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not gonna lie, the first 3 episodes had me in a clutch. I started watching this on a whim late at night, not expecting it to be so compelling that I’d feel like I needed to know what would happen next. I was seriously ready to lose some sleep over it that night. luckily I decided against it and instead continued watching the next day. sadly, the show couldn’t hold me much longer than five or six episodes. the metaphorical chess game was a bit tiring and I feel like a lot of the twists were predictable. there were some instances of lazy writing, like ... when that boy “bumped” into Mom to steal that super very important key from her… the animation was a 8/10 though.

Okay, I guess I hadn't really the foggiest idea about basketball at all, but... after reading Dogashi Kaden! the fog that - uh - fogged my mind kinda cleard up a little!

So much as for fog.

(this review might contain little spoilers, you've been warned)

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Now onto the actual manga, that surprisingly was an interesting read. Not only because it un-fogged my mind, but also because

... * it has an interesting story.
Yeah, the story was rather good, kept me reading due to some cliff hangers and was easy to follow. Nothing special, though. General shounen and sports :>

Everything was introduced nicely during the first chapter (although the beginning let me hope for some bigger events to follow [heck, what was I expecting from 13 chapters anyway? oO]).

I don't know though if it could be considered as negative that the scenario focused on only one certain thing after the first few chapters; the author gives us just one ''serious'' match to nibble at (then again, what was I expecting from 13 chapters~).

Nevertheless, even though we get to see only one match, this was quite an interesting one! ''Quality instead of quantity" - would be fairly wise words right there!

* the art is neat, although some facial expressions were sort of overdone and the proportions seemed somewhat weird sometimes... Oh, and some panels were kind of confusing, especially when they showed the players doing teamwork and some special basketball-tactics - which I am, by the way, not familiar with... so maybe that's why it seemed so confusing to me!

* the main protagonist, Haruyoshi, is just an ordinary boy. Well, rather not! Apparently he's got, like, some mutant-legs, which allow him to run over the court in lightning speed.
No, not really. He's really just an ordinary boy with outstanding ability in brain-leg coordination, and he's fast.
Oh yeah, he's indeed fast. His developement is fast (horrible transition)! Almost rushed! His developement seems rushed, considering that the most of it happened through this one serious match, but at least there was developement, so no whining.

There isn't much to say about the other characters. The female's manager only purpose was to bring frightened little Haruyoshi-kun to the team (+ fanservice), because she saw invincible potential glowing all around him; the glasses-wearing captain was the threatening one that got the ''serious match'' to start; the team members pushed Haruyoshi with lectures and examples to where he is at the end of this short-story.
That said, they apparently were all a means to and end, period.

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I saw many compare this pretty little short-story to Eyeshield 21, so I will go along and do it too: DK! compared to E21 is just a bunch of.... ... ... .. .. ERROR. Oh oh oh you omnipotent, fancy christmas tree! :< I'm not able to do it! Why?!
Easy: comparing 13 chapters to 333 is. not. possible. Also; basketball -- Amercian football..? Plus, I never read Eyeshield 21. And even if I read it sometime soon, I won't compare it to THIS story. That would be ridiculous, right?

Sure enough though, this story will still linger in my mind when I read the next sports manga, because the few hours I spend reading it were worth it - even though I'm not into sports! It was sometimes funny, somewhat thrilling and even a little bit sad... :>

Until now, Kimi no Iru Machi taught me one certain thing: "If you were a boy in a manga, you should absolutely pray for the genre (not) to be harem." Oh... well, seems like it is actually not that certain.

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* Haruto, our lucky protagonist of Kimi no Iru Machi, has to fight himself through several hardships; which - and that's for sure - are always somehow connected to at least one female. And that's pretty much it.
Haruto. Females. Problems.
This rough draft cotinues until the point I currently stopped reading, but I guess this will go on forever, or at least until Haruto finally finds his ... true love and thus gets rid of his problems.

This rough draft - Haruto. Females. Problems. - is like the dry bone of Kimi no Iru Machi's story, luckily enough there's sufficient meat at that bone for it to be tasty.

But, to get away from all the meat and bones and for all the veggies: the concept of KnIM's story is easy to see through, yet the stuff that is wrapped around this rough concept (-> great portions of drama, humor and ecchi!) makes everything interesting. If you don't pay close attention and just go with the flow of the story you might not even realize that easy concept, ha.

* The art is at the very least good. And that goes for just this manga itself, not comparing it to any other artists style. Beautiful, clear lines, also, the grey shading makes everything livelier. I think the art pretty much fits both the characters and the theme of the manga.

* Now comes the point where my newly absorbed knowledge gets into action: the characters = the females (if you really want to, you can count the few males into the cast too)!
Like I said at the very start, this manga has taught me that it must be paradise for a boy to live within a harem - but ONLY if that boy gives all that 'love hurts' stuff a wide berth. Surprisingly, and really no one saw it coming, steering clear of Love isn't quite possible in a harem manga. And that's most likely because, well, it happens that at least one of those pretty harem-girls developes/has a crush on the boy in charge.

In KnIM now we have almost a dozen of those cute and pretty (I'm serious, the female characters are mostly beautiful ones, IMO) girls that like Haruto-kun or begin to develop a crush on him. I hate that. But just because I hate that I won't get biased. After all, that's what I get for reading harem, huh? xD

I guess I have to at least bring up her name once; Eba, the allegedly main characters (major?) love interest is only ALLEGEDLY Haruto's major love interest with justification, because things happen with her that no one sees coming but on the other hand everyone wants to happen -- which put Haruto (and me) into deep sufferings of cunfusion.
I don't really get what's going on there anymore, and while Haruto seems to move on I stay put and Eba is... I don't know.
I really liked her character, though. She is, by far, my favourite of the female characters.

So, while the female characters in KnIM change quasi every fifth chapter, our little, ever-so-blushing main protagonist Haruto doesn't seem to change at all. Well, he did change, but I kind of get the feeling that he's stuck at some point now.

However, all in all the characters are nice and the different female's personalities vary!

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Enjoyable reading, nice art, a good story and a lot of girls - I have high hopes for this manga to get even better in the next time -, you should really give it a try if you like/love harem, romance and humor!

To be honest, I just finished „Bokkesan“ because I started it (and I was pretty bored). Luckily there were only 10 more chapters to go when I realized that this manga isn't quite what I had expected...

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Like stated above, I wanted to quit reading right after chapter 8, because

* I expected the story to be more ''original'' and interesting. Overall the story is fine, but nothing I haven't seen anywhere before in a similar way.
The first few chapters are nice and enjoyable to read - afterwards, when I got the whole thing, the next steps seemed kind of ''forseeable'' and everything just went clichéd.
Due to ... the sudden cancellation of this series, the ending appears to be rushed and disappointing. But an ending that normally goes over maybe 5-6 chapters can't simply be squashed into two chapters without seeming unnatural, I guess.

Nonetheless, here, too, things like friendship, bravery, caring for each other, whatever kind of aspects are being negotiated to the reader throughout the reading, and I think these are points mangas shouldn't drop, no matter how chliché that is.

* the art is decent (even though some proportions are somewhat out of place or too big... like Sayu's chest - seemed to me like intended fanservice which didn't quite work out), I just had to get used to it.

* the characters were nice, but nothing special; the (stereotype) anti-hero, the (not always) clinging damsel in distress, the friend, the long lost brother... etcetera. Well, creating good charactes isn't easy, I know.
Considering that this manga consists of only 18 chapters, the character developement is accordingly humble.

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Overall I think „Bokkesan“ is worth the reading when boredom takes over again - a continuation of this series would have been redundant, that said, the 18 existing chapters make a perfect short-story to fill time.