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Cotton 200% is sitcom-adjacent and romance-adjacent without really committing to either. It's set in the countryside. A lot of the human experience side of the story centers around some characters liking and being into farming, while others hate farming and just want to go to Tokyo.
Watashiya writes a lot of short stories and one shots, but I think this one probably fizzled out before she intended to conclude it, mostly because the ending isn't really an ending. There's a climax toward the end, but it happens suddenly without much of a lead-up, and not much resolution. Since there's not a lot of build up, it ... doesn't leave things unfinished per se. Rather, there wasn't much to finish. The characters are charming, but the plot is a bit thin.
I enjoyed reading it and would recommend it as light reading. It's not a page-turner.

It's unclear how to edit the title of this entry. The main title is transliterated incorrectly. It's supposed to be "Pink no Ken", similar to Hokutou no Ken (Fist of the North Star). "Kobushi" is incorrect.

Anyway, there are three entirely separate stories in this volume. Overall they're pretty cute and funny. Nothing mind blowing. If you've read multiple other works by Watashiya, you might like this one too. While this was originally serialized in Flower Comics and is supposed to be shoujo, her penchant for racy humor certainly comes through. My favorite of the three stories was actually the last one, Boku no Kusuri wa ... Amakute Nigai. It's a cute love story with good characters.

If all you really like is shounen anime, I can't recommend this, but I'd recommend it for most other anime fans.

It's episodic, but does have a progressive plot and a proper ending. The pace is on the slow side.

There isn't a strong central concept. The characters slowly develop friendships as they progress toward an uncertain goal. Ultimately, friendship is the strongest theme.

The characters are somewhat flat, although their interactions are well done. Some of the characters develop though the series; others stay pretty much the same.

Amount of
3/6 Humor (0 to 6)
... 4/6 Mystery (0 to 6)
2/6 Action (0 to 6)
4/6 Drama (0 to 6)
1/6 Romance (0 to 6)

General scores/thoughts:
5/6 Protagonist/Male lead (1 to 6)
Dynamic
Round
6/6 Female lead (1 to 6)
Somewhat static
Round
3/6 Other characters, generally speaking (1 to 6)
Static
Somewhat Flat
... 6/6 Concept execution (1 to 6)
4/6 Plot (1 to 6)

An interesting concept, executed well. Most enjoyment of the series comes from the concept and its exploration, as well as the development of the protagonist and the interaction between him and the female lead. The concept is approached from multiple angles at different points in the series.

Amount of
3/6 Humor (0 to 6)
3/6 Mystery (0 to 6)
4/6 Action (0 to 6)
5/6 Drama (0 to 6)
3/6 Romance (0 to 6)

The protagonist has a wide range of experiences in a fairly short span of screen time, which gives the series a dramatic feel. The series itself is fairly dynamic and doesn't have a consistent "feel" like many other series do. It treats its concept mostly seriously, such that it would be fair to call it sci-fi.

I recommend this manga most highly for men who like battles and a bit of fan service, and who don't mind if the logic of how the combatants win is a bit fuzzy.

The shining star of this manga is its art. It's polished; there are a lot of great action shots, and the perspectives in many frames are really interesting and impressive.

Perhaps coming in second is the world in which it's set, specifically the game Not Alive. It's a death game scenario of sorts, but a fairly unique take on it, despite the prevalence of the genre. A few things in this area seemed ... weird and arbitrary to me, but they were eventually explained in a pretty satisfying way. The story completely ignores how such a game became possible, which I think is probably best. It wouldn't have been interesting, and I don't think any explanation would have held up under scrutiny.

I think the above two points are the main draws of the series.

The characters are... fine. Amamiya Kyouka is a fun character, and Shigeru Mikami is what he needs to be to drive the series. Amamiya's demeanor is probably her most interesting trait. It's a bit hard to predict how she'll react to things, especially at first. Her reactions are odd, but they're internally consistent, which makes them feel realistic. The only interesting thing about Mikami, apart from his role in the plot, is his use of his own game making experience to strategize in Not Alive. However, this is only mentioned occasionally without drawing any particularly interesting connections between his experience and his strategy. It would be more appropriate to say this could have been an interesting aspect of his character that wasn't really taken advantage of. The other characters are passably interesting, although I personally found some of them annoying.

The story is fairly standard. The main characters have to win to survive, and they have a couple other easy-to-understand motivations that are revealed as the series progresses. There are some twists that I actually thought were impressive and that I enjoyed, but otherwise it often feels like its incoherently bumbling its way down the obvious path regardless of whether it actually makes sense.

The incoherence is probably the worst part for me. It feels like some of the players in Not Alive are straight up cheating, but not getting called out on it, and they're doing so to such a degree that it would be impossible to win against them. The logical conclusion of this is that their opponent would either have to be absurdly good at the game, or they would lose. However, the players who should logically lose in this situation are supposed to win, because that's the plot. What ends up happening is that the players who should lose get extremely lucky, use some nonsense strategy that seems like it would only very questionably work, but it does anyway, or Dragonball Z their way through a fight by being insanely fast or strong. This makes the strategy aspect of the battles completely uninteresting to me. Also, the cheating characters are *extremely* smug, and seem to think they're the best despite being very lucky, which was really annoying.

Overall, I give it a 6/10. Anywhere between a 3 and a 9 wouldn't surprise me from others. I think this manga certainly has an audience, but not a huge one.

I really liked the setup of this manga, and was looking forward to reading another of Ishikawa Emi's works. Overall, the first half is really solid. The main character is very cute and relatable, and the plot is driven by her predicament. The opening is also fairly dramatic and engaging. The story is set up to be episodic (similar to Zekkyou Gakkyuu, the author's prior work).

Unfortunately, that doesn't really pan out. My guess as to what happened is that this wasn't a particularly popular manga, and the author was told to wrap it up by the end of volume 2. As such, ... there are a few episodic chapters, and then an ending that wraps up what is probably the most major plot thread, but leaves a couple open as well. Assuming that this was indeed forced to wrap up in short order, I think the author did about the best she could to create a satisfying ending. Again, unfortunately this does leave some things out that could have given the story more life, like playing out some of the complicated conflicts and relationships that the author had set up, as well as expanding more on the world in which the story takes place, the relationships in the business of being a vengeful spirit, and the other vengeful spirits' convictions about the main character.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this. Ishikawa Emi is a great author. I wish Ushiro no Hikaruko chan could have been taken to its full potential, which it definitely falls short of.

FYI I read this in Japanese. I'm not sure what English translations there are available.