by Sasuga Kei
My alternative title for this post: No Nope Nopest.
Usually I can’t be bothered to write reviews unless I have something to actually say other than “it was good” or “it was bad”. I’m not going to write a summary either because I tried that at first and even I got bored of it so let’s just jump right into it.
As an aside, this thing used to be pretty popular back in the day.
First off, the oneshot of this manga was a lot better than the serialised version. The characters felt more natural, and the story was nice and compact. In the serialised manga, though, every character was exaggerated into stereotypical Japanese tropes.
The pacing was… fine, I guess, but after Utsumi — our hapless protagonist — started dating “Shou-senpai”, it was all over the place and towards the end the whole thing became so ridiculous it was like a farce of itself. In fact, this was the only time the manga got a laugh out of me and I’m pretty sure it was unintentional.
There is nothing in this manga except romance. I mean it. The main characters’ lives revolve around their romance drama, the side characters’ lives revolve around the main characters’ romance drama. Sure there is an occasional blip to something else happening in their lives, but otherwise I just didn’t get the sense that these are totally “real people” living “real lives”.
The main characters in this Romance Drama of Our Lives weren’t really all that interesting either — I mean, an oblivious cowardly moron, an energetic klutz and a girl who is like a freaking clam with all the secrets she has. Neither were the side characters interesting since they basically existed only to be mouthpieces for the main character’s “feelings” as if those feelings weren’t obvious from his face and behaviour. But the authoress was evidently writing for idiots so she felt compelled to spell everything out in great detail just in case so her readers will really get it.
I honestly can’t stand this “rubbing it in your face” style of writing.
As such, none of the dialogue in this manga felt like it’s being said by actual people.
The manga basically had nothing to say either, except maybe “don’t be a cowardly moron”. It’s solid advice, I guess, but not exactly compelling.
Now that’s all out of the way, let’s get to the real bad stuff this manga has.
Utsumi Seiji, our hapless protagonist, is so freaking useless and weak that he’s constantly getting used and molested by the girls around him while he just lies there and “gets swept up in the mood”. Sure, the mangaka tries to pretend that the girls totally for real like him because he’s so “kind”, but he just — seriously doesn’t do anything aside from Talk no Jutsu, the most boring ninjutsu in the universe. The only reason most of the girls flocked to him seemed to be because he’s useable which is a horrendously bad message to give to young boys.
THE MANGA: Get used by girls and even you will be popular! 😀
Well, at the farce of an end Utsumi finally grows a spine and actually does things so there’s that.
Then there’s Kurokawa Yuki, the main girl of the manga. I don’t even know where to start with this one.
Well, basically in middle school Yuki started dating her childhood friend, Tooru. After three months of going out with him, he started whining to have sex with her until she gave in and they did it in the old school library. Oh Tooru, you little romanticist. Unbeknownst to them, they were filmed and the boys passed the video around the school while saying they’d made a bet of it with Tooru.
The whole thing traumatised Yuki so badly that when she’s going out with Utsumi a few years later and almost ended up having sex with him, she got triggered and rejected him.
Somehow this becomes a huge freaking issue.
THE MANGA: You can’t have a relationship without sex!
ME: They’ve been going out for, like, a week? If all you want from a relationship is sex then you don’t really want a relationship.
But no, it’s totally insurmountable. They can’t even work up to it, try some light and heavy petting, test her limits and ease her past them or just do some other stuff instead of going right into penetration.
No, no, instead of ANY OF THAT,
Yuki jumps right into corrective rape.
THE MANGA: Oh, this uppity girl isn’t putting out.
YUKI: RAPE ME, SEIJI.
Like, what?
What?
What?
And when Utsumi THANKFULLY AND OBVIOUSLY goes: “Excuse me, Yuki, what the fuck?”
She goes right into breaking up, but not really. At least not until Utsumi, the hapless moron, started dating “Shou-senpai” just to make himself feel better.
And this thing was written by a woman.
For boys.
For the love of gods.
Hiraeth 