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I felt compelled to review this in light of all the other glowing reviews that completely boggle me.

First, positives:
- Art was good to me.
- Sakura's character development was actually great and fun to follow, even though I don't approve of her x Kuzumi because there was zero justification for it.
- Haruna was the best character in this series & I found myself rooting for him and Yuuko more than any other characters.
- The premise gag is genuinely funny and entertaining at the beginning

Next, negatives:

... TL;DR:
Imagine: Kuzumi is mentally handicapped. (He's not really, this is just a hypothetical to help demonstrate my criticisms with this manga)
If that were the case, this story wouldn't need to change at all beyond the last few chapters. I mean at ALL. Kuzumi is silent and dazing off into space for 90% of this manga. He says nothing, his eyes are glazed over the majority of the time, he bird watches, listens to music, and wanders off on his own. These five things are essentially his entire character and everything he brings to the entire story until the last few chapters. Hoooo boy, if that doesn't get your romance ML interest piqued, I don't know what will.

--- expanded version:

Kuzumi says - more accurately: mumbles - 8 words (not exactly. I didn't count but I'd wager I'm close) throughout the entire series until the last 2 chapters time jumping to happy romance ending. The rest of the time, all of the other characters are just constantly making leaping assumptions about Kuzumi's intentions and actions. There is little-to-no reinforcement for those assumptions but the characters still take them in stride and think he's just the bee's knees. "Oh Kuzumi stole the role as the prince of the play because some nobody background character was going to confess! He did that to save me! I love him!", "Oh Kuzumi broke a window because I was being cornered into saying something I didn't want to say. My hero!"

...... maybe he's just a moron that jumped into the play? Maybe he's just a moron that broke a window? Maybe not, sure, but what's he done to earn all this credit and good will? These situations run rampant. Multiple times he's LITERALLY got snot running down his face like a child.

Look, I get the premise of a background character being the ML and that's actually why I picked this up. Anti-trope is a fun change of pace from the typical romcom fare, but you've got to be kidding me with how asinine the "progression" in this series is. Sakura had to be smoking some excellent stuff to be as into Kuzumi as she was. Like I said, he could have been genuinely mentally incapable the entire series & she'd have never even known and the story would not need to change at all.

Anti-trope is well and good, but there are questions I did not find sufficient answers to which negatively affected my enjoyment:

- Why would the most popular girl in school, constantly surrounded by friends and hot guys, be into a guy like Kuzumi? "that's the joke!" you might say, but the romance, progression of non-Kuzumi characters and the ending were not a joke, so how do the dots connect?
- Why does she fall for him? "He's always doing weird things! He makes me so mad!" for 60 chapters is insufficient for me.
- Why does he fall for her? Nooo idea. Even at the end when shoe-horning in his perspetive during climactic events there's little sense to be found.
- How do they get closer & eventually discover feelings? ???? anyone??? Everything is so "lol random feelings and plot conveniences just because". No sense of reality or real people. Like I said at the top, Sakura had some good character development, I really do think that. But the _relationship_ development in this _romance_ manga needs to also be as important as individual development. To me, at least.

The PREMISE for this series is genuinely fine by me. The manga is funny and entertaining at first, but it just doesn't hold water with how long the gag was kept up and enforced for with zero effort, words, or intelligible action from our ML.

"Oh, Kuzumi did that because he must have been the only person who realized the bind I was in! He really can't read the room but sometimes he really can!" ...orrrrrr maybe he's just a wandering, delusional, weirdo doing arbitrary crap? I mean, come on people.

Kuzumi has zero character development beyond - again - Sakura and others' assumptions about his actions, life goals, feelings, or that he's really into bird watching, etc... My god, for all they know, Kuzumi could genuinely believe he can talk to birds!

Ah, pardon: There IS some actual written character development for Kuzumi, but the problem is that the entirety of this happens within a single chapter that the author shoe-horns in near the very end of the manga that looks back at Kuzumi's perspective during the proceeding 60-whatever chapters to attempt to ribbon up all of my criticisms. That's all well and good, but it's so lazy and insufficient to me. I felt as though the author suddenly realized the same things I'm criticizing after nearing the end and thought "well crap, how do I make Kuzumi believable as a human being that people want to be around and that the most popular people in school adore and constantly root for???"

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Most of my criticisms have surrounded the romance tag. The comedy aspect of this manga is OK & the majority my score. There's some funny events and situations, especially where Haruna is concerned. The side characters are likeable for the most part.

I kept going because I just kept thinking "any time now, Kuzumi will open his eyes & show that he can be a romance protag. any time now, the relationship development will get going". But nope. It does happen, but not until the VERY end when hope has already been lost and forgotten. The ending was pulled kicking-and-screaming by Sakura and it was wholly undeserved and entirely unfair to her character development as a whole.

Don't give me that canned romance ending for characters that haven't earned it. Sakura worked hard and deserved a LOT better. Ending her with Kuzumi like he was this greatest guy ever just cheapens anything the manga could have been. Should have taken out the romance tag and romantic events with Sakura eventually overcoming her one-sided crush in favor of friendship, and it would have been significantly more enjoyable to me.

I felt the need to contradict the only other review that gave this a mind-boggling 9. They are entitled to their opinion but I think that rating is insanely generous, or they simply are brand new to reading manga.

FYI, MAL says 20ch, but there are actually 29 (ending at "24.25" whatever that means).

This series started out cute but at this point I'm just over here saying "refund please". Waste of time & frustrated me enough to write this review which I believe is my first one.

TL;DR: If you read nothing else from my review, even score aside, I would highly recommend skipping chapters 23 ... & 24.25 unless you like crappy unfinished cliffhanger endings with introduced drama that didn't exist before these two chapters & never get resolved because drama cliffhangers are cool? 23.2 (halloween special) is fine.

Long-winded & spoiler version below:

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Plot: Kayako falls for a younger (by 5 years) co-worker, Kaori, to whom she confesses reaaaaal early in their friendship. Kaori responds with "why don't we try dating" and "maybe I'll fall in love with you too", which she quickly does. Cute/fluffy after but this series should have been a onshot or half the length because the author really flubbed the landing or otherwise simply didn't have any sort of plan or fleshed out storyboard.

Art: I was fine with it, though the artist is clearly a novice. No complaints from me, either way and no further comment because art is subjective.

Relationship progression was fairly typical, satisfying, and non-graphic. Hand holding & some kiss scenes. The artist clearly cannot draw a kiss, though they do kiss a few times "off screen" or "looking at back of FL's head with a 'chu' label", etc.. No further skinship. These aren't complaints, just info.

My problem with this series and the biggest reason I'm scoring this at a 3 can be summed up in two major cons:

1. Pacing is not good. Character writing is not good. There's fluff & flutters here and there, sure, but the character writing is genuinely poor. The characters are two dimensional despite thoughts and introspection being a common thread through the series. I've been more invested in oneshot characters. The side characters? None of them had any point but filler. Random chapter with X co-worker we never see again. Random chapter with grandma who we never see again. Random chapter with friend group that we never see again. All these incidents & side characters all had one common purpose: to introduce insecurities to our two leads and NONE of those insecurities are ever resolved.

Kayako is insecure about her age. Kaori is insecure about overstepping her boundaries & interacting at work. Both are insecure about dating another woman. Just to name a few of these insecurities. Drama can drive narrative and character growth but if you don't actually use those points in a way that serves the narrative or that actually provides said character growth then it is nothing but waste floating on the water. Why intentionally add waste to the water you are in full control of pouring with no intent to clean it back up? I just don't get it.

2. The last two chapters of the series literally do nothing but introduce a completely out-of-left-field love rival which just throws a shit in the pool, confusion in the lead, and then curtains close. Really (not) great writing. I don't care if the series was cancelled, if you can't close the plotline that you are STARTING in the last two chapters of your story, don't even include them. It's insulting to this story you've crafted & to your readers. It gives a very "who the fuck cares, I had them drawn so here you go!" impression. I was annoyed enough by these two chapters that I wrote all this. Nothing gives me bigger gripes than abrupt endings but it's really just so awful to introduce such a plotpoint in your abrupt ending. Things could have ended so non-problematically but noooo.

Unless you love pointless drama cliffhangers just skip chapters 23 and 24.25 (23.2 / halloween special is fine). I'd mark the whole manga as a miss though. The author stopped caring 3 chapters in, so why bother.