This is going to be a very long post, but I hope somebody will read it and be up for discussion, as I think this series to be inspired by another and that they'll have similar, if not the exact, same ending.
I just finished binge-reading the entire manga (up to ch.218) and while at the start it had a really intriguing idea (love triangle with a side of step-incest lol), it kinda fell flat immediately during the "hina affair" arc but, because there was potential in the story, I kept going while searching for cliches throughout the series, you know, just as a game.
And after reading up to the 218 chapter it's blatantly clear, how this series is totally inspired by "Ichigo 100%" (or strawberry 100%) to the point you can tell how the story'll probably end just by knowing the ending of Ichigo 100.
While it may sound absurd at first (and trust me I did find it absurd too), I'll try my best to explain:
The biggest giveaway are the 3 "main" characters (especially Rui) so I'll try to go in order starting with NATSUO, which has the personality of Aya Toujo but lives events similar to those of Manaka Juumpei, like Aya is an introvert and the start of the series who writes novel in secret and falls in love with the first person he shows his novel to, they both have trouble communicating preferring to stay silent and go in monologues instead of actually speaking their mind, like aya he has a makeover done on him between middle school and high school as they both were nerd and now are ""sexy""(?), they both get their heart broken pretty early in the series and are seen like trasparent by their crush (him by hina during the "you're only a child" period and aya by manaka confessing to nishino in front of her), both writes the screenplay for the drama club and so on and so forth. Then moving to the "lives experience like makana" part, I'll be concise and just show two out of many, the going for the drama club (which in natsuo case is just weird but it's not in manaka's case) and the relationship with RUI/Nishino.
Which brings us to the character that actually made me notice everything :Tachibana Rui which is actually Tsukasa Nishino, now here there are way too many similarities, in the events they both live to put them all, so I'll just put a few: both chef, both have another genius chef that likes them, they both go for a study session of culinary abroad (rui new york, nishino paris), they both are the only one the MC goes out with publically (as nastuo and hina was a secret, while natsuo and rui are known to be a couple by everybody but their parents), they both ask to break up the relationship during the study abroad (nishino before and rui in the middle), both chooses to pursue their careers instead of keep going to school with MC and so on and so forth.
Now comes the last one HINA, which is not inspired by ichigo 100 at all, as she literally is the synopsis of DomeKano, a step-sister in an illegal student/teacher relationship with a side of surprise incest. Nothing more, the flattest character in the story, still really enjoyable, just character wise if you take away from here any of the things I put before she crumbles as a character (at least for now).
Which brings us to my conclusion, that the end of the story will be similarly inspired by the end of ichigo 100, Rui will stay more time abroad to perfect her cuisine and when she returns, the story will end with Natsuo/Manaka that tells Rui/Nishino that he has always waited for her (maybe while both showing each other they kept on their necklaces).
If anybody arrives here, congratulations and let me know what you think :) |