One of the biggest weaknesses of japanese romances set in high school is that most of them don't feel like a high school. The (supposed) teenagers simply don't act like... well, teenagers. They act more like five years old who think that kissing results in babies. This annoyed me greatly, but, thankfully, not every japanese romance is like that. This is proven by Ge: Good Ending.
Beginning serialization is 2009 and ending in 2013, Ge: Good Ending was created, written and drawn by Kei Sasuga.
Its story doesn't seem very original, but if you get through the unassuming beginning, it gets better. Insanely better. It takes advantage of the clichés and subverts them. This makes the whole ride a lot more entertaining to the eye that already saw everything else.
Said that, the events that led up to the finale were just plain cliché and a tad bit melodramatic. But this is just one small hiccup in a road of greatness.
Each of the main and side characters pass through their own hardships and, at first, they seem to be the traditional ones, but the way they are dealt with is different and unique. Differently from most of other romance manga, the characters actually act on their wishes and aren't just indecisive kids.
Also, they aren't as innocent as high school manga normally portrays teenagers. They actually act like teenagers instead of crybabies that can't understand how relationships actually work. This brings a problem: they can be jackasses. But that is good, people can also be kind of di**s.
One thing that was extremely refreshing was that the protagonist Utsumi wasn dense. He noticed what was happening around him and, most of the times, acted on it. Also, he was actually affected by it and became marked by his situation, in a way that reminded me a lot of Haruki Kitahara from White Album 2.
The art is, as a whole, quite beautiful, but the character design took some time to get used to. The characters were much more... robust than in most of other manga, but this wasn't bad, just different.
Ge was a wild ride that hit every right not for me. It scratched an itch for unusual romance and realistic teenagers that built inside me for a long time. It knew how to use its strengths to make everything more enjoyable.
More experienced viewers/readers of romance will find a lot to like here, even if just by its refreshingness. But, and this is a big one, it needs a more experienced viewer to be fully enjoyed, as it plays with the clichés of the genre.