Jun 4, 2024
Toaru tenin to kyaku no hanashi is yet another manga that begins as a twitter mini-manga, which then got serialized into a full-blown manga. It starts almost immediately, with the female MC, Komatsu Saki, confessing to Shirashi Yamato, the male MC, within the very first chapter.
As with other romance comedy mangas, it hits every trope imaginable:
- Both of the characters are awkward around each other,
- Onsen story,
- Christmas, New Years, & Valentine story,
- “He/she is sick, go check up on them” story,
- A rival love interest who fell for the MC earlier,
- Sharing an umbrella under the rain
...
moment,
and so on & so forth.
Unfortunately, it feels slightly underdeveloped, with a lot of plot points just ending up being forgotten or simply thrown into the mix. An example of this: the love rival, which we got introduced as someone who liked Saki before Shirashi even met her. He comes off as being possessive towards Saki, and wants her for himself. Later in the story, he just completely disappears after the confession scene, and there wasn't much of him to begin with! I can count with one hand how much he appears on the storyline.
The characters themselves are not that memorable or have a deep personality either－Saki is shown to be head over heels for Shirashi, but it's not shown why she did she feel that way in the first place. As for Shirashi, he… kinda feels like just your run-of-the-mill employee.
Perhaps it is a consequence of its length, which is very short－21 webcomic chapters + 25-odd manga chapters, which means the writing must be prioritised to progress the main characters’ romantic development. Thankfully, though, the length means that these flaws don't stand out that much, and don't detract much from the story as a whole.
Personally, as a sucker for any romance manga, I enjoyed this quite a lot. Just bear in mind that it's not an intricate, well thought out story, that is fortunately saved by its length.
Final verdict: 6/10 - Fine
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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