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The story follows the daily lives of Kimura and Hiyama, two high school girls. Kimura is a shy girl, a bit cowardly and with very little self-confidence; Hiyama on the other hand at first glance seems rude, confrontational and aggressive although appearances can be deceiving, since she is hopelessly in love with Kimura(this is a yuri manga after all). Having said that, the story introduces a third character: Mizushima, Hiyama's childhood friend and Kimura's love interest; and with this the comedy is served.

Beware of spoilers from here on out:

"Protagonist x Rival" is a short story, despite having 4 volumes and 47 chapters. From what I ... understand this manga began his life as a WebComic in May of 2019 until April 2020 when it was serialized by Gangan Joker. I mention this because even though the art was improved for the serialized version, the length of the chapters was not what caused several chapters to be short stories (approximately four pages long) about the characters in random everyday situations. Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily, since this manga is pure comedy with zero drama, so this manga manages to make you smile even with four pages. Now, comedy is quite subjective in most cases(what makes me laugh doesn't have to make you laugh) and in this particular case the comedy is quite childish and repetitive. Almost all the chapters follow the same pattern: Kimura tries to get close to Mizushima, to deliver Valentine's Day chocolates for example, and Hiyama apparently interferes by bullying Kimura, only to discover that what she really wants is to express her love for Kimura which she does in a rather clumsy and very aggressive manner. And this pattern is constantly repeated throughout almost the entire manga.

Objectively speaking what I just wrote is true, which for some may be a negative point for the story, for me personally it is not so much. I really love the interactions between Hiyama and Kimura and they make me laugh out loud in every chapter. Kimura's shyness and low self-confidence and Hiyama's social awkwardness lead to many hilarious misunderstandings.

The strongest point of the manga is without a doubt Kimura herself: her progression is more than evident, in each chapter she gradually overcomes her shyness and little by little she discovers and understands her feelings towards Hiyama. There is a huge difference between the Kimura that we see in the first chapters of the manga and the Kimura that we see at the end of it(they are complete opposites). With this I do not mean that Kimura's radical change is a bad thing, in fact it is quite the opposite, it is very satisfying.

Hiyama doesn't really change much, she pretty much stays the same throughout the entire manga. Thanks to Kimura's radical change we are also able to see Hiyama's true face: behind her aggressive, strong and self-sufficient attitude that she shows at the beginning we discover a rather innocent and shy girl at the end. Put this way it shouldn't work, but it does and I promise it makes sense.

The other characters are not worth mentioning... Mizushima is only there to help the plot move forward. And the others, like Kimura's friend or Hiyama's two classmates, most of the time just serve as comic relief. I'm not saying they're bad, for example all of Tatemoto's interactions with Hiyama are hilarious, I'm just saying they're not very important to the story(except for Mizushima who is important and necessary).

Summary: "Protagonist x Rival" or "Shoujo Manga Shujinko x Rival-san" is probably a manga that you can read in one sitting in just a few hours, it's fun and heartwarming, full of fluff and absolutely no horny moments(no bra or panty flashes...sorry). It's just an innocent story between two girls who discover their feelings for each other... and once in a while that alone is enough.

The score is probably too high (maybe 7 or 8 would be more appropriate), but I love this manga so much that I can't be realistic about it... but thanks for reading anyway.

Before I start, this is my first review, and I'm not an English speaker so please bear with me.

I'll try to be careful not to do too many spoilers but there will inevitably be some so beware of SPOILERS from this point on.

Story(8/10):
As it says in the synopsis Aya and Sei meet through a dating app and from that point on things go downhill for them. Sei has a past love that she was never able to get over, which has caused her major trauma. Although at first Aya tries to reject Sei, she quickly realizes that the teacher is only looking for a substitute ... for her unrequited love and that it doesn't have to be her, Sei could have used anyone; so he agrees to a purely physical relationship where Aya would assume the role of Yoru(Sei's unrequited love).

Objectively speaking there is nothing wrong with the plot itself: the characters and their circumstances are introduced from the beginning; Sei and Aya's reasons for acting as they do are understandable in the first half, from the second half not so much(although it is not without logic according to the reasoning of the characters). The way Aya and Sei act especially in the second half of the manga is not necessarily something I would personally do but I can understand the MC's line of thought. This is a yuri manga tagged as "Age Gap" so I'm going to put aside the ethical dilemma that a sexual relationship between an adult and a minor presents(personally I can't agree with this kind of thing, but I'm going to try to treat this relationship as a relationship between two people with reasoning capacity and not as one between an adult and a minor).

In large part the work tries to cause discomfort to the reader through the vast majority of its panels, but I do not count that as a negative point for the story since it is the author's intention to create those kinds of feelings and he really succeeds(too well in some cases). The negative point that I find in this story is the ending; It's not that it's a bad ending but I feel like something is missing. Despite having discovered and expressed their feelings(especially Aya) the relationship between them does not change much in the end and I feel like they have lacked a conclusion which is a huge point against the story. The ending itself is neither good nor bad, it leaves a bittersweet feeling(more than anything because of what I said in the previous sentence), I don't hate it but it could have been better.

Characters(6/10):

Aya: She is too passive when it comes to Sei, but too aggressive when it comes to Haruki. I can't understand how she is able to face and speak clearly to her only friend but she is completely unable to do the same with Sei. This improves in the second half of the manga, which denotes some character progress(good thing), but not as much as one would expect(not so good). That aggressive and dominant attitude that she has towards Haruki we can also see directed at Sei at the end, although to a lesser extent. I also don't understand why at the beginning of the story she keeps coming back to Sei: in their first meeting when Sei threatens Aya to block her if they don't meet in person it's understandable that Aya would agree, but the moment Aya literally says to Sei "You scare me" and runs away it doesn't make sense that she still wants to maintain her relationship with Sei. In short, I have mixed feelings about this character(sometimes I like it and sometimes I don't).

Sei: With this one I have no mixed feelings: I hate this character. She is too forceful with Aya, that the latter is a minor only makes things worse, but even if Aya were an adult that(in my opinion) would be just as bad. She uses Aya and she is fully aware of it. Even when she realizes the damage she is doing to Aya with her behavior, she still does not change her attitude with different excuses like "It's the last time" or "Aya and I are not really lovers". I'm sorry but I can't really be objective with this character, I really hate these kind of people. As I said before, her actions make sense and she also presents a certain progression(to the same extent as Aya, although in both cases that progression is insufficient) which are points in her favor as a character, but personally I don't like her so I'm going to leave the things here.

Yoru: A character that has a great presence from the beginning but that we don't get to know until much later. I understand the relevance of her, as she is the reason why Sei behaves the way she does, but when she physically appeared I thought it was going to be a means for Sei to somehow overcome her past and move on; but it was not like that. Apart from a scene that is dangerously close to being an NTR scene, I don't understand what the point of this character's arrival was. I don't see any sense in the fact that she says that she leaves Sei in Aya's care and then says that she is divorcing her husband. Does she want to be with Sei or not? Does he want to break Sei's relationship with Aya or not? These are questions to which I have no answer. Although this type of people without logic exists, they are bad for you and they know it and despite moving away from you they keep coming back to not let you move forward and forget about them. In this aspect Yoru is well done.

The only other character worth mentioning is Haruki. I don't have much to say about her except that I feel sorry for her and that she deserved better. I have more things to say about her but I don't want to do more spoilers than I already have(way too many) so I'm going to leave it at that.

Art(8/10):

In this aspect I really have almost nothing to say, I don't know much about art or the technical aspect of manga, so I simply rate how much I liked the drawing personally. As a general rule it will always be a high score since I don't know how to draw at all so I almost always enjoy this type of thing. For this manga in particular, I found it very pleasant and I enjoyed it a lot, although there is nothing in particular that has caught my attention.

TL/DR Conclusion:

Long story short: this is a manga about toxic people doing toxic stuff so if you are looking for a yuri manga full of fluff and moe you will not find it here, but if you are looking for a manga, with damaged characters, ethically dubious and a lot of horny moments this is the one for you(I think XD).

I know this review is a long read and I'm sorry for that, but I needed to write about this to collect my thoughts and if this helps someone then all the better.