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I wanted to give this manga a 5, as a sort of neutral rating to represent that there was very high highs and very low lows, but ultimately this series ended up being so frustrating that I will dock that extra point on the "highs" side.

*This review will include spoilers since I've completed the series. The manga hasn't finished updating the last few chapters yet, so I supplemented that by looking at raws and watching the anime where I couldn't understand some of the Japanese, since the screenplay is ultimately the same.

I was really into this manga in its early stages. As someone who really ... enjoys coming of age stories, I was pretty excited to see one that tackled teenage girls learning about sex not only in a way that wasn't fetish-y, over-sexualized nonsense, but was also candid and awkward, too, because that's all true to the experience! When you're in high-school it feels like you're constantly fumbling and making really stupid decisions and you're figuring things out and for some reason nobody around you understands your very specific feelings. That's what made this manga good. The euphemisms for sex, the overreactions to romance, the friends cheering each other on and having each other's backs despite not knowing what the hell was going on, through such a confusing time--all of that is what drew me in and made me believe that I'd found a rare gem. It's all sensationalized because it's a work of fiction, of course, but that's obviously part of the fun.

The moment Sugawara realized her feelings for Izumi I knew this manga was going to take an undesired turn, and I was unprepared for the extent of that turn, and I think Mari Okada was as well. I genuinely have no clue what she was really trying to tell the readers, and I don't think this manga being some kind of portrayal of youth as messy and erratic cuts it.

All of what made the series enjoyable at the start, the comedy, the awkwardness, the energy etc. gets sidelined to make space for romance. To be fair it isn't like the romance is particularly cliche like you'd usually expect. It's still largely framed by the feelings of confusion and embarrassment, just that this time it isn't fun and it actually just bothers you the whole time. Young characters should be allowed to make mistakes, but in this case it was more like bad decision upon bad decision was being made and not a single narrative-important, HEALTHY adult figure was around to put a stop to it.

I think Sugawara is the worst of it. It's honestly just sad because I think you're meant to believe that her actions are a result of being groomed by Saegusa, who I will tentatively call a pedophile, and how that's warped her perception of literally everything the series is about: love, sex, being a girl entering adulthood, what it means to even be a person who experiences new and exciting things for crying out loud! She talks about how she's going to "die soon" because the child in her will soon be gone, she connects her self-worth to her looks and to her seemingly mysterious personality, and sees sex as the only way out. What was a light-hearted, enjoyable plot is suddenly overshadowed by Sugawara failing to properly reckon with trauma. And that'd have been fine if it wasn't like getting on a train ride that absolutely lost control. I don't want to blame Sugawara too much because it really doesn't feel like Okada had any intentions for her to heal from her past, whether through her own actions or the intervention of another character, but man is it hard. Watching her abandon her first ever real friendships to chase after a boy that you really cannot piece together how she came to like at all--like I'm still at a loss as to how she developed such strong feelings for him--was probably one of the most frustrating things I've ever seen to date. It was awful watching her essentially harass him on the train, and then blame him for getting aroused. I honestly can't tell if it's just bad writing on Okada's part why Sugawara was so fickle, because in one instance she didn't like Kazusa turning her into a love rival over her good looks, and then in another she was using them against Izumi. Then in a scene where she was actually confronted she would say things like "That was just me saying some bullshit!" I thought where she had been really steadfast with her decisions before, she suddenly had become really flaky and honestly, a terrible friend. I wish somebody had called her out on it.

To be fair to Sugawara, she did say she was choosing love over her friends. It's just that that she still tried to hold on to both...? I imagine if she wanted to really cut them off she wouldn't have asked for Kazusa's permission to confess to her boyfriend, but who knows. And then to act like Kazusa giving her permission was the obvious conclusion to that request just seemed so disrespectful. In the final moments as well where she's still trying to get Izumi's attention despite Kazusa being right there...........

If it seems like I'm dunking so much on Sugawara it's less her personally than it is my confusion with what purpose any of that was supposed to serve. I think Sugawara's decisions ultimately highlight something I think this manga really frustrated me with, and that was how nobody was really held responsible for their actions.

Hongou and Milo-sensei, for example. Their student-teacher relationship was another gross thing this manga just springs on you. While I think the theme of exploration of one's sexuality is something that can be done creatively and even with a certain level of risk attached, this aspect of the series was just ridiculous. Maybe the grossness could have been avoided if the legality of the situation, as in the fact that Milo-sensei is ultimately a creep for entertaining any of Hongou's advances at all (despite not having feelings for her), wasn't treated as empty blackmail material or some kind of half-hearted awareness that what they were doing was wrong. Milo-sensei constantly saying he's too cowardly to be into minors, or only saying that he just doesn't want to lose his job, and yet still messing around with one. And we're supposed to believe he's a good, responsible adult?

I think by the end I was just happy Momoko at least had a moment where she freaked out. Finally somebody was trying to defend themselves! But even that fell flat, because all it took was the object of her affections barely acknowledging her feelings to satisfy her anger.

I think this manga just ended up being so half-hearted. I thought it was trying to do something different regarding topics that really could use more works, but just ended up being a slog through the mud. It constantly spouted what it thought were truths like "Romance and sex can't be separated!" as if that excused any of the characters' actions, and really that statement is hardly true! It relied on stereotypical gender norms like Kazusa being a weak girl for Izumi to understand that he had feelings for her and wanted to "protect her". Only Sonezaki experienced any real outrage at Juujou's expulsion, which was truly refreshing because everybody else was like "Meh what can you do", and that makes me wonder why that plot point was even in the series. Don't even get me started on Momoko. I thought a gay character could be more confident about straying from the "norm", only for her to be let down by Kazusa during that scene by the river, or how she comes to watery decisions like "maybe it's not about the gender of who I love" which honestly feels like the usual cop-out when faced with making a character outrightly gay. By the end of it all a pedophile is still allowed to run a theatre school for young children and faces no consequences for his actions except an APOLOGETIC punch, and I think that sums up how nothing is acknowledged by the end.

I think the art is very nice, at least. And I think Okada has skill as a writer. But I can't say I think she has ideas I find worth-while, after this one. The manga is entertaining and well-put together. But the actual content of the story eats itself alive, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how or I guess why that happened. The playing of colour tag would have been a nice way to wrap up the series, I think, if the conclusions brought about by playing it hadn't been as ambiguous and indirect as whatever ideas the manga tried to put forward. And I think that's a shame.