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The amount of times a romance manga starts with a strong first impression, then stalls in the expedition might have to be investigated.

I’ve read two body swap romcoms and this is by far the better of the two, but it’s still not great. To make a long story short, MC Sunao was dumped by cheating gf Lemon. Years later he falls in love with club-mate Natsumi. Before he can confess, he dumps into Lemon again and they somehow gain the condition of switching bodies every other day.
I’m not even going to try and sound smart in this review, it’s just disappointing to see ... a story with a, not unique, but fun premise be turned into a gag for the sake of maintaining the status quo. The protagonist by chapter 36 seems to inherit a bit of Kazuya from Rent a Girlfriend with his internal monologues that sound ridiculous to any functional person. If there’s one thing I can’t stand about a character, it’s that they progressively regress in character development. All other characters either have A. Tried to better themselves for one reason or another or B. Tried to make a positive impact on those around them. Sunao Akiyoshi (MC) does neither of these things and it’s becoming increasingly more infuriating to read.
I will say this, if you like side characters who take the burden off of watching drivel over and over, you might like what this manga has to offer from around chapter 16 onwards. Characters like Raika (Lemons friend) immediately have 10x the impact that the bland main cast. For what’s its worth, this manga actually made me laugh. There’s basically zero comedy in “romcoms”, even popular ones like Kaguya-sama and to the credit of this manga it’s so ridiculous at times I couldn’t help it. It could have benefitted more from this if there was more to root for, but about 60% of the last 15 chapters was contrived garbage. The equivalent of “Hey how’s it going” “I’m doing good how about you?” “I’m doing just fine thank you” in real life. Just filling the air with conversation, or in this case, text to fill out the pages

All in all it’s not that bad though. It’s worth reading weekly probably, if you have nothing better to do.

I’m might come off as a hater but I genuinely wanted to like this manga. That being said I had three insurmountable issues with its preface and just couldn’t get into it.
1. Inconsistent pacing
When you start any action oriented piece, I feel like most people expect a temporary build up, almost like instructions to the understand the tone and vibe to expect from the get-go. In chapter 1 its employs the “build and drop” technique twice in scenarios that should take place over a few chapters. It might just be me, but it’s like the author has already expected you to understand the style of ... chaotic writing that’s about to take place.
2. Incoherent universe rules
I expected the world to be brutal coming into it, but from the start of chapter 2 it told me a lot of decisions made by the government would make zero sense. The chapter starts off with a distraught man infected with Jinka being prepared for incineration. That’s fine. But he is incinerated alive. Why? Not explained. I’m to assume that Jinka takes over the life source of the affected entity but not the cognitive abilities? Why is that on the reader to infer and so early on? Also why would a possible victim of a “special variant Jinka” be surrounded by teams of people without any special fitted equipment? You get where I’m going with this. The rules makes no sense. Even if they’re explained later on that doesn’t excuse the miscommunication now between the scenes shown to the reader.
3. Plot contrivance
Everything I have mentioned is expected to be overlooked for one reason: the sweet and meek little sister whose older brother will stop at nothing to protect her. Please for the love of god save me from this preaching. I’ve seen it done dozens of times and exponentially better. I understand a lot of things are still a mystery and that’s not an issue, but I wouldn’t be shocked if the sister is deceiving the brother in some way because it all has been way to convenient so far.

I’d love to say this series just isn’t for me but truth be told it’s just not that good and has several problems in its structure and foundation.
Edit: The question of Jinka not infecting some who inhales the pollen is explained in chapter 12, which further strengthens my point. This is something we should know from chapter 2 where cases are presented.

I made a promise to myself to finish the next 5 manga I planned to read, that was a mistake. Blue Flame falls in the category of “absolutely vile insane drama I can’t stop reading, I just have to not start in the first place” and I’ve been trying to distance myself from that because they’re good reads once a year.

I really don’t need to go into the premise or story, for two reasons. One, if you seen one of these you’ve seen them all. Inu to Kuzu, Musume no Tomodachi, Oyasumi Punpun, Chi no Wadachi, and Shounen no Abyss just to name a few. ... Reason number two is you wouldn’t care anyways. I can’t even pretend to lie and say this has any redeemable factors that make it worth a read alone. I can’t even be critical about it like I can with more common drama plots. Every single character is a piece of shit, every possible action is a 180 from what a character should do, and by chapter 34 I found 11 serious plot holes that would make a fantasy author cringe in horror.

That being said you get the gist. I recommend this manhwa if you like any of the aforementioned ones I previously mentioned.

Edit: *Just finished it and I take back everything I said in this review, oh my god it’s so fucking bad. How do y’all do it?😂 I’ll keep the same review up though, it’s how I felt at the time*

This anime is at best a 5/10, you guys do too much I swear.

I read the manga well before this came out and it was the most 3/10 experience I had ever read. I don’t hate the characters, or story, or silly themes before anyone thinks that. It is just so goddamn boring it could replace melatonin. Now I will say the sfx and music of ... the anime combined with the incredible voice acting make it a more pleasant experience in anime form, but that’s really just the nature of romcoms/comedy shows.
There’s nothing special about this show. There’s been a lot of opportunities to expand on characters background and besides Alya we hardly get to see it in detail. I think if the story was more character driven it would be ten-fold more interesting, but I guess I’m in the minority there as well. You can like the show, hell you can love it, but to me it’s run of the mill stuff.

People like to hate I see.

I’m not sure how this is rated a 7, and My Dress Up Darling is almost a full number score higher when there’s almost already been more plot progression in just these 4 chapters than that. I guess I’ll begin with what it’s started well with so far. Pacing, character dynamics, humor (ous) moments and situations, light-hearted themes. Where it could be improved next, more comedy, art, and that’s about it.

These are personal observations and it’s still early, but you guys hate life I guess. It’s been genuinely good so far and I hope it maintains this quality throughout.

I’m going to be critical about one aspect of this story that might seem stupid, but they should’ve cut out the veranda bit.

Here’s the thing, slice of life is only fun for me when two requirements are met. 1, it basically has no story and 2, it focuses on an interesting topic. Neither of these requirements are met when I read this manga. Personally, I don’t find gardening on the veranda interesting enough to read for chapters on end but that is what the manga is about.
Why am I complaining then you might ask? It’s because there’s a genuinely interesting story here which again ... ruins the entire concept of slice of life. It’s either one or the other for me.
At times I felt like skipping entire chapters just to see more detail on both “Neighbor-san’s” lives that captivated me more than I was expecting. Then bam, hit with multiple chapters of planting and nothingness to kill the momentum. I’m not saying the pacing is bad or it wasn’t a well balanced attempt for the plot, but it just didn’t jive with me like I wanted it to.

Also I was baited by the Adult Cast tag because they act like middle schoolers, not even really. When I see that tag I expect characters to act their age (32 to be precise). I don’t care what arguments people have about maturity and whatnot, it’s an expectation I will not back down from and when school themed mangas seem more mature, we definitely have a problem.

Hey author, what the actual fuck?

As if Domestic Girlfriend and Good Ending wasn’t enough, we somehow have an even more lame ass coward who’s indecisiveness has him walked all over. The premise is as follows: Guy’s girlfriend cheats on him and breaks it off. Guy then has to find a place at a share house with all females. Guy helps females. Guy’s ex-girlfriend comes back and he falls right into her lap.
I’m not trying to be an asshole, but I genuinely don’t think the author has been in or seen a healthy, normal relationship without emotional manipulation, ever. Sad face this, crying in the ... rain that, do you really believe that nonsense works author-kun? It’s not even entertaining anymore it’s just straight up annoying, please stop.

If I’m being honest there isn’t really much here that stands out from modern slice of life/ romance subtext genre. That being said I think it’s great to read and keep up with weekly.

You’ve seen it before, Kuudere girl likes outgoing/aloof guy. Introverted protagonists who gets a bunch of extroverted friends changing their high school experience. I never understood the phrase “personality like a wet bag” until I read this. That applies to every single character. The plot revolves around her crush which takes 40 chapters to even attempt to move forward, but I expected that. It reads like a gag without the punchline. And ... the art matches it too, which I think actually helps the appeal. I’m not kidding when I say this is the least offensive manga I have ever read, not a single good or bad thing about it. Its lukewarm by definition.

It’s a cuckold story. That’s it

I’ve noticed these have become popular to make as of late, I mean official manga serializations. It’s dominated in dojinshi of course, with its ridiculous bad plots and laughable character writing. I only read this because I get the itch to read complete garbage from time to time, something’s wrong with me.

Now, respectfully, fuck everyone in this story not named Akaneya Yuuri. If you have ever seen the anime “Just Because” she is literally Komiya from that and everyone else are the rest of the cast but much more degenerate. She comes through so often for the mc and others ... but gets completely shit on in the end. Don’t know what I expected.

I don’t know what Japans fetish is with taking the best character from a cast and pissing all over them for no reason at all, but it’s lame as hell. Other than that, the art is pretty trash. Tries too hard as I like to put it and comes off edgy. This isn’t shock value or horror it’s just hilariously bad so save those panels for something useful.

Anyways enough ranting, yes it’s trash. Please avoid

I hate how much potential this manga has squandered.

Synopsis: Story of a 34 year old man Kinokura Gen who loves to camp solo and a 20 year old girl Kusano Shizuku who wants to “solo” camp together with him. He teaches her about the ways of camping and she cooks for him as thanks in return.

Pros: The art to me is appealing. It might be a bit unorthodox at first but the wilderness environments just look good. The art gets better as the series goes on too. Character development*. The caveat will be in the cons but overall character development is gradual and sort of ... done naturally, for the most part. Another positive is the recipes, food manga typically are boring with this but Futari Solo Camp reminds me of Delicious in Dungeon; not with how odd the meals are but stepping out of their comfort zone to try different food.

Cons: I’ll start with the asterisk from the pros, the character development was implemented because of the author’s mistake. You see, Kusano is completely and utterly unbearable for the first 15 chapters. It’s not a debate. Her first meeting with the MC had some misunderstandings and instead of recognizing them she forces the MC on top of her, to then use that as blackmail on him if he doesn’t allow her to “solo” camp with him. False SA allegations, check. Second, and as it is later confirmed, she is a sheltered brat who has never been told no by her parents and thinks barging into peoples personal belongings (wallet, IDs, etc) is an appropriate response to coerce her preferred outcome. There’s more but you get the gist. The author changes her character about half way and she admits many of her mistakes to then change and become a helpful and eager learning pupil of our MC, which was welcome indeed but so obvious in its execution.
Before I get hearted I’ll move on. Another negative is the text itself. This is a cooking and camping book with manga panels. The amount of text in just 29 chapters should be criminal for a Shounen let alone slice of life, but somehow has been achieved. Some long winded explanations that take minutes to read can be summed up in two sentences and it’s annoying. The next is a gripe of my rather than a flaw but after meal they share we get the wasted “YUMMY” or “INCREDIBLE” panel which is a waste of space because anyone with a functioning brain can see the food looks great. It’s a bit nit-picky but when you see it at least twice a chapter with both meals it feels like padding that is just unnecessary.

The tricky part is recommending this manga because it annoyed the absolute shit out of me in the first half but has gotten significantly better in the second half. The art, characters, and vibe in general has improved. Can you withstand complete nonsense for 15 to 16 chapters? If so, give it a try.