Akuma to Love Song
A Devil and Her Love Song

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"A Devil and Her Love Song" is perhaps, one of the best Manga series I've read in a long, long time. The plot is great, and the characters are as well. I find the art style to be very unique.

The story is humorous and has a hint of romance, along with suspense. It will keep you guessing, that's for sure.

My problem with this manga is how much I expected from it and how it ended up to be a huge disappointment. I really enjoyed the first part of the manga (though there were some hard-to-believe situations, specially when it comes to the teacher's behaviour), but at some point it just started to make no sense. From now on there will me some mayor spoilers so pls stop reading if you don't want to see them. (The conclusion is free of spoilers.)

I think you can resume this story as "look, these people are going through difficult situations, look how they'll change and how they ... learn how to be better ppl" but failing in the way of doing this. I just don't understand how the mangaka was able to ruin her characters so much. I mean, at first we were presented to a girl who makes a really interesting protagonist, completely different from your typical-shoujo manga heroine, who is not afraid to speak her mind and clearly have a lot of issues that will develop throughout the story. But then, she falls in love, and all of that just goes away and instead we have ye again a super plain protagonist. I'm not saying that her stopping to be a cold-hearted bitch is a bad thing, I think that it'd have been a really good development only if it had been well-executed.
As of the male lead role -Megu-, at first I really liked how the character was written and the interactions they both had, but at some point -when that other girl from the music school appears- he just starts to make a lot of stupid decisions, and even though I can understand that everyone can do stupid things when they're put in a situation they've never been before, for me his way of doing things wasn't believable at all and it ended up being a big turn-off for me.

Also, I really don't understand how you can introduce this background story that it's so important for the plot and for the characters' development, just to resolve it in that simple way. I mean, are you trying to convince me that a teenage girl, after she remembers all of a sudden about her mom committing suicide in front of her and the reasons that led her to do that, got to find a way out of that pain in just one fucking chapter?
This was the most important part of the story and we deserved to see how Maria recovers with the help of everyone around her, and it's not something that you can resolve in just a few pannels.

But the thing that really messed up the story for me was how the father issue was dealt with. I mean, he raped your mother and caused all of this despair upon your family and just like that you're able to talk to him and it only takes you a few chapters to act as if it were normal for him to meet your family and be okay with him saying that he loved your mother??????? And you're also okay with him going to your grandparents house and you even support that, bitch whatttT????? Even your friend (the kouhai) has the balls to say "hey i would like if you and him get along " BITCH WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU ASKING YOUR FRIEND TO DO?????? But what pisses me off even more is her response to him, as if the things he's saying make a lot of sense.

The way this part of the story is written, how they don't give the importance that it needs to has, and how they just portrait this guy as if he's not that bad as a person, when he raped a 14 YEAR-OLD, RUINED HER LIFE and it just looks as it's not that great of a deal for anybody?
I mean, if you were to deal with this kind of serious topic and you were trying to make the readers empathize with that man you could have written it in so many different ways, but not this one, where the decisions and the way the characters act doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

SPOILERS FINISH HERE

Conclusion: Though the story and the characters weren't exactly my cup of tea (gosh, even the ending of the manga was a disappointment) I have to say that the art was beautiful and I really loved Maria and Megu's designs. Also, I think that if you're looking for a dramatic shoujo manga to read this wouldn't be me first recommendation, since there a lot mangas out there with better storytelling, BUT it was entertaining enough to keep me reading through 90 chapters just because I really wanted to know how it ended, so I have to give it some points for that.

Going in, the story seems solid, characters seem to be typical shoujo but with a slight twist as our MC (Maria) has extreme awareness to people's true feelings, so it causes scenarios where characters actually need to face their flaws. personally for me, it's halfway through which starts going downhill from there. Below I'm going to write one without spoilers and one with that actually detail what's very wrong with the direction the manga goes in (again this is my opinion but I feel as if it's misleading and is looked past).

NO SPOILERS EXPLANATION:
Maria's past is slowly introduced to the audience and it makes ... absolutely no sense. Her past has very serious connotations but is essentially solved because the author uses friendship and forgiveness. The characters also become very obsessive over Maria where it's creepy and wouldn't be acceptable past a manga/fictional standpoint.


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WITH SPOILERS EXPLANATION:
With Maria's past, it's eventually revealed that her mom was a r*pe victim. Her mom was 14 when it happened, with the perpetuator at 20 years old. The father was found not guilty, and was supporting Maria financially behind the scenes. Knowing this, Maria forgives her mother's r*pist and even brings the r*pist together with her mom's parents to become a family. Not only that, the father is actually a priest and is taking care of orphaned children. It's insane to me that a child r*pist was forgiven, and actually had the audacity to say he fell in love with Maria's mother as well (they exchanged letters bc Maria's mom didn't want him to forget what he had done to her, but through the communication he "fell in love"). This is the biggest issue with the manga for me and I feel as though I should rate this lower because of it. There's also 3 boys essentially in Maria's life that all like her, but 2 of them are super obsessive, push themselves onto her constantly, or gets insanely jealous that other males are there to support her.

SUMMARY:
Overall, it is my two cents, but I feel as though the truth about Maria's past and what unfolds later down the story is too messed up for a shoujo manga or just a story in general. Shoujo targets females 18 and under, and it sets a bad precedent that everything that happens in the story is acceptable, similar to how in Maid Sama where almost every episode our MC girl almost gets sexually assaulted but is played off with comedic animation or because our MC male is attractive.