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Often times, there are works that try to strike a mix of comedy and seriousness. They create characters with unique, distinct quirks, that when interacting with each other, they make for a really fun environment. Many fail at that mix, and end up with quirks so unique that may feel that they oppose what the character is, like they flip a switch and they're a completely different person.

This manga is the rare example of the perfect blend.

An obvious problem that occurs when mixing comedy and seriousness, is the absurdity of the former, diminishing the emotional impact of the latter. This manga, however, avoids this entirely ... by just having characters that are perfectly shaped into those quirks, which makes for an extremely enjoyable experience. You'll laugh with them, you'll understand them, and you'll cry for them, as well. It doesn't push those moments as well, they just naturally happen throughout the story.

It creates a world so beautiful, yet so believable, that doesn't feel as if it is a different world that only suits that mix of people; And although not much people read manga for their likeness to reality (probably the opposite), it makes their interactions, their existence, their problems and their solutions, all feel real. And that real, is something that you can relate to like no other. The pains and trouble that are represented, the way that they are dealt with so much care, and how "to the point" it presents those moments, is something to be praised. When reading it, a core idea will be reinforced from time to time: Acceptance. Of others, of your mistakes, and of yourself.

It may come as a surprise that such a simple, even dumb premise, could evolve to something that holds so many sweet and endearing moments.

In short: simple, sweet, and funny. 10/10.

It's just your average fan service/comedic manga.

I could end the review here, but I'll dwell about why I was so disappointed after reading it.

When I first stumbled upon "Kimi no Koto ga Daidaidaidaidaisuki na 100-nin no Kanojo", I saw pages about the 3rd "main" girlfriend and was really surprised. Those pages not only described her unique traits, but also made clear how the MC helped her notice that those traits made her the beautiful girl she is, even while being "the odd one" when compared to others. And so I imagined that the manga would develop around meeting all those different girls with their own ... distinct features, that would not only blindly fall in love with the MC; but also learn with him how to love themselves. Something I believed that would also be in a more relaxed world, with comedic moments between the characters, a few dramatic ones, but nothing that would be extremely complex due to the theme of having a 100 girlfriends just not being suited to be explored further than minor arcs.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Just in a few chapters after that girl, things have escalated to the absurd level way too quickly, and it just is the path that the manga chose to follow. The girls introduced are textbook stereotypes, and only expose a little character complexity at random moments, just to have a minor arc and end up with everyone loving everyone. The fan service was also gradually more frequent, serving no development purpose to any of them, just to please the reader (or the author). And about the moment that I talked about earlier? When they do occur, they're extremely superficial and take no more than a few pages, being there with the sole purpose of introducing one more girl in the harem. Certain things about their relationship that could hold some importance are ridiculed by others that are way more extreme and happen frequently throughout the story progression, taking out the little importance it could hold and making it as something shallow, that has no real impact at how things are going, not even worth to be remembered as a hardship.

Things become out of hand easily, and this makes everything "normal" in our world seem silly compared to the "normal" of their world. It breaks the similarity in a way that makes it impossible for me to empathize with the characters in our world standards, as it creates an insane distance between anything that could be compared to their everyday life. Which is okay to be done when you have no intention to connect to our world, but to make the reader involved in their world. The problem not only with this manga, but with all in this genre is this switch between "wanting to be more realistic" when it comes to characters feelings, and pulling a sci-fi moment like "earth is going to be destroyed!".

While the characters are mostly flat, they are well established in their own boundaries and what they like to do, and the variety produces interesting interactions between themselves, a charming feature about this specific theme, that if didn't went off the rails every single time, would be incredibly attractive, as the concept has a lot of potential. While the potential is not wasted, it is used to create comedy in the clash of opposite personalities, as opposed to being a development tool, something that was used in early chapters, when there weren't so many characters and nothing out of reality hadn't happened yet.

The art is excepcional. While the story has its ups and downs, this is beautiful. The character design, their expressions, the impact, even how the panels are placed, make this manga admirable. It plays a really important part, being a comedy-focused manga over anything else, and it does an excellent job in conveying the expectation to the reader.

This could be easily described as your average fan service, over-the-top comedic manga. But it is more diverse when it's making jokes, just like the fourth wall breaks with comments about the readers and the own author, also referencing other titles such as Doraemon (a bit overused), Chainsaw Man, One Piece, and various others, which does makes them smarter than "just the average". And I did have some fun while reading it, but nothing that would be greater than those forced moments and absurdities that made no sense. So it is just more of a comedy than a romcom, just isn't that obvious about it since the beginning, focusing a little more on what I thought that would be the main idea of the series. As a result, it played me into believing that this manga would be different from what it is, which led me to a frustrating experience.