Ranked #2044

DearS (Manga)

Alright. Let's make this quick

Story: 5
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DearS is a blatant Chobits ripoff from the word "go". Fortunately, it does not stay a blatant Chobits ripoff. Though it starts with the normal harem hijinks and unnecessary amounts of fanservice, it does find its own voice. Unfortunately, it rushes through everything with tremendous speed. Introducing a new character every two-three chapters for a while and half of them don't even stick around, it's as if Peach-Pit was struggling a lot through the manga to find ways to keep it going. Because of this, it feels like a NaNoWriMo project rather than a well-thought-out story, and the massive cliche of a finale is halfhearted enough that it's hard to care what happens to who.

Art: 3
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When Peach-Pit wants to make the girls look pretty, they succeed in spades. However, it seems to take a lot out of them, because the majority of the manga is told in a range between decent work and amateurish doodles that would make a How-To-Draw-Manga-taught artist envious at the thought of how such terrible skills could warrant a paycheck for this.

Character: 4
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Like I said earlier, about the middle of the manga, a barrage of new characters come in one after another. The result means characters that should get character development never do. Some are lucky if they get a whole chapter focused on them. The manga only seems to care about Ren, Takeya, and Miu and it shows. The shame in this is that those three have the most cliched developments to their person. There are some good bits of original development in Ren at the end, Unless you're new to the harem ecchi genre, it's nothing you haven't seen before.

Enjoyment: 7
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And yet, despite it all... it's fun. It's really fun. Though it goes through all the motions and often feels desperate to keep going at times, Peach-Pit puts a commendable dose of passion into each panel and it shows. I was never truly bored reading this, but nor was I astounded. It's funny but not enough to make you laugh, it's cute and sweet but not enough to give you diabetes, it's ecchi but not enough to warrant shrink-wrap, and it demonstrates what effort can achieve from an otherwise poor work.

Being the first work from the exceedingly-prolific Peach-Pit, it's a solid effort and a good sign that the things to come of them would be even better. Overall, DearS gets a 5/10. read more