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Nov 29, 2024
You and I Are Polar Opposites initially centers around the relationship between the energetic and extroverted Suzuki, and the reserved and quiet Tani. Since both of them are new to relationships, we see them grow and develop not only as a couple, but as people too. As the manga progresses, we see other relationships begin to form and the story explores how these characters interact and develop as they navigate their lives in high school.
The writing in this manga is a breath of fresh air. While the characters certainly have specific tropes they fulfill, none of them feel artificial or purposely over-the-top. Each character has
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concerns any teenager their age would have, and the manga does a good job exploring the anxiety and expectations placed on you as you progress through the final years of K12 (or whatever the equivalent in Japan is) education. The characters second-guess not only their assumptions and beliefs, but also how others around them understand the world and what that means for their relationships. While all of this is happening, the story still manages to give ample time to cute romantic scenes and adorable interactions. There is a near perfect balance of romance, comedy, and drama.
Like with teenagers in real life, their struggles with understanding relationships and their self image isn't as pronounced as some other romance series have portrayed it. Most of these things are worked out inside their heads, and often times it takes only a few words or a specific action by another character to help bring a person to a new understanding of themselves and of those around them. Watching these characters grow and mature is satisfying and can even make you reflect on your own beliefs about yourself and others.
The art is serviceable and simple. It doesn't hinder or improve the story in any noticeable way.
Overall, I highly recommend this manga for people looking for a refreshing take on the high school romcom genre.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Nov 29, 2024
This manga centers around the budding romantic relationship of Aikawa Fudou and and Magahara Desumi, the former being the leader of a Power Rangers/Sentai type team of heroes, and the latter being a part of the evil, world domination seeking group known as Gecko. Like all Sentai series, these two groups fight each other and are full of big personalities and over-the-top names for attack. While this is happening, Fudou and Desumi have a secret relationship despite their complicated situation and try their best to hide it from the others.
The story is lighthearted and fun, with it fulfilling both the romance and comedy genres with
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ease. Since this is quite the short read, you could probably read through it in one day. The story doesn't drag out or frequently appeal to the gag of interrupting intimate moments of the main couple with phone ringing or someone walking in on them. It's a very straightforward story which doesn't try to do anything too crazy or deviate from the standard romcom formula.
Overall, this is a nice read that can fill in that wholesome romance niche.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Nov 2, 2021
This manga is decent at best. It's probably the quintessential "safe" slice of life manga that's currently out right now. The characters are one note, the story is none existent for the most part, lots of (mostly useless) characters, and an easy to self insert into MC. Those features by themselves aren't too bad, but put together a creates a, while charming, overall monotonous plot.
Let me start with Komi. I can't say I really enjoy her character. She's quiet, well mannered, and very plain. All great traits for a woman, to Japanese people anyway. Compared to her oneshot counterpart, it's like night and day.
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In the oneshot, she's emotional, strange, and clearly unable to communicate what she wants to. In the manga however, it's doesn't really come off that she can't communicate but more like she just doesn't like to. When useful to the plot, she can speak at length with clear and concise sentences. It's more like she's embarrassed to talk, rather than unable to. She's also very plain like I said. Nothing really noteworthy about her except her condition. The story just relies on her condition as the backbone of her character and does nothing to expand for the most part.
Tadano is a strange MC. It feels like the author is trying to paint him as a normal high school boy but his actions don't really reflect that. He shows almost no attraction to Komi or Mangabi yet we're implied to believe he likes one of them? He shows no deep connection of any of the love interests he is meant to choose until it's, again, useful to the plot. While some people don't mind that, the relationships between characters is one of the most important things to me when reading any story. To see it done in such a lackluster manner just kept annoying me as I read this story.
Mangabi takes a big role in the story when she is introduced. She serves as the main romantic rival to Komi. I despise love triangles but there are some rare chances where they work. Mangabi's character is good though. She is more outgoing, has more depth, and is just better written than Komi honestly. I honestly enjoyed her on screen far more than Komi, until the later chapters anyway but that's mostly due to the art going downhill. She seems like a typical high school girl with her own insecurities and emotions that help build her into an enjoyable character and I can say she is one of my favorite characters.
Speaking of characters, the rest of the cast. I have never seen a more bloated and useless cast of supporting characters in my life. I swear the author introduces several new characters every 5 chapters and we're some how expected to remember them. Like: Look! Random character #12 likes random character #21! Like... ok? I don't even remember who the hell these people even are lol. For some people this isn't an issue as they just see them as funny parts of the story, but for me I just find it lazy writing by the authors.
The art of this manga has gone down hill too. Early on, the art was a bit rough but had appeal to it. Now, the art just exaggerates characters' certain features. It's flanderization at it's finest and frankly just downright unsettling to look at. Mangabi's eyes are the most atrocious example. They look like they're melting off her face. Komi's face got compressed and now she has a massive distance between her lips and her chin. Another character, Katai had a small face as his characteristic but now it's not even recognizable unless they zoom in a for a sasuga shot.
As mentioned before, Mangabi and Komi are rivals trying to be Tadano's girlfriend. This was fine when Mangabi was first introduced, but my main issue is that it's far too drawn out. In fact, it becomes the main topic of the story for 150+ fucking chapters. So much for making 100 friends, let's instead focused on this extremely poorly written love triangle for more than half the manga. I won't spoil who wins, but let's the just say the pay off is not worth it. It is the bland, innocent romance you find at the end of those romcoms where the characters get together at the very end and all you get is some hand holding scene. Maybe if you're like 40 I could understand why you find that appealing, but I expect much more rewarding romantic scenes. Especially after that long of a build up.
Overall, I can't say I hate this manga as it does have it's moments, but I also can't say I recommend this manga. If you like extremely safe and conventional slice of life stories, than this is for you. Otherwise, look else where. 5/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Oct 25, 2021
! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS !
I don't have high expectations for a manga whenever I see the harem tag, but early on this manga showed some promise with it's interesting premise. Like sailor in ancient times, I was lead astray by a siren and ended up crashing into an absolutely dreadful storyline with infuriatingly bad written characters...
I'll start with the positives. The art in this manga is quite good. Each character has expressive faces that have their own unique characteristics to make them easy to tell apart. Family members also look similar so it's easy to tell who's related to who. That's really all the
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positives I can say unfortunately.
The MC, Nagi Umino, is one of the worst written romcom MCs I've ever has to misfortune to read. He has no brain. He doesn't think for himself. He is oblivious to each heroine's feelings. His actions make little to no sense as he does something that's clearly out of affection for one of the girls but then does nothing to follow up. He gets literally kidnapped along with Erika and his first instinct is "oh wow the food here is pretty good." instead of, I don't know, threatening to call the police? He also claims he like Hiro, but it feels like his feelings are only there to cause drama. He asks her on a date like once, gets left alone in a hotel with her one night where she literally gets on top of him in a sexual manner then does nothing, she clearly enjoys spending time with him but he does nothing, and then in his one sad attempt to "save her" it ends up blowing up in his face and turns out nothing bad is happening. I've never seen a man take this many L's in a row and the worst part is that most of them are self-inflicted.
Nagi's relationship with Erika is just a total mess. They're supposed to be engaged, but no threat of marriage seems to be coming anytime soon. Where the fuck is the urgency? Nagi of course rejects it (about the only intelligent thing he's done in this series) but then continues to spend time with his fiancé like they're best buds or something. He said he wanted nothing to do with her initially but then suddenly warms up to her and eventually goes along with the fiancé. Nagi, you were literally against this and suddenly you're playing Mr Nice guy out of no where because she's "not that bad." He then for the rest of the story just goes along with the fact he's her fiancé. What is Erika's father gonna do? Force you to marry? That's literally illegal, even in Japan. Nagi's brain is the size of an lemon, so unsurprisingly, he completely ignores this fact. Erika in herself is just a boring character. I'm guessing she's supposed to come off as some tsundere but she's just far too one dimensional. She wants to come off as extroverted and friendly, then be shy and reserved when it comes to romance. It's such a boring archetype as nothing is done to make her unique. Tsundere is one of the most overused archetypes in romcoms so she needs something to help her stand out. She also has absolutely no chemistry with Nagi. All their conversations degrade into arguments and screaming matches. Then, Nagi says some corny ass line and suddenly she blushes. It's so tiresome seeing this happen over and over again. A relationship is supposed to be dynamic, not predictable. Unless you expect me to believe they'll just have hate sex each other eventually, I cannot logically see their relationship developing any further. Of course, she'll probably still win because she's the cover girl. The author will just pull something out of her ass after another 50 chapters or when this manga gets axed.
So Erika is bad, what about Hiro? Smart, pretty, and long time friend and love interest on Nagi. Surely, she's the best girl right? No. She is literally a sociopath who treats Nagi's emotions like they're games to her, which considering how stupid Nagi is I can't blame her. Her personality seems to do complete 180 at times in the manga. She's either super supportive, extremely defensive, or horny beyond belief. There was a flashback scene that shows her with a much more normal smart but aggressive personality. Then Nagi doing better than her on the exam made her change her whole personality? Like wtf? Nagi also confessed to her at the same time but changing your whole personality is just going overboard. I think the point of her in the story was to serve as some moral dilemma for Nagi, like who is he gonna choose to marry. Love triangles are terrible plot devices but granted they can work if used correctly. That is clearly not the case in this manga as none of Hiro's advances seem to work on Nagi even though he's supposedly in love with her. Now, I guess that's more Nagi's problem but then what is the point of Hiro then? She's just there to cause meaningless drama and literally nothing else. She is just a walking red herring that does nothing but distract the reader from the plot.
Speaking of meaningless, Sachi. Nagi's step-sister who likes him romantically. What's a harem without some incest. Jokes aside, Sachi is also a poorly written and is downright a bitch. She's insincere with her feelings, even though literally everyone but Nagi can tell her intentions. If anything that should be clear indication to her that he doesn't think of her as a potential romantic partner. But, how else are we supposed to insert more meaningless drama into the story? My favorite part is when she pretends to get a boyfriends in order to get Nagi jealous. Noticed the trend that every single heroine in this story is insane or just straight up unlikeable?
I'm not going to talk about Ai too much as she is still a new character with only a couple of chapters of introductions. As of now, she's a yandere-lite idol that is madly in love with Nagi because he told her she can sing... Yeah, seriously.
I'm not planning on keeping up to date with this manga as it continues to get more and more ridiculous as time goes on. 3/10.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Oct 24, 2021
Slow burn the manga. It takes a while for this manga to pick up the pace and get good, but once it does it is easily one of the greatest manga out right now. The story focuses around a character, Phos, who is trying to find their place in a post-apocalyptic Earth where the only remaining humans are literal rock people, fish, and ghosts from the moon which are trying to collect them. With so much ambiguity, one might get the impression that the author doesn't really know what they're doing, but that is clearly not the case here. I'm gonna be referring to all
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the gems as "he", as they technically have no sex, for simplicity's sake.
To start, the art in this manga is simple, but extremely effective at displaying emotion and impact when necessary. Especially towards to end (i.e. as you get closer to the latest chapters), the art is absolutely beautiful at displaying the feelings of sorrow, pain, melancholy, and anger. Phos' face at chapter 93 (you know which panel) conveys so much emotion. I describe the art style as a mix of bubbly but dramatic, mixed in occasionally with some sharp edges used to invoke negative emotions.
The story, while doing my best to avoid spoilers, is fantastic. As I said, the pacing is slow but the build up is paid off. Although, if you're expecting a satisfying or relieving finish to this, then unfortunately (as of now), that isn't what happens. Phos and the cast get trapped in this situation where no clear solution can be seen as "correct" or as "the best possible outcome." Instead, them, and subsequently, the readers are left thinking: "what do they do?" It's not all doom and gloom in this story though. There are some funny moments, especially early on, amongst the characters. Though to be fair, this only makes the recent chapters even sadder.
Each character feels like they have great depth and a purpose in the story in this manga. Emna has to be one of my favorite villains of all time as he systematically relieves Phos of all his allies either through physical means or by psychological means. It's infuriating to see him so easily succeed but at the same time you can't just be impressed with how thorough and calculated his methods are. The main character Phos is a victim of his environment. Forced to live a life where everything seems to be going against him, eventually even his own family. Although he does use questionable methods to get what he wants, I can't say I've ever felt like he wasn't doing the right thing. Considering the circumstances he was in, he was doing the best he could. Cinnabar was also a great character. While he may come across as this generic "outcast who is actually pretty cool" character archetype, he soon becomes a way to reveal Phos' character development through the eyes of second lens. It's a unique relationship as they become further and further apart as the story goes on as Phos' physical appearance and goals begin to change. Phos gives Cinnabar the one thing he wanted, a friend. As the story goes on however, Cinnabar does end up getting more friends, but grows more and more distant from Phos. Their relationship does get quite deep as at it's peak, Cinnabar has a very strong attachment to Phos. Not romantically, as they don't reproduce like we do, but deep nonetheless.
Overall, this manga is fantastic. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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