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Yandere Kanojo is a manga that reminds us of what real life (and love) are about.

It's a funny gag manga with lighthearted, cliche characters. They fall in love in a ridiculous way and have ridiculous interactions and go on ridiculous adventures. The guy with glasses studies hard, the girl with a bat hits people with said bat, and so on.

Then ever so slowly, real obstacles start creeping up, one by one, just like they do in real life. Sometimes they get solved in the same lighthearted, comical way as the rest of the manga, but sometimes they are just hinted at and are put off ... for later. It happens so subtly that you almost forget about it in between the hints and foreshadows...but as you get towards the end, all those unanswered questions start bubbling up to the surface and can't be ignored any longer.

Yandere Kanojo reminds us that life, no matter what, should mostly be fun. It doesn't matter if you're from a loving and functional background or a conflicted and discordant one: what matters is that you find people that you can laugh, love, and belong with. What matters is being able to move while under our individual inhibitions and burdens and find enjoyment and happiness in our day-to-day lives, even if those burdens weighs us down to our very core and threaten to take away everything we have. It shows us what happens to those who embrace that, those who never find it, and those who are caught in the middle. It reminds those of us who are lost that it really doesn't take much to find that happiness again, and it reminds those of us who are happy that even beneath the bubbly surfaces of those around us, everyone is struggling with something.

Yandere Kanojo reminds us that love is more than just a moment of attraction, or a confession, or even a state of being together. Love is about making new memories together; it is a thing that grows with each passing moment (or page). Love makes people do wonderful, heartwarming things, and it makes people do callous, hurtful things, and it makes them do everything in between. Love is far from perfect, and sometimes it is the most enchanting thing and sometimes it is the most upsetting. Sometimes it blooms into a beautiful firework and sometimes it festers into a thorn that bristles out of your heart and hurts those around you. And sometimes...sometimes things just don't work out and there are some things that love can't overcome.

Love isn't perfect, but it's all we have. And if you choose love, the kind of real, tempered, imperfect love that Reina and Manabu have, then no matter what happens, at least you can go through it with a smile and a 4-koma gag.