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Komi-san is a fun little read, what with its relatively short chapters that you can read in bursts & not think too much about, enjoying the nice art, the huge (HUGE) assortment of characters, and nonsensical plotlines, but it has reached a point where I'm just... angry. And I don't like getting angry when I'm reading your everyday shounen romances. So, why am I angry? Oh, the reasons. There are so many reasons.

Let me get positives out of the way quickly: because the story has just SO MANY characters, there are quite a few that are unique and interesting. They're never developed, mind you, ... so it's pretty much the case of 'what you see is what you get', but their starting-off points are unique enough that they are fun to read about. It's a double-edged sword, though, but I'll get to that a bit later.

For the most part, storylines are short and if something doesn't catch your eye, you can just skip ahead because the story is moving at a glacial rate so you're unlikely to skip much of anything. Some gags are funny, even if they do overstay their welcome occasionally, and I'm sure that, eventually, romance aspect will be cute.

Anyway, that's about all I can say as far as positive things go. And, honestly, even they come with a lot of caveats, so let's speak of those caviars.

As I said before, this manga has just A LOT of characters. Some good, some bad, some inconsequential. That's not necessarily the issue itself, if I'm being honest, but the way a lot of these characters are utilized is. As you shutter forward through dozens of its chapters, most of the interesting cast is introduced rather early on. However, as the story goes on, they sort of begin to fade into the background, showing up only occasionally, while a lot of panel time is afforded to characters that are just worse and worse. The entire premise doesn't work because I cannot think of a writer in the history of mankind who would be able to write 100 unique & interesting characters contained with such a boring and one-note setting that is Japan's high school.

While, on occasion, a decent one emerges toward the later parts of the manga, for the most part every new character that gets introduced is just... annoying. The bigger issue, though, is that they overcrowd the panels from thereon, and at some point 5-6 chapters will go by with ONLY annoying characters appearing in them. Which is when things go from annoying to simply anger-inducing.

There was a chapter that I read shortly before dropping the manga where one of the worst characters introduced in the entire story forged the cliche anti-sex thing in the school and went around hammering heads of other insignificant characters. That's it. That's the entire chapter. I think it's supposed to be a parody, but it's easy to be confused since, you know, IT'S JUST NOT FUNNY.

I wouldn't be bothered (too much) with this if the story was in any way, shape, or form captivating. But it's not. It's slow. It's borderline abusive in how slow it is. That 'love status quo' certainly lives up to its name in this little slice of heaven. But look, there has been SOME progress. And while slow, it was NICE progress. I'd even call it organic, taking into account the kind of characters that we're working here with. The problem I have is that, far too often, the main storyline is just outright shelved for like 30+ chapters while we investigate pointless, boring, and outright putrid aspects of this world.

There was recently a repeat arc (well, recently as in ch 210~, so recently for me), where we had second school festival. We've already had one, and it was already one of the worst arcs of the story, so now we have the second one. Is it redemption time? Nope. In fact, this arc alone is what mostly took me from 'pretty annoyed' to 'outright just angry and done'. Not only are the storylines played out throughout just rancid and drab, the story for some ungodly reason takes a massive turn into melodrama for like 6 chapters, and I was just done.

The love triangle (that isn't really a love triangle, and was the story I hated from the onset anyway) gets its moment in the sun, and instead of doing anything positive, it just shits all over everything. The gyaru chick, whatever her ungodly name is, ruined, well, everything. I was marginally fine when the 'love triangle' was only her middling, one-sided crush that was evidently born out of the fact that Tadano was the first dude who treated her as a human being, but the story decided to actually dedicate time, energy, and SERIOUSNESS to this plotline that was outdated in 1969.

The conversation that she and Komi had on those stairs in the midst of everything else that sucked in connection to the festival arc was honestly one of the worst things I've ever read in my life--that's right, LIFE, not just this story. Not only did the character of Komi did a complete 180 (from being unable to talk more than 2 words face-to-face, to having a FULL BLOWN FUCKING MONOLOGUE where she SCREAMS), what was even worse than that is that NONE OF THIS MATTERS. Her one-sided crush is pointless. It was never gonna manifest. Giving it the gravity and the weight of 'Catcher in the Rye' did not make me emotional or invested, it just pissed me off.

By this point, there's simply too much filler in the manga--well, there's always been filler, to be honest, but the reason I wasn't as annoyed with it as I'm now is that the main storyline was still interesting. At this point, I just do not care. I wish we could completely switch perspectives and just watch little-brother & little-sister story, because they are far more interesting.

For now, I've put the manga on hold, but I honestly don't know if I will ever have the strength to continue. Of all the characters in the manga, I like maybe 4, tolerate like 6, and am either annoyed or outright angered by the rest of 'em. That is NOT a good ratio for a story that hinges on you liking most of its cast, especially the newly-introduced ones, since the only character with any form of development is Komi (which was ruined anyway, so what the fuck's the point) and that gyaru chick that I wish was never introduced (or, if she was, never became such a centrally focused character).

I suppose I'm in the minority, though, since a lot of people seem to love this repetitive, cliche-spitting bullshit that would have been a cliche in a shoujo manga from 2001. Girls crushing on the same guy & using that crush to strengthen their friendship is such a borderline fantasy scenario that it can only ever play out in manga. Except, this isn't a fantasy manga. So, I'm out.

What was already a rather thinly-held-together story has become entirely unreadable at this point, and I find myself with no desire to continue any further.

If you need a quick TL;DR: it's your by-the-books 'reincarnated into a villainess, a bunch of stupid stuff happens' story with some occasional nice fluff that is largely overshadowed by the annoyances of the rancid tropes of the genre. If I never have to see another love triangle that isn't really a love triangle and is instead a source of extra chapters that add quite literally nothing to the story, I will not have missed a thing of this world. ...

Credit where credit is due, first: unlike quite a few FMC of this genre, this one has not swayed even once in her simping over the past 44 chapters. If every other FMC took a page out of her book, I'd be incredibly happy. She is wholly devoted to the main lead, through and through, and remains entirely unshakable to this chapter. I'm not entirely certain that will remain so, however, as the last 10ish chapters or so indicate rather heavily the shitstorm of drama that's coming might just devolve her into yet another brainlet that walks around getting wet whenever any male character looks at her funny. Again, in the chapters that I've read, she remained steadfast, and is largely the best part of the entire story to be honest, a rarity in this genre.

So, why am I dropping it? The already-foreshadowed shitstorm of drama that's been bubbling on the horizon. Most of the story focuses almost exclusively on 2 characters--FMC & MC. While side characters pop in here and there to share their thoughts and make it seem like there's more to this world than the love story, they are largely inconsequential and only ever truly used as plot devices to either keep the story moving forward or to introduce secondary drama (i.e. brother & father who supposedly adore FMC entirely ignoring her wishes at every corner because, well, otherwise there'd be no drama). When the story is JUST about FMC & MC, it's entirely serviceable--nothing to write home about, mind you, but there's enough fluff, tenderness, and decent romance in there that I was actually enjoying it. Everything else surrounding the two, however, is absolutely putrid.

Secondary MC, especially, has entirely marred the story to the point I'm dropping it completely. Another point that I 'cleverly foreshadowed' are the love triangles that aren't love triangles--this guy stands NO chance. He will not win. I'm willing to bet my savings on that fact. However, he has occupied at least 50% of the screen time in the past 10 chapters or so, and it seems that will continue to be the trend going onwards. He is entirely inconsequential outside of just being a secondary lead. I hate this trope. His entire existence had to be bent like a steel pipe with bare hands in order to shove him where he doesn't belong, and not only did it not improve the story, it demolished it.

Similarly, most every other female character is so sporadically present after a certain point that they, too, are entirely inconsequential. The author dedicated a good chunk of the story to developing FMC & MC, and those parts were fairly decent, but it also came at the expense of developing any of the side characters. None of them matter, not really, even if at first it might seem like they do. Like that Saintess, whose coquettish behavior early on seems like it would play a massive role throughout the story--nope. She don't matter. I don't think she's showed up in the story in the past 20 chapters.

I will say that, despite me not recommending this and giving it a low grade, this is one of the better stories in the genre. I mostly never even add them to the 'read list', let alone give a review, just because of how low quality these things get. So, if you're a fan of the genre who rarely drops these stories, I imagine you'll be guzzling this thing like cold water in a scalding desert.

Me? I'll keep searching for my oasis that won't give me nausea as I read it.

I will pose a rather strange question: what even is this manga?

I have read 23 chapters, and I legitimately cannot tell you what the central theme of this story is. It's not girl love, it's not civil conflict, it's not friendship, it's not a fantasy adventure, it's not a coming of age tale... it feels like an amalgamation of tropes from various genres married into what is, quite honestly, borderline insulting narrative.

There hasn't ever really been a clear direction letting you know how to read this story as, so you blindly try to figure it out only to be blindsided with, well, stupidity. ...

I don't consider this a love story, and if you do, then perhaps it's good that you're reading this review: what you have here is a borderline psychotic case of love-bombing. You have one character who is clearly not interested, and one who is desperate for attention, and even if it's played off for laughs and wholesomeness and as though it's sweet, it's... well, it's really not. While at the start it may have worked as I simply believed the chick was just hard-simping for her favorite character (where the comedy would work), when it became clear that she is legitimately, unequivocally *in love*, whatever little was working in the story just... stopped. It was no longer funny, it was sad. And then from sad it became depressing, and from depressing it became, well, worrying.

Then chapter 22/23 came, and I was just kind of done. Not only did we get introduced to a trope so boring it was outdated in 1987, it was the story's last chance to actually go back to the roots of comedy, and it just didn't. It fully embraced the melodrama, and whatever little it still had going for itself (which was honestly almost nothing at that point) was just... gone.

So, ultimately, what you have here is some psychotic, perverted version of a love story that, quite frankly, isn't even a love story (and it shouldn't be), with a set of simple, one-note characters, and a world beyond inconsistent and full of logical holes. You have a main character that goes from being a comedic self-insert into... I don't even know anymore, to be honest.

This is not a love story, this is not a 'villainess' story, this is not girl-love story, this is just... annoying tropes inked with increasingly inconsistent art.

TL;DR -- some nice fluff dragged down by tropes of the genre.

I don't usually read yuri (at least unless the premise intrigues me), but I am a sucker for a fluff romance so I do undergo an occasional binge of the girl-on-girl manga. For the most part, the reason I tend to avoid not just yuri but yaoi as well is that a lot of the stories get consumed by either JUST that, or the surmounting tropes of the genres.

Lonely Girl is kind of both; there is just a tinge too much dependence in terms of characterization for me. It feels as though ... quite a few girls in the manga are defined by their relationships to the counterparts, which makes for some really shallow characters. Even the two mains seldom step outside the assigned tropes, and even when they do, it's very brief and never leads anywhere.

None of this, really, is anything close to an objective critique--usually, if a trope is repeated ad-nauseum throughout the genre, it means that it resonates with at least the majority of the audience. The same way I don't enjoy straight-folk romances that are JUST romances, I don't enjoy it in here either. Admittedly, there might a bit more to the story beyond which girl will end up with which other one and how, but unless you are really invested into seeing it happen, nothing else of great import really transpires. Sure, there are your dramatic tropes that come to usurp the status quo, but they never really shake anything up enough that it warrants an emotional reaction. For the most part, I simply stumbled through pages numbly, occasionally mumbling 'that's cute' like a lunatic, and occasionally just fast-forwarding through the pages when it felt like I was reading every other yuri ever.

Nonetheless, despite my mixed feelings, as far as a good number of yuri romances go, this... ain't even bad. It's a par-for-the-course rom-com, and one of the few that doesn't completely surrender itself to the tropes, so if you are tentatively interested in broadening your horizons beyond your everyday rom-coms and want to dip your toes into the other side, this is a legitimately good starting point. You'll get the fluff, the cuteness, and you'll get the tropes you'll continue to see in every yuri ever.

You know that feeling when you finish a movie that made you feel really good, but then when you try to remember what it was about... you're sort of drawing blanks? Well, this is that movie... but manga.

Tanbo de--yet another overly long title that I wish would fad out once and for all--is feelgood story, and that's about the highest order of praise I can offer. In all honesty, I enjoyed it--60 chapters shuttered by in no time, and though I never truly laughed or anything of the sort, I was never annoyed or bothered by anything, either. I imagine this would be one of ... those stories you read when you're feeling a bit malaise, when you need a temporary distraction from whatever you're dealing with in your life, where you don't need to actively engage with it past the pretty picture and feelgood panels.

However, just as that's it's greatest strength, it's also its greatest shortcoming. There's nothing else to it--just the shallow waters that cool you a bit and feel nice to sit in, but if you try to swim or frolic, you just conk yourself against the stone and start bleeding. Okay, that's a bit overboard, but still apt.

The story has no depth, not really. It's just about a farmer and a girl that fell out of the blue sky, and this idealized, romantisized life in the countryside. There's a bunch of adorable kids that show up a few times and (for some reason) aren't beyond desperate to get the hell out of there, there's childhood friends, and just a lot, A LOT, of food. It's slice of life at its barest, and though I appreciate the subtle approach to drama (or, well, lack thereof really), at some point it really does just become scrolling through extremely pretty pictures and wondering why is everything so slow.

The comedy's sparse, there's no interspection beyond the shallowest of attempts, there's basically no romance (not the actual sort, just some juvenile cringe), there's no drama, there's just... nothing. I appreciate it on the surface level, as I am probably gonna end up re-reading this a few times when I just need to distract my dopamine-addicted brain for a few hours, but the manga never truly managed to engage me and make interested in any of its aspects.

Character work is, perhaps, the second best part of it after the art, but it's all so... vanilla and recognizable.

Anti-social bloke suddenly finds himself opening up to the world after a random (but beyond gorgeous) woman enters his life for no apparent reason? Check.

A young (but beyond gorgeous) woman is so hyper you're just about 98% certain she's an undiagnosed manic but because the story portrays it in a positive light you just sort of ride the wave? Check.

A slew of marginally-interesting side characters who seem just as infatuated by the woman as the main character and occasionally pop into the story just to fill out the panels? Check.

It's not even the matter of the lack of originality--it's the lack of a twist at the established tropes. You could say that the MC has a bit more personality past just being a basic self-insert, but it's so little that in an actually well-written manga with deep characters, he'd be a footnote--one of those background faces that fill out the panel.

I've nothing against stories like this, honest. As I said, I enjoyed it and even liked it, but I don't want you to go into this story expecting something new or unique. If you want familiarity, if you want that warm, fuzzy feeling and little else past it, this is the story for you. Anything beyond that? I'd look elsewhere.

‘Are We Really Getting Married’ aims to portray a semi-realistic romance wrapped inside a wholesomely unrealistic premise. And while it can be argued that, in fact, it does pull off that ‘realistic romance’ vibes, it does so at the expense of almost everything else, but namely entertainment. Contrary to what the high minds might think, there is a good reason why ‘realistic romances’ rarely, if ever, blossom into anything more than niche past times. Even some of the most fanfare-inducing ones, like 500 Days of Summer, aren’t really ‘realistic’, just grounded.

There is really just no simple way about my final conclusion after 35 chapters of ... reading this manga: plain and simple… it’s just boring. It commits the worst cardinal sin of all pure romances, and though some people, as evidenced by the overall score, might find the blooming ‘realistic’ love to their liking, I do not. I do not like reading ‘realistic portrayals of love’ due to one simple reason: most authors, for some reason, seem to think that ‘realistic’ means ‘dull’ and ‘boring’. As such, they tend to make the characters in question extremely mundane, and that is all fine and dandy, but then they go ahead and make the stories hundreds of pages long. And that’s no good.

The story of ‘Are We Really Getting Married’ is held together by flimsy threads that are really there just as plot devices that push our two leads together. The narrative fluctuates between ‘eh’ and ‘meh’, and all its desperate attempts at bold portrayals of everyday occurrences are really just… well, meh. The story repeatedly goes in circles, but it’s a romantic story, so the narrative aspect really isn’t that important. There is little to evolve upon in terms of romantic narratives, which is why most, if not all authors focus simply on creating interesting characters. And characters here, well, are not.

What’s-his-name and what’s-her-face, in summary, are just boring. There is nothing uniquely interesting about them, nothing that makes me root for them, nothing that inspires me, nothing, nothing, nothing. It’s just a dull guy and a dull girl awkwardly falling in love like horny high-school teenagers despite being in their mid twenties. There are no quirks that make for decent comedy, there is quite literally 0 chemistry between the main pair–like, legit, you could pair two planks of wood and they’d likely have more chemistry than the two of them–and if, again, this is the ‘realistic love’, then I simply never want to love in my life since I’d be bored off my noggin’.

But, as is the case with most of these ‘realistic romances’, this story isn’t realistic. Forgoing the stupid premise, why is it that every single ‘realistic romance’ sprouts some of the most boring, uninteresting, and dull characters in existence? Because real people, believe it or not, are not boring. They don’t have singular quirks like ‘I love physical maps which is a weird thing, look how quirky I am’, or ‘I have a cat’ as personality traits. But whatever, it’s like I’m shouting into the void at this point, to be honest. I have no clue what’s happening in Japan, but these constant depictions of beyond socially inept grown adults are honestly just kind of… sad. It’s as though these characters haven’t ever interacted with people past 3 sentences their entire lives, and, even if that’s true, I just don’t care about them to watch them get to the 4th grader’s level of communicative skills.

Maybe it’s just me, but there’s a reason why most romantic manga have at least 1 of the 2 leads be an extrovert as such a character can carry a monotonous dud. That’s why all shounen romances sporting black-hole dense teenage boys with 0 personality have girls that steal the show and mostly become the reason people read the damn thing, or why every shoujo manga sports an awkward girl who orgasms at the sound of a dude’s voice while all the hot bishounen howling at her steal the pages around her. You can salvage 1 dud if you surround it by gold, but if everything you’re flaunting is just dud… well, what’s the damn point?

Anyway, I’ve ranted enough–I don’t see this as a realistic romance, or much of a romance to be honest. As I mentioned, chemistry between characters may as well redefine the definition of that word, and while art is nice and readable, it doesn’t come close to salvaging generic rom-com story and beyond dull main duo.

Cheerio!

To summarise this manhwa in a very simple manner: gorgeous art severely wasted on mediocre characters and a story riddled with so many plot holes it may as well be cheese. Now, to go a bit deeper–perversions notwithstanding–’Crowning of the Spoiled Prince’ is a rather… unique take on the whole girl-boss fantasy. In some ways, it is much better than most others like it, but in some, it is simply outright atrocious.

As I mentioned at the start, the manhwa has absolutely gorgeous art. It’s colourful, dazzling, riveting, and a thesaurus-worth of other adjectives that I cannot bother writing out. Every character is beautiful, clothes ... are absolutely ridiculous as even someone with literally no fashion sense can attest to, and it is extremely easy on the eyes. It has some of the best art I’ve seen across the board, and is one of the main culprits why I read as far as I did.

The secondary reason is the main girl-boss, though she is also one of the reasons why I’m dropping this. As a bonafide dude, I’ve come to appreciate a lot of the girl-boss manga and manhwa, as, unlike here in the west, they tend to do the girl-boss characters quite well. Rather than stripping them of their femininity entirely and just making them dudes with tits, they embrace the fact that these characters are women while still making them strong and infallible.

However, before I move on to the characters and their slew of problems, I’d like to discuss the manhwa’s story for a bit. Spoilers ahead, as it’d be difficult to explain why I loathe this story without them.

Imagine a scenario in which you return to the past knowing who the traitors that will eventually destroy your home are. There, really, is only ever one scenario that ought to play out in this: kill the bastards as quickly as possible and prevent all the future troubles. Except, for all her girl-bossiness, Regina doesn’t do that. In fact, she doesn’t even entertain that thought–not once does she contemplate simply killing her fiance and what’s-her-face. And it is not as though our dear princess is unaccustomed to death or murder–but for the plot to play out the way it did, it was necessary for her to ignore the most simple solution to all her problems.

However, that is where the plot holes simply begin and not end. Her solution to the problem makes no sense, as neither does the way she goes about ‘fixing’ the situation. In order to dissolve the engagement to the fiance she should simply kill, she latches onto the classic romantic trope of swindling a gorgeous dude into pretending to be in a relationship with her. It is entirely unnecessary, as their relationship could have become far more organic rather than just outright awkward and weird.

Beyond that, there is simply the constant cloud hanging over my head that she is making decisions that an experienced war veteran never would–like allowing her enemies to live in her home and have virtually unfeathered access to it. Instead of throwing calculated tantrums to gain something, she throws legitimate, childish ones that left me scratching my head. If she is as determined as she claims to be, after realising that the Emperor was willing to bend his ass in order to repair their relationship, she should have abused that instead of just ignoring it.

No, despite the claims that she is a veteran–she behaves like a sixteen-year-old child in far too many situations. This, in turn, creates one plot hole after another and none of them ever lead to anywhere. Misunderstandings pile on, the story loops unto itself repeatedly, and time is wasted on wind and clouds as the story remains virtually the same for 30+ chapters.

Her plan to keep her 10 year old brother ‘thrash’ was moronic from the onset, but it is only compounded further by the fact that if her goal was to keep the prince thrash… why is she even doing anything? The reason why the Prince stopped being thrash was due to magic–so, she should simply prevent that and not care about anything else. If her goal was to make the prince ‘competent thrash’ as she claims, then occasionally beating the kid does fuck all in progressing that goal.

Few decisions made by a lot of characters throughout make sense, and even fewer still once you start taking into account the motivations of the characters. Our main lead, for instance, is one of those ‘I am made of assumptions’ characters, and while his deadpan personality is nice and all, like most characters in the story, he’s… kind of stupid? Everyone in the story is, at minimum, kind of stupid, to be honest.

From the princess to the prince, and the moronic emperor, and the pair of villains that are equally dumb, to the comedic maids and knights that are about as filler as you can get… there’s just a whole lot of stupid going around in this story.

My biggest gripe, in the end, is that this story tricks you with a hook that it never delivers upon. Its initial chapters promise a story of cold-blooded and calculated revenge, but what actually ends up happening is, well… nothing. Just a big gust of wind whizzing by like piss. Rather than focusing on the revenge part, far more focus is given to ‘educating’ the prince and flirting with the ML. Which, you know, fine and dandy, but the story then breaks the mood frequently enough with sudden dark undertones that it did not earn.

Again, gorgeous art that is in the service of very poor storytelling and some lacklustre characters. Perhaps the story just missed the mark for me, and if you enjoy what is effectively a semi-lukewarm SoL romance, you might gain far more enjoyment from it than I did. Cheers.

‘Boku no Kokoro no Yabai Yatsu’ was… surprising. Not in the nature of how it began, as this quintessential edgelord self-insert, but in the nature of its lengthy journey. While the manga drops its hook pretence rather early on, as the main character isn’t, in fact, a psychopath who wants to go on a murder spree of his classmates, it does deliver on something that a lot of shounen romances miss out on: consistent ‘individual’ progress. A lot of shounen romance do have ‘romance progress’, but it often rings extremely hollow due to how stagnant or annoying their characters tend to be.

In here, though, there ... is a consistent sense of progress when it comes to the main guy. While he’s still the classic shounen romance lead–staggeringly insecure, anxious, but a good boy overall–mangaka manages to push the character beyond the archetype. And however little outside of that archetype the character of Ichikawa lands, it is still enough to make him stand out.

Storywise, it’s a shounen romance–if you’ve read a couple, you’ve read them all. It’s set in middle school, but it somehow still manages to be less cringe and awkward and annoying than a good deal of high school romances while still revelling in the fact that these are actually kids more so than teens. You have your standard sick days, festival days, Valentine’s days, white day days, and a plethora of other tropes that you’ve likely grown familiar with. But like with all shounen romances, the story is irrelevant so long as the characters can hold the weight of the narrative–and here, well, they can.

As I said, Ichikawa is the classic sho-rom protag–from the onset he’s presented as a loner, anti-social, and the ever-classic ‘mumbles every word spoken to a girl’. While his ‘murderous wants’ do set him apart initially, they’re just a hook or, character-wise, a coping mechanism for what is effectively the ail of every boy like him–the dude’s just fuckin’ lonely. Over the course of many chapters, the growth is evident–it is not immediate. Just meeting the girl and chatting with her doesn’t dismantle his insecurities, but it does consistently push him into new things, evolving his character bit by bit.

Romance is slow, yes, but it harkens back well to the idea of romance at the age of 13-14 without stagnating or being boring. What helps is a decent cast of side characters that, while hardly ever developed into standalone people, do allow the story to breathe further beyond its basic romantic plot. A lot of it is simply glancing at the singular moments of middle schoolers–when they’re fighting, exploring new things, understanding it, trying to behave older than their age and so on, a fragmentation that captures our own memories of those days well enough.

Yamada, the counterpart to the main guy, is a semi-standard shounen romance main girl. She’s an extrovert to an introvert, she’s beautiful, popular, nice, all the good stuff–but, just like the main guy, she’s also insecure, uncertain, but to a level where it’s somewhat believable. That’s not to say that she clearly isn’t echoing manic pixie dreams that men for some reason seem to be beholden to even today, but just like Ichikawa, she does evolve beyond the prototype of the standard pixie girl whose sole reason for existence is to be there for the main guy.

She has a life outside of romance–she has passions that have nothing to do with the main guy, and even if they do feel somewhat surface-level, it is an important distinction that gives her a life beyond being a prop of a love story. Oftentimes, female leads in shounen and even seinen romances are relegated to being a stand-in fantasy, a prop beyond the scope of reality, something that never was or can be. And I actually have no issue with that–so long as it is understood as a fantasy–but it is always refreshing to see a female lead whose entire persona, individuality, and life isn’t tied to one guy. She’s not necessarily a mainstay standout, but she goes well beyond ‘serviceable’ into the realm of fairly decent characters.

What started as a fairly simple fluff romance (and, in all fairness, consistently was exactly that if you’re worried about some traumatic drama) does eventually dip its toes slightly beyond the base fluff of these types of stories. First loves are exciting and can never be lived twice in reality, so being able to capture the essence of them on paper in any capacity is always a win–it is the reason why we read these stories, after all, even when we’re well beyond the age of living them out in any capacity.

‘Boku no Kokoro no Yabai Yatsu’ might surprise you as it surprised me. I won’t claim it will turn your head or that if you’re not a fan of shounen romances it might make you one, but it is better than generic drivel that seems to pop up frequently these days. Few shortcomings–like very stale side characters, overreliance on some tropes of the genre, very misleading hook and so on–don’t break what is essentially a very decent capture of first love, awkward and odd and blush-dominated though it may be.

I don’t mind slow SoL romance manga. If anything, my all-time favourite one is one of the slowest ones out there. But you know what it is not? Boring. Beyond boring. So, so, so painfully boring I felt like chugging barrels of ale to find entertainment anywhere.

SukiMega might genuinely be one of the most boring romances I’ve ever had a chance to read–and I’ve read a lot. A lot a lot. It is one of those cutesy-vanilla romances that take their time, with which I’ve zero issues, but there always comes a point in those romances where I genuinely just give up and drop ... the whole thing. To elaborate a bit further, I’ll be spoiling a bit so read on with caution.

I genuinely don’t care that I’ve read 81 chapters and that the pair had made virtually no progress. I’ve read 140 chapters of Takagi-san with even less progress so that’s not an issue for me. The issue is that SukiMega is just not fun. Whereas Takagi-san and many other slow-burn romances understand that they can’t front their love story and, as such, give readers something else to indulge in, SukiMega has nothing past its miserable love story and the cutesy heroine.

The story is beyond slow, and it facilitates all the romantic cliches known to man, but it isn’t even the worst thing about this manga. Once you’ve read enough romance stories in manga, you’ll come to realise that they’re literally all the same. They’re just a spitfire of repetitive cliches and tropes that marry into a semi-cohesive narrative that either ends rather abruptly or way overstays its welcome. What carries every single romance manga out there are its characters, and characters in SukiMega just plain suck.

I decided to drop the story at the end of one specific chapter where the main character regurgitates the self-loathing spiel for like the 11th time–and I was done. From like 40th chapter onwards, it became more and more obvious that if I continued to read this story, I would come to loathe the main guy, so I eventually dipped before my dislike turned into outright hatred.

I understand that the kid is like, what, 13-14 years old? And that I was hardly less awkward than him back then, but I simply don’t care anymore. His character had gone well beyond the realms of insecurities straight up into the realm of needing genuine professional help. What’s worse, I cannot for the life of me fathom where those insecurities come from. The kid was never bullied, and though he comes from a divorced household, his mother seems to love him and cherish him enough. He’s always had friends, and was never isolated. So, where in the ever-loving kiss of Jupiter do the insecurities the size of Mount Vesuvius sprawl from?

It is honestly beyond baffling watching this kid try to navigate any social interaction with the main girl. Nobody who’s read shounen romances is unfamiliar with the overtly shy main guy who blushes at the snort of the main girl, but this might yet be the worst one of the bunch. Virtually the only reason I even remotely endured for 80 chapters was the main girl, and it was not because she was cute or adorable (though she may be all those things), but because she was literally the only one of the two pushing their relationship. But enough’s enough. There is slow romance, there is mid-2000s shoujo slow romance, and I can read both of them, but I cannot read boring romances. Comedy is sparse, past like the 50th chapter the story starts taking itself way, way, way too seriously–like, really, it’s a story about a pair of 14 year old kids experiencing first love, and the author started treating it as some kind of coming of age, The Catcher in the Rye, biblical anthology of agonised youth.

If you like fluffy romances, you’ll likely enjoy this one too. If you’re allergic to lethargic main leads, you’ll likely grow to hate it as I did. While the main girl is a breath of fresh air in shounen romances, she was not good enough to carry the tepid, beyond boring, self-insert memory that is the main guy. Read like 30ish chapters to get the gist of it, and then imagine that the main guy was not a social inept alien experiencing human contact for the first time and the remaining 50 chapters become 2. Cheers.

If there is a very simple way to sum up this anime it would be this: pure, unadulterated, simple vanilla romance. As such, you will likely fall into one of two camps when it comes to this story: either you will find it far too boring to enjoy, or you’ll be like me and enjoy it for exactly what it is–a perfect way to relax, have a cup of tea with, and just forget how much harder the life is than what the anime world presents.

Otonari is one of those SoL anime with virtually no story–two high-school aged kids going to the same school happen ... to live alone in the same apartment complex right next to each other, they are complete opposites in the school, romance ensues. There is little else plot to speak of here, but as is the case with quite a few other SoL romances, it’s completely fine. In the end, it is simply a story of two high school kids slowly falling in love, and hardly any high school romance is ever more than just that–two awkward kids trying to navigate the troves of their first love.

As such, the story takes a major backseat and just gives its characters the room to breathe and slowly grow. However, because of that, this is one of those slow burn romances that, for some, might feel a bit outdated. It echoes a lot of the things 2000s shoujo romances are known for, just without the melodramatic parts of the former that make them a major headache to read. There are no budding love triangles here, there are no mountain-sized misunderstandings, and there aren’t many plot-tying cliches that tend to drag romances down to the dregs.

That’s not to say there are no shortcomings either, however. The story, in many ways, is too safe. As I said, if you aren’t into slow-burn SoL romances, this will likely be one of the most boring anime you’ll ever watch. Not much happens from 1-11 episodes, and though the progress is very evident, it is never front-and-centre. Not much happens, and even comedy isn’t as good as in some other SoL romances, so if this ain’t your cup of tea, you might find it entirely without honey.

I didn’t mind it, though. If anything, I quite liked the fact that the show dropped all pretence that a lot of romantic stories proudly carry. To me, it showed that there is no need to indulge in the classic romantic tropes to carry the story. It is a simple, albeit dramatised, version of the classic high school romance that just showcases two people slowly falling in love over the course of their high school days.

Speaking of those two people–Mahiru and Amane aren’t exactly… amazing characters, all things considered. They don’t really brim personality, but they are good enough that it doesn’t detract too much from the overall atmosphere of the show. Their brilliance doesn’t necessarily lie in their own presentation of quirks and attributes but more so in representing a time in life that fondly resonates with a lot of people.

They are both awkward, somewhat insecure, indecisive, but refreshingly self-aware in ways I wished more protagonists in these stories were. In some ways, I liked that their romance is a slow process, as it allowed the two of them to explore themselves individually a bit more than just the shallow, surface levels we get initially. Even with all that, unfortunately, they aren’t all that memorable, though I’m sure that Mahiru had captured quite a lot of hearts as she’s one of those few strangely tolerable quasi-tsundere characters.

Besides the main duo, there’s a small assortment of other characters, though none of them get a whiff of development so there’s hardly a point in discussing them. They’re just there as background fodder for the high school setting as well as some much needed comedy. Chitose was probably the highlight of the cast, but that was mostly because her character brought the most energy on screen of them all.

Art and sound wise, little stands out–though the OP was actually quite decent. Art is crisp, modern, while animation often feels stiff and slow, though that is kind of a standard in romance anime. Music feels oddly missing in a lot of ways, though that might just be because anime simply lacks those punchout moments when music is allowed to swell and breathe freely.
Even with all the shortcomings of being a slow burn romance anime, I enjoyed my time with ‘The Angel next-door spoils me rotten’. It’s relaxing, it doesn’t spike your blood pressure with stupidity, it doesn’t present love triangles as the most common thing on planet Earth, and all it asks of you is that you just huddle up under a blanket with a warm cup of tea and watch its two awkward, yet oddly adorable characters slowly thaw the walls of their insecurities and embark on that ever-embarrassing journey of the first love. Give it a shot.