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*Spoilers*

Shoujo can be a hit and miss genre, especially romances. Unpopular girl gets the attention of the most popular, handsome guy in school. Mix in a lot of drama and stupidity and you get your typical shoujo romance manga. Granted, not all are like that. Some are better, and try and break through cliches. Saruyama is one of them, well mostly. Haruna has to transfer schools from a prestigious school to a normal public high school. There she meets the Male Lead, Macharu, and then falls in love and so on.

What I found refreshing was that Macharu is the short, okay looking guy, and ... it's his best friend who is the tall, handsome womanizer (the typical shoujo lead). Macharu himself is very sincere and says what he thinks and feels, which is a great change to the ML's Im used to (can't communicate, dense af, dumb). Their relationship also starts early, and continues on into the short chapter amount of this manga (which is another nice change). I also admired that it approached sex maturely, where they wanted to wait until the right time, and eventually did do it. It's a nice change from the OTT innocence of manga sometimes.

It sounds like I'm gushing about this manga even though I gave it a 7. But I still have my problems with it, like side characters (the friend group that never seems to leave) who don't have an ounce of development, and just are comic relief. Atsu, the best friend, is kind of a piece of shit friend, who wants to break them up because Haruna doesn't want him, and he wants what he can't have. It's the most recurring drama in the manga, aside from typical relationship stuff. Any other drama lasts for like a chapter, and that's it. Also, the ending kinda just... ends?

Anyway, it's worth a read, it's short, it's sweet. Not long enough to have an impact, but not short enough to feel... underwhelming.