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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.

A manga derailed by its inability to not hit every single cliche in the book of light-fantasy manga.

While definitely far from awful, the yet-another-long-winded-in-name manga commits perhaps the most cardinal sin of them all: it... becomes boring. A lot of what makes the countless trash isekai manga somehow remain profitable and afloat despite the fact that they're awful by every objective metric is the fact that they're usually not that boring to read. This one, despite not being isekai (a breath of fresh air, if I may say so), however, does become just that: boring.

The cliches that it decides to play by are ... simply too stale and become predictable to the point where I was ready to drop it around 10-15 chapters in, but continued reading 'cause of hope the author was simply starting off slowly and building up. 30 chapters, however, are enough for me to know that we're stuck here and we're not moving on from here and this is all that it's gonna be.

The story, at its core, is just bad. It's the same nonsense you've read numerous times-- LN stories staring an 'anti-hero' that has really nothing 'anti' about him. The main character is simply too likable to be anti-anything, and his 'maou' title is just waved off by the world setting and (as is usually the case in these types of stories) it turns out, wait for it, it was actually the church that was baaaad.

While his interactions with the main girl can be cute, they're just too basic and juvenile for me too really enjoy them, especially considering implications that these two are not in their teens, but much older than that.

Furthermore, the story repeats itself so much it's gotten too tiring. I'm not going to spoil anything, but once you've gotten through the first 'major' arc, just know that the same structure is repurpsoed for all the rest (up until I've ready, anyway).

Art, well, is good. While most character designs are fairly generic, and the setting itself leaves a lot to be desired, it's clean, it has some uniqueness to it, and readability is top notch.

Characters, similarly to the story, just get progressively more trite and boring as they are introduced. While the main character is fairly cliche-- and I'm even tempted to genuinely call him Gary-stu -- he at least has that teen-edge 'cool' factor to him that keeps him somewhat interesting. The rest of the cast, however, is too dull; the main girl is literally just a doll that exists to reaffirm the main lead as some sort of a lonely, nice guy or whatever. Her character, cut from MC, literally can't even exist as she's so co-dependent on him to do anything. Which, well, is just boring. And kinda insulting.

Other female characters, similarly, are either just one-note-bores, or too dependent on MC for their personalities to exist. While the holy maiden or whatever has some life outside of MC, her development goes backwards and, well, the rest is history.

Villains, similarly, are either too one-note, or the other type-- one I hate even more: the author is too afraid to make a bad guy 'bad' since nearly ALL of them get converted onto MC's side, so most of the 'villains' are, at best, misunderstood and, at worst, just not that evil, really.

It's a fun manga, don't get me wrong, and if you're looking to break away from isekai trash but still read some fantasy, you can go ahead and jump into this. It has relatively straightforward romance, drama is minimal even if it is heavily melodramatic, it has some nice action, palpable cast of characters, and if you can ignore its placid and one-note story, it should be an easy read.

Cheers, and apologies for grammar mistakes; I'm too lazy to proofread this.

Preface: the review will likely be long and have a lot of grammar mistakes. Proofreading is too boring, so forgive me for that. Anyway, onto the review.

Haikyuu!! was always that 'volleyball sports anime' for me and literally nothing more. It was just like every other sports anime with the exception of it being about volleyball. It hit the same notes as the rest, it had the same story beats, it had the same character arcs, and it had the same over-the-top animation that the rest of them do. Even still, it was extremely high in quality and consistent in its execution which is why I ... always thought of it as one of the better example of sports anime. This season, however, was awful. Absolutely, unapologetically awful. Even if my overall score doesn't reflect that sentiment, I will die by it. In vacuum, without previous seasons, this is likely by far the worst season of sports anime ever produced.

Not only did its high-quality animation drop considerably, every other aspect of sports anime was thrown into the gutters and kicked until it died. The show became the poster-boy for precisely what is wrong with the entire genre and it postered itself with pride.

Story beats are recycled to the point I wanna kill myself. How many times do I have to watch half a season of training sessions? Training is boring. It's boring when I do it and it's certainly boring when others do it. I swallowed it during the second season since it was the first major one, but at this point we're too deep in to be giving literal 8-9 episodes of a 13-episode long 'half-season' to Hinata learning the literal basics of volleyball. Have a time skip -- spend 10 seconds to show that he trained and that he's now better. I promise you, nobody would call you out on it.

Because of this, the pace of the story is garbage. I found myself skipping scene after scene after scene after scene in this desperate attempt to locate anything worthwhile. But there was nothing. Even the single match we got in this season was borderline unwatchable. Worse than the first practice match of the first season. Nothing hype about it, nothing exceptional, just... bleh.

One aspect I've always hated about Haikyuu!! - and generally every sports anime for the most part -- is the dreadful onslaught of flashbacks for the irrelevant, minor characters. I don't care about their struggles -- if you wanted me to care, you would have made them the main characters. It seems to me that the writers of sports anime/manga want to be all-inclusive with their nonsense and repeatedly recycle teams that the main characters have floored in this horrid attempt to keep it 'realistic'. Here's a flash for you: we're not here for realism. If we were, everyone would have dropped this nonsense at 2-3rd episode. We're here for a colorful cast of one-note characters doing sportsy things that no actual high-schooler short of a freak like LeBron James could pull off. What's the point of Tobio being a genius and one-of-a-kind setter if you keep introducing morons that are better than him? What's the point of hitting every single sports cliche in existence rather than just keeping it fast and fresh?

This season, too, drowns us in pointless flashbacks and pointless onslaught of side-side-side characters to the point that I just don't give a shit anymore. I genuinely couldn't care less even if I physically tried. To make matters worse, they suddenly invent some childhood friend for the baldy, and... what? I'm supposed to suddenly give a shit about his love life? Goddamn, that was awful. Absolutely awful.

Then, as though we haven't had enough cliches as it is, it was time to introduce a new Hinata -- but this one has gray hair and is basically what Hinata wishes he was. I... I just wanna ask... why? What's even the point? You just literally told me it would have been a billion times more fun if that guy was the main character instead of Hinata. You just told me I've wasted however-many-hours on watching the subpar version of someone else. 'It helps with Hinata's growth' -- no, it helps because it's an easy story beat to execute. It helps because it requires literally 0 brain cells to write. You know what would have been more fun? If this guy didn't exist.

Every single story beat in this season screams 'I don't care anymore I just wanna write cliche garbage so I can rake in all that sweet manga cash till my carpal tunnel goes whammy'. And, to be fair, I respect that. I really do. Doesn't mean I can't bitch and moan about it, though.

Every sports anime seems to misunderstand what the point of the sports anime is which is why they all tend to stumble and fall over time. Major fucked up, Diamond no Ace fucked up, Kuruko fucked up, heck, even Eyeshield fucked up. They promise us one thing, but then they flip us a middle finger and say 'nope'. Again, we are not here for realism -- specifically because there is none of it in literally any sports anime out there. We are here for fancy nonsense that defies the law of physics -- which is exactly why the first season of Haikyuu!! was so appealing. What about it is appealing now? Nothing. Just like in every other sports anime -- well, except Kuruko. That thing kept amping shit up until the end and I respect 'em for it.

Furthermore, one thing that always kept the boring and asenine story beats in check, the high-quality animation, is gone. The most impactful scene in the entire season was one random guy who got like 2 minutes of screen time yeeting the fucking ball into the sky as a serve. Even the ending scene, the one scene that should hype you up for the next season, with the main character elevating what supposedly made him special to begin with, is just... meh. Good. You can jump. Get at it.

Characters, similarly to the story, recycle their beast and we're at it again. Hinata is doing great. Oh, no, he's really insecure now. Tobio is no longer insecure about being called a 'King'. Oh, no, wait, he actually is--nevermind, let's get going!

The main problem with sports anime, from what I've gathered, is that they are hellbent on recycling the opponents. They've floored the 'blocking team' (because that's how teams are composited, of course) sometime in the first season, yet, here we are, in the fourth fucking season with that team still supposedly giving them a challenge. Come on dude, I don't care. This just makes it seem as though nobody from the main cast progressed at all, or minimally at best. It kills the pace of the story and we are left with... well... this.

Furthermore, I have a feeling that literally the entire point of Tobio going to that All-Japan or whatever national camp is just so we can introduce another metric-ton of 'rivals' for the future. And, I gotta be honest, I don't give a shit for any one of them. They're just recycled versions of the people we've already seen, and I absolutely cannot wait for when they face these recycled rejects so we can get another 50 flashbacks about how much they care for volleyball and winning and whatever.

The story is written in such a way that it is clear that the author doesn't want it to end. Which is precisely why it's so goddamn confusing to me why they're hellbent on keeping the pace so bizarrely slow. We're at, what, 50ish episodes now? My god, 50 episodes and not even a whole year had passed. Do people realize just how insanely slow that pace is? If you cut out all of the unnecessary flashbacks, all of the entirely boring and irrelevant 'training arcs', heart-to-heart, this show would be like 20 episodes tops -- and, you know what? It would have been a mile better off for it. And with 30 extra episodes, we could have had far more of what is actually fun -- matches. Matches against the increasingly better teams. Heck, our main cast could have even lost at the Nationals, and we could have had that emotional 'bye bye third-years' or whatever and could have injected some fresh blood into the show through organic means -- new first-years. But noooo, instead, let's have yet another training session in which Hinata realizes for 69th time that just jumping really high isn't really a volleyball skill.

Anyway, I ranted too much. I'm out of words and out of desire to sit on this any longer. This is usually the point where I drop the sports anime -- once they start recycling story beats, bringing back the already defeated opponents in some vain attempt to appear as though they aren't writing fantasy, and when they dumb down all characters for the sake of hollow comedy. To add insult to injury, this show went even a step further and introduced a character that's basically a carbon copy of our main character... except that he's like a billion times better. Yikes. Talk about wasted investment.

Anyway, I'm all of the potential defenders of the show to swarm me or whatever the expression is, and if you can enjoy the show despite its endless flaws -- all the power to you. I'm in no way trying to discourage other people from enjoying this, just venting my personal frustrations. Well... that's it. Review done. Bye bye.

Hey, it's isekai, so you already know it's probably going to be garbage. But, if I'm being honest here, this might be the worst of the lot, and that's probably the scariest thing I've ever written.

Look, if you can't keep my attention for longer than 4 chapters in a manga about an overpowered character in another world, you should not be writing anything except perhaps cheesy AD campaigns for 6th grader's lemonade stands.

The only salvageable part of this idiocy is the art, which is by-the-books isekai one, so don't expect anything unique or interesting about it. Just clean-cut nonsense you've seen a thousand ... times before.

Besides that, there is nothing. The story makes about as much sense as quantum mechanics (probably not even that much), and the characters are your standard LN garbage, just worse.

MC has literally no spine so I don't know how the hell he's walking, and the first four chapters were enough to deem him the worst isekai MC ever. Look, even if others have literally the same personality, AT LEAST, AT THE VERY LEAST, they have a backbone -- to some degree. This one? Nill. Nada. Zero. His thought process screams of 'look, I'm from Japan, and I'm so polite so no matter what people do or say to me, I'll always be polite and nice 'cause I'm from Japan'. Absolute garbage.

Girl mc (me thinks?) is just another noble girl who treats MC like garbage for the longest while before (I imagine) eventually falling in love with him, and MC having the worst case of amnesia in the history of the world and liking her back.

There's no other likable character in the entire manga (I'm not even joking -- everyone either gets like 2 panels, or is a sewage-level piece of human garbage), and even the baby, however cute she may be, gets like 5 panels in total despite having been mentioned in the freakin' description.

One more """good""" thing is that the manga made me blow hard through my nose once. Congratulations. You are on Jake Paul's level. I guess that's something, at least. Right?

Another manga derailed by the curse of popularity.

There's a strange paradox in terms of the stories I tend to enjoy -- I look forward to them having more chapters, yet, almost without exception, they tend to go down the hay-hell along the line. The niche ones get axed early on and leave a lot to be desired, yet the ones that become popular tend to way-overstay their welcome, and end up leaving even more to be desired.

Banchou-san falls in the latter category -- it became popular, and, as is the case in the manga world, when some work becomes popular, author will do ... anything in his/her power to maintain it for as long as possible, even if it means sacrificing everything that made it good in the first place.

If you are a romance-manga-debauchee like me, you have without a doubt experienced this phenomenon as it's the most frequent destroyer of all-things-holy. Nearly every romance manga that I've read, and that has gotten popular, has shot itself off the rails in the long run. As the matter of fact, I can perhaps think of 3 off the top of my head that hadn't -- and Banchou-san doesn't fall in that category.

With a simple premise, and even a simpler story, one of misunderstandings that seemed to have become a staple of the genre, I was along for the quiet, and hopefully 30-40 chapters long ride. A few shenanigans here and there, some misunderstandings, a bit of drama, resolution of it all, and bye-bye. In the end, however, that's not what happened.

The enjoyable, simple story went off the haywire with the introduction of a completely unnecessary character that served a single purpose -- prolong the crippling story. Whatever made it entertaining and likable at first was thrown out the window for the staple cliches of the genre, and now, fifty chapters in, I've given up. It's too stale, too boring, too annoying, and not worth it anymore. There are literal thousands of ways to introduce drama in the story, and for the life of me I will never figure out why majority of romance-manga writers seem to resort to the worst possible ones imaginable. It's almost as though there exists a curse that says there are '20 dramatic things you can write in and nothing else', and everyone sticks to it like it's the Holy Bible of Writing.

Part of it has something to do with my personal taste, no doubt, as I generally tend to avoid romance mangas that go on for longer than 40-50 chapters, regardless of whether they're seinen, shounen, shoujo, or josei. There's just something about that length that speaks to me. Now, if you look into my favorites, you'll see that it's not the golden rule I swear by, but it's certainly a general lining. And Banchou crossed it.

I said a lot, yet seemingly nothing, so let's get to the point: the story was supposed to be about a wimpy guy gaining courage over time by slowly getting to know this badass chick and, for the longest time, it looked like that was the case. Then, out of nowhere, it backtracks, spins around, shits on itself, and laughs at us, as though taunting. Now, it's a story about a retard, a vagina-having retard(s), and how long can the author milk the story for all that it's got. And, I get it -- I really do. Making it in manga business can't be easy, which is what makes stories like these even more depressing. The author had a chance to end it early and properly, but there was never a guarantee his/her next work would have made it -- so, instead, we now have more, and more, and more, and more.

Characters went from interesting, albeit exaggerated buffoons, to some limp, soggy, drab makeshifts that are about as interesting as what I had for breakfast today.

I've had my fair share of fun reading Banchou-san, which is why I won't call it that bad -- but I will say I am disappointed it turned out to be literally 'just another popular rom-com'. At this point, I can only hope for some sort of a revolution in a manga world where short, but concise stories are the ones that authors want to make, rather than long and overdrawn garbage they spew out just to stay relevant and employed. I don't envy them, nor do I hate them -- if anything, I understand them as someone who relies on popularity to remain financially afloat. I guess, we're just two sides of the same coin.

It's a decent manga, and it's certainly fun throughout its first part. I do recommend, however, letting it go during the chapter where the wimpy MC finally breaks out of his shell and admits to his feelings out loud. It was a perfect moment to end on, and everything after that is just a downward spiral that will leave a bitter aftertaste in your mouth.

So long...