I, Maehara Maki, someone who couldn't make any acquaintances or friends in high school, finally found someone I could hang out with outside of school. A girl. Her name was Asanagi-san. The boys in my class called her 'The class second cutest girl' behind her back. 1r3q66
On Fridays, she would refuse her best friend, Amami, 'the cutest girl in class', invitation just to hang out in my house with me. Together, we played games, watched some movies, read some manga while eating junk food like pizza and hamburgers, and chugging cola without a care in the world.
To others, we may seem sloppy, but it was a precious, secret time together for Asanagi-san and me.
4 Volumes (Ongoing)
You know, most of the time when you read romance, you tend to think of them as 'rom-coms'. I know I do, because they're such a common facet of them. This maybe a bias of mine as a male reader, but outside of Shoujo romance, MOST romances are rom-coms with a side of SOL, or SOL romances with a side of comedy lol.
As a result, I'm so used to being able to say 'this is a nice cute light and fluffy romance'.
Well this? This is the OPPOSITE of that. It is HEAVY. Here we have two introverts as the main couple, and they both have very serious issues. The female lead is one of those introverts that has adapted very well to society, and in fact may not have even known she was one. The male lead, however, is a very fragile young guy, hurt by his past and quite frankly completely socially inept. Their romance is great, with her initially gravitating towards him because she just wants some alone time from her EXTREMELY extroverted friend. He accepts, because any friends who share his hobby is more than the zero he currently has.
Thank god for the girl's willingness to reach out, because the boy has none of that, and he definitely needs the push to grow. He does though, and it's great to watch them push each other forward. Their growth is great.
But special notice goes out for the MC being the way he is because he went through an extremely damaging divorce of his parents less than a year ago. This is quite possibly the heaviest take on how ruinous a divorce can be on the child, when the divorce wasn't a trainwreck to begin with. Aka it wasn't a traumatic or aggrandized epic failure; the parents seem to have parted fairly benignly to be honest.... but that doesn't change how devastating it was on an introverted young single child.
As I said... Heavy.
Good romance, really nice coming-of-age story with good character development, but it is NOT light and fluffy.
I do recommend it, but please, know what you're getting into. Good luck.
@24 chapter (which I think is approximately 1 LN?).
t's definitely good
And unexpected with a development or two.
I need to praise in particular the art. It's very good, the character designs, especially for the main 2 girls, are just perfect you can easily see how they're so popular and praised (even when we get flashbacks of the growing up and their popularity). The art also at times alternates between being cute and funny (and sometimes both), making it funnier or cuter. I really like the more liberal takes the adapting mangaka takes, like showing them (figuratively) towing Maehara along in a car or the super deformed faces or simplified expressions with just a few dots.
I do wonder if some detail was lost in the translation from novel->manga, so I'll probably re-read from the novel at some point. I'll be looking forward to the anime! I might hold off reading anymore until it comes out.
Surprisingly.. I enjoyed reading it.
Likeable characters, good plot so far and most importantly, good translation.
Also, since it is based on LN/WN, the manga didn't do a huge time skip here and there.
