Koigokoro♥Senpukuchuu
The Latency Period of Love

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A four chapter manga that I found fairly cute. It stars Ritsuka, a bubbly but not very bright girl who wants to find love and believes strongly in the love legends at her school.

Overall, the story is okay. It's pretty basic and nothing new from most shoujo I've read before. Had the typical falling onto the boy and embarrassing panties being shown moments, etc. A few cute moments, but overall mostly the same thats been done before.

The art is good. Its the same ol' shoujo that I've seen time and time again, but I never get tired of it. I love shoujo art styles ... and always enjoy seeing the pretty girls and boys. But like I said, not much difference between other styles of shoujo.

The characters-meh, average. Ritsuka is your average naive bubbly girl character who's really not that smart. Her love for the love legends are kind of cute and she does try her best at everything. She's cute at sometimes but at other times she's a really big cry baby and really gets annoying. She cries. So. MUCH. It's honestly insane how much she cries, which is the main reason I probably don't like her as much as I might. As I said-meh. Don't love her, don't hate her.

Kaze-kun, the male main, is a little better, but not much. He starts off arrogant and annoying, one of the types that won't reveal what he feels. He starts to warm up a little bit though and gets a little better. He gets jealous really easily which is actually fairly cute, especially in the third chapter. In all, he's a little better character than Ritsuka but probably because I just can't help but fawn over guys like him. OTL

I upped the enjoyment on this probably a little more than I should have because even when a shoujo manga isn't that great, I still enjoy reading them. >.> My heart has just a super duper soft spot for them.

Had the usual where the heck are the parents feel to it. o__o At lot of mangas have it which makes them feel unrealistic even if it makes them a little cuter.

Overall, a pretty common shoujo story. Cute to read, but nothing really new. Some of the legends were intresting, how the heck did they come up with things like that? >.> Some cute moments, but a lot of the same old stuff. Still a nice read if you want some cutsey shoujo in a short period of time.

Using lots of tropes and cliches in your story is not inherently bad. The problem lies when the tropes ARE your story: you can't just write a series of cliche scenes for the sake of it and fill in the blanks with story. This is the problem with Koigokoro Senpukuchuu. Instead of having its cliche, cheesy, generic shoujo scenes for the purpose of elevating what the manga already had story and character-wise, it feels as if the author put a bunch of classic shoujo tropes in a hat, pulled out several, and half-assedly wrote a story around them. Even what's supposed to be the main ... premise—the main character tries a bunch of superstitions around the school to get a boyfriend—wasn't properly written, as the manga feels like it has no plot and is just aimlessly showing a bunch of romantic scenes between two characters. This premise could have worked and made for a fun manga, but the length of the manga limits it on that front.

Which brings me to my next point. Because the manga is only four chapters long, the pacing is atrocious and everything is incredibly rushed. The beginning of the manga didn't really have any exposition or setup to anything at all (which in hindsight makes sense considering how little actually happens in the manga): things just sort of start happening. Within approximately 30 pages of the main character and love interest meeting (which I might add occurs about 10 pages into the first chapter), the love interest: a) gives the MC his jacket, b) gets jealous of another guy who is close to the MC, and c) pulls an "I'll always protect you" after coming to save her from a ridiculous and forced situation that makes absolutely no sense. I want to emphasize that this is supposedly the first time they've met, and this chapter takes place over the span of a single afternoon. On the opposite side of the spectrum, so little actually happens that the only thing moving the "story" and the characters' relationship forward is forced drama, which comes out of nowhere and is very obviously just because the author had no idea how to progress the plot. In addition to being extremely unnecessary and forced, to the point of being cringy, the drama is extremely poorly executed.

*Spoilers*
The last chapter of the manga was legitimately baffling with how horrendously it created and resolved drama. The drama is so terrible that not only does it lead to extremely confusing dialogue, but I legitimately had no idea that it was even present until it was resolved as the MC sobbed. To be slightly more specific, the MC wants to swap headbands with the love interest at the sports festival, as one of the superstitions is that if you do this with someone you like you will be together forever. There's a brief scene showing a pile of headbands with a hand picking it up (which I guess was supposed to be someone else accidentally grabbing it, but it wasn't clear). This is immediately forgotten and the MC asks the love interest to swap headbands (basically a confession), to which he rejects her, saying the confusing line: "as a student of my school, having this kind of relationship would be troublesome." So she got rejected for...reasons. Cool. Makes sense so far. The MC runs off, understandably upset, and the love interest soon learns that her headband was misplaced. Immediately after learning this, he runs to the MC and accepts her confession. Aside from being a confusing mess, the story just changes what the conflict actually is in the middle of it occurring. His rejection had nothing to do with the headband, so why did he immediately regret rejecting her? It feels like it was just conflict for the sake of conflict without giving any thought to what is actually happening in the scene.
*Spoiler end*

To give Koigokoro Senpukuchuu credit, most of these problems (aside from what I just discussed with the last chapter) are at their peak in the first chapter, or at least aren't as bad in other chapters as in the first one. But the problem is that the characters and story aren't compelling enough to make this manga good even once these issues are gone. The main character is annoying and inhumanly stupid and has absolutely no chemistry with the love interest, who just seems to develop feelings for the MC out of nowhere.

All in all, it was mildly enjoyable (except for the first chapter), but I didn't like the characters or the story, so it's mainly just that it's a decent way to pass time without being completely miserable. I'd recommend it if you have nothing better to do, but if you're actually looking for a decent romance manga, it's not worth your time.