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Domestic Girlfriend mirrors Good Ending in many ways, the most significant being that it starts out so strong and pulls you in, and then slowly deteriorates in quality to the point that now I'm reading new chapters just to see how things turn out. As a Hina fan, i should be heartbroken because it will likely not be a Hina ending; the fact that I don't really care shows how badly DX G mangled its later chapters.

The core story between Natsou, Rui and Hina is solid and enticing for about the first 100 chapters. It starts to become stale after that.

However, even more so than ... GE, this manga is equipped with a whole other separate story in which we find out that Natsou is actually Jesus in his spare time and spends his days looking for cute girls with tragic backstories in order to solve all their problems. Seriously, the amount of random side characters who pop up out of nowhere, only to be never seen again after a few chapters is off the wall. Many of these girls fall in love with Natsou seemingly for the virtue of his rolling out of bed that morning. It gets tiring after a while.

Generally, this manga under delivers on its potential. It tries to do way too much and hit on way too many themes instead of stick to what Kei is so good at, namely, love triangles. Hina's returns from the island and instead of focusing on the jealously / drama, we are treated to random quests and meaningless tidbits.

Spoilers Incoming.

Despite all of Suzuka's flaws, and there are a lot of them, there is something about this manga that leaves you wanting more. After 17 volumes, however, I found myself unsatisfied, wondering if I wasted my time and money giving this manga a shot.

What did Suzuka get right: There are some genuinely good scenes of romance in this manga, from confessions to kisses and reconciliations. Suzuka is an inherently interesting love interest, despite the flaws in her progression. Finally, some of the track arcs were entertaining and gave me a sense of what it could be like to be a bigshot on ... a highschool track team.

What did Suzuka get wrong: This is going to be longer. One of my biggest complaints is the way the author introduces new love rivals solely for the purpose of creating drama. This is a common complaint in romance mangas but Suzuka suffers from it more than others. It seems like MC cannot sneeze without making a girl fall head of heals in love with him, and as soon as things are cooling down, God calls in one of his harem members to heat it back up. The unrealistic way that MC has every girl vying for his love definitely made the story more unenjoyable and less believable for me. Especially in the later books, it baffled me the way these girls appeared for the sole purpose of making drama, and disappeared the moment they were no longer needed. However, in a way these girls were necessary because of the second issue...

Suzuka promises more than it delivers in turns of character development and plot resolution. Suzuka had issues getting over her senpai's death, but gives up on him after meeting MC and initially struggling with it. However, she still pulls away from MC in the end and has epic moodswings targeted at him. Is there some underlying issue that comes out late in the manga that explains all this? Is Suzuka still harboring feels of love for her dead senpai? No, you never hear about it again. Is there any resolution or development at all? Not really. We don't really get a good explanation for why Suzuka acts the way she does except that she is a selfish person and has issues getting along with MC. In the end, there is no grand apology or epic make up, or confession of love. Things just sort of work themselves out in the same way they always were. Even the track arc is unresolved. We never get to see Yamato race against his rival or compete in the IS event. At the end of the day, the manga felt less like an overarching story and more like a SOL heavy character study.

Overall, I am rating Suzuka a 7 because that is how I felt about it when reading it. Theres no denying that while going through the chapters, I was interested in how MC's relationship with Suzuka would develop. The art was lacking at some points, but not enjoy to be un enjoyable. Lack of character and story progression / resolution keeps this romance manga from reaching the same heights as similar ones like GE in my opinion. At the end, you may feel unfulfilled, but the journey was entertaining none the less.