Jan 20, 2022
I came into this with high hopes having just finished Relife, but was disappointed. I'm not sure why it is so much shorter than Relife is, but I really feel like this could have been so much better if it was twice as long, as it felt so rushed. I might talk about light spoilers so stop reading if you don't want to see anything. If you're just looking for an opinion to decide whether to read this or not, I would recommend not to.
It's kind of just forced on you that the 5 main characters become friends. The first arc feels so weird,
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as it just moves the plot along without giving any time for the characters to interact normally and just get to know eachother (I guess this is implied to happen off screen, but that's not really what you expect from a slice of life). By chapter 17, which is around the climax of the first arc, we see one of the girls trying to talk the other out of killing herself. What makes this sudden is that the girls have literally said a maximum of two lines to each other before this. They have definitely never had a conversation just the two of them. This kind of rushing of the plot without proper time to develop the characters and their relationships is consistent throughout the story.
It also just feels so much less realistic than Relife, which is strange considering the premises of the two stories. In Relife, the characters seem so much more realistic and relatable (to an extent obviously, it's still a manga) but here their thoughts and actions are so baffling sometimes. For example, early on Seto tells yuuhi that her dad left and implies that her mum is now working as a prostitute to support her, resulting in her never seeing either of them. You would expect Yuuhi to try and help comfort her or something, but instead he just drops that both his parents are dead (which we had never been told before) and that she's in fact lucky because at least her parents are alive.
So much of what the characters do and say just doesn't make any sense. And maybe it would, if the manga was longer to allow the reasons for their behaviour to be explained. But it's not. So it isn't.
If you've read Relife and are looking for more great stuff from the author, I think you'll be disappointed. If you haven't, read that instead, it's so good.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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