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This is a short revenge story that (compared to the usual mahnwa equivalent) does not go so far that you begin disliking the hero and heroine.
The art is pretty standard, or even below average for romcoms.
The characters are likeable and takes (for the most part) rational and believeable decisions.
The manga does have an unneeded twist in the last chapter, which made me grumble a little about double standards and "stooopid japanese sensibility".
I won't recommend this one. Even if you are looking for slob romcoms, you can do better than this.

4/10

Plot: Dude realises his girl is cheating on him and he ... gets mad and sad. His friends has his back and a reasonable revenge plot is hatchet

PROS
The art is fine and some of the pacing and twists do work well. I'm not a fan of "timey-whimey" plots, but the witch was well made imho. Older sister plot part was also a cool concept although contrived.

CONS
I cannot believe this is made by Aka Akasaka. The characters are more edgy than 90ies Final Fantasy rivals. The dialogue and plot is worse than Kingdom Hearts. The level of drama is a COSTANT STATE OF CAPSLOCK! Background stories for every character is beyond tragic to a level that it becomes almost laughable. To think the same guy could make Oshi No Ko and Kaguya-sama ... is wild to me. I could never recommend this to anyone.

3/10 from me sorry.

I saw the writting on the wall before I even clicked the first chapter: Psycological, Medical & Tragedy tags. I steeled my resolve again when the translator's name was an Oyasumi Punpun reference. This would be a rough one.

This fragile romance between Shizuku and Kaori is slowly build and expanded upon, with supporting characters from the girls sisters to old aquitances helping to move the pieces into place. This is a nicely crafted narrative, well drawn and with great character. It does hold some emotional impact which is always great.

I rated this in the high end of 7/10, as it is simply too short. I ... actually got to bond with the character, despite it being this short, but it felt a little too "crafted for impact." A wholesome tragedy is certainly lovely, but the predictability does take the edge of the emotional response. I do recommend it, but I would also suggest checking out some nonwholesome tragedies, like Oyasumi Punpun or I Love Your Cruddy...

I find [Oshi No Ko] to be hard to review. On one hand it does a lot of hard stuff that most mangakas could never achieve. On the other hand, this manga does fumble a little in critical places, which I will elaborate later, as a justification as to why I consider it a 7-8/10 instead of a 8-9/10. Spoiler free of course.

Pros:
This manga explores the underbelly of the Japanese entertainment industry. This isn’t just the hardships that idol culture creates, but a more thorough exposure of staged plays, the film industry, celebrity culture and yes, idol culture. This manga does this in a unique, ... refreshing, honest, entertaining and dramatic way.
The drawings are gorgeous and the backgrounds are way better than they needed to be. Stage and settings for the manga's dramatic moments always blend well with the backgrounds.
The characters are great. You believe in their circumstances, aspirations, hardships and growth. Even the story progression is better than most dramas.
The show wraps up in a satisfying way, closing almost all the threads and with all pieces on the table, the show doesn’t have as blatant plot holes as other well regarded shows like fx Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys.

Cons:
The manga tries to tackle a very unique set of tags, which is part of what makes it unique, but also the reason that it is hard to explain the show's appeal.
At first glance, it looks like an Idol manga with some of the classic tags: Drama, Romance, Comedy, School Life & Slice of Life.
Then we add the combo of Gore, Psychological and Tragedy, which is almost always a good decision to raise the dramatic stakes and impact of most stories. It also warns the reader that this manga won’t be purely wholesome.
But then it gets weird, by adding the tags: Reincarnation, Supernatural and Mystery. This is certainly a decision that will come as both a blessing and a curse to the narrative. On the plus side, this allows for a very different way to add character motivation, but I would argue that it also hurts the manga in a lot of ways. Accepting supernatural elements in a realistic depiction of the entertainment industry feels a little unnecessary. The reincarnated characters don’t really lack agency or motivation to act anyway, so they could just have been normal children. And it opens the manga up for the obnoxious normies, that convinced themselves that this reincarnation was bound to end in the Incest tag, thus securing the manga a constant barrage of unneeded critique. I believe this mangas premise could have worked just as well or better, without the Reincarnation and Supernatural tags, which also eliminates that mangas biggest plot holes: the crow-girl.


In the end, I want to recommend [Oshi No Ko] for most readers. It’s creative, cool, unique, dramatic, entertaining and well drawn. But the humor doesn’t touch Aka Akasawa’s previous work (Kaguya-sama) and is held back a little by the convoluted supernatural shenanigans. I will for sure reread this again at some point.

Let us be fully aware, that "mr. paper bag is in love" was axed very early by its publisher, which forced the mangaka to wrap up the story in a very unfullfilling way. We cannot judge what the mangaka wanted this to become, only what the final product is!

Aaand the final product is absolutely horrible. An autistic boy takes all experiences very litterally, and courts a girl he haven't seen in 10 years, while wearing a paper bag on his head. Not due to him being and uggo, or carrying a scar that the girl was responsible for, but because she worded her feelings with ... "I don't ever want to see your face again" 10 years ago.

Paper bag-kun is a hottie, giga kind and a tryhard with bad communication skills, but not in an endearing way. Suddenly the story had a stalker plot for like 2 chapters, which was never elaborated upon.

Nothing of value is lost by skipping this one, althought the full manga might have reached slob tier up around 4-6/10. I gave this 2/10 and I am not wrong on this one.

This is unironicly a battle-manga about light novel authors, which is uninteresting.
The "spin" is to add a suggestive loli harem, with a hint of incest.

The reason this falls flat, is due to not committing. Suggestive tag with very little fanservice? Loli harem without any waver in the MCs conviction? Incest-adjacent with 0 in world consequenses? The end result is a bland battle manga, with underage girls gushing for the MC, who never makes a move on anyone.

I was struggling to read through these chapters. Not entertained at all. Go read Domestic Girlfriend or Kaguhara instead for some actual fun.

These 31 chapters are the penultimate definition of the average 4/10 romcom.
It's arguably too short to really build a lasting investment in the characters, but this also means the mangaka don't have time for most of the regular tropes, liked the locked equipment room, the lost child, the aquarium date, under the teachers desk and so forth.
Nothing in this manga is surprising or unexpected.
Nothing is tackled in an unexpected way.
The characters are cute, well drawn and believeable, but doesn't get much time to shine.

This is romcom slob, but sometimes, that is exactly what you need.

This is tagged as erotica and the first couple of chapters goes decently hard on the spice. However, it soon becomes apparent, that this isn't actual erotica, but just a plain old suggestive, harem romcom. In the end it falls short on characters, premise and plot progression.

It avoids pushing boundaries like better mangas do (see: Domestic Girlfriend) and instead end up kinda disappointing. Audacious at first, but non-committed to its own degeneracy.

I did like the start though, so I would recommend people reading around 20-30 chapters? That level of spice is the only level you are gonna get. Go with Kaguhara if you want ... funne degeneracy. Go with Sexercise if you want actual porno.

This is tagged as erotica and is pretty spicy.
The art and backgrounds are decent.
The character archetypes and personalities are strong.
It does a great job with incorporating fetishes, both from popular tags, but also some more obscure tags, in a way that everyone can enjoy them.

Then why did I rate it as a 4/10? The story is so unbelieveably bad. Not in an audacious way like "Please Put Them On, Takamine-san." It is a constant immersion break. The story is unfinished, repetitive at some parts and revolves around pressing gemstones out ya dick. The imagined pain of that is so unpleasant, that the ... author should had gone full hentai, where pain is looked fondly upon.

Gal Gohan isn't anything special.
The characters, art, background and themes are acceptable.
Fujiwaras character got a pretty rough send off, but I can live with that.

The chapters got very predictable, due to the directness of Miku; the gyaru. She is fast and open about her feelings and intentions, which makes the plot stand still and wait for the appropriate aging.

It's not spicy at all and ends at the start of the relationship, without showing conflicts and hardships from breaking the taboo. Aging Miku from 16-20 is the morally right call from the author, but who reads ecchi romcoms for their morals? There ... is also some cooking I guess.