his own perversions through Subaru's loss of self-control, but it's not much. One of his motivations is to better himself as a person so that he can be suitable for Subaru, and although he does this, it doesn't receive much focus. There is a villain character who is corny as hell and not all that well-written, even as far as corny one-note villains go. We see some other characters who are part of Subaru's family but they're a bit underwhelming and don't leave much of an impression, and are ultimately just plot devices for the story or for Subaru and Akira's romantic development. Despite Subaru talking a lot about how she cares for some of her family, we don't see a lot of it -- so, missed opportunity.

The highlight of the characters is the relationship between Akira and Subaru, but even that isn't all that great. I already talked a little bit about it above, where the initial setup for their relationship is not very well thought out. As far as how it develops, the idea is that Subaru's loss of self-control reveals her true feelings for Akira, and that over time, she'll come to reveal her true feelings for him more and more while she actually has her self-control. It's a fine idea, but it didn't necessarily come to fruition all that well though. Sometimes the story would forget the progress that the two had made in their relationship, e.g. at one point she admits to him that he's the one she wants to marry, then later tries to play it off (in a tsun-like fashion) like she didn't specify that it was necessarily him even though she clearly did (and I don't mean that she only implied it the first time -- it was pretty unambiguous). There are times where Subaru's perverted desires are revealed to Akira and he accepts them because he loves all sides of her, then later the manga acts like this never happened and she's hiding these desires out of fear again. This kind of thing cheapens the development that you'd already built up to that point. There are also a couple of moments where the two characters grow a little closer, but it's not always particularly clear on why they did. Despite a lot of the issues I have though, the romantic developments that are present don't do a terrible job of endearing us to these two characters at times, so it's not hard to see how a reader might root for them to work hard against the forces trying to keep them apart.

One of the ideas presented in the manga is that one doesn't need a (material) reason to love someone, which is a point that comes up whenever Subaru's love for an average guy like Akira is questioned. Although it's a cliche theme that could have been presented better, it led to some of the better and more heartfelt scenes for the couple's romance, so the work gets a few points for that.

The art is not all that note-worthy. It's not bad, it's not great, but it gets the job done. The characters are drawn well enough, and Subaru is cute (if a bit generic) looking. Things like the surrounding environment generally look fine, but sometimes drawn in such a way that the artist could avoid needing to draw too much detail (I assume). One cool thing about the art is that in the early chapters Subaru was drawn in different attire when in Akira's room to illustrate a difference between her refined facade and her true self, but this idea was dropped pretty quickly and she just dons her 'good' look for most of the subsequent chapters.

This manga ultimately feels like a bag of mixed opportunities for me. The premise is an interesting one, but the story tripped over itself in attempting to handle it. The romance is decent at times, but then a later event will cheapen the developments up until that point. The main characters aren't awful, but they could've gotten better development and their motivations could've been better explained. The minor characters are mostly plot devices, which wouldn't have been too bad if they didn't so blatantly feel like plot devices and nothing more. The comedy was the best part, but it was hit-or-miss and could've been more creative. To sum things up numerically:

Story: 3/10, the premise was poorly handled and the exposition was grating.
Art: 5.5/10, it's fine.
Characters: 4ish/10 or so...on their own they weren't great and there were a lot of missed opportunities. The romance could've been better, and a lot of the better aspects were squandered in some way.
Enjoyment: 5/10 or something, I didn't quite love or hate any part of this series, though I appreciated the comedy a little more than I disliked other aspects, and for a quick read it's not bad to look at.

Overall: I'll call it a 4/10 or around there. It's not really a BAD read (honestly, you kinda know what you're getting into), but not my cup of tea.