Sep 13, 2022
Dual Kanojo is an average vanilla romcom with a very confusing ending.
The story's pretty simple. There's a girl with split personalities trying to get together with our MC. She's a basic tsundere that has her 'tsun' and 'dere' sides split into two different personalities. The split was apparently caused by her inability to be honest to our MC, which is why she bullied him when they were kids. This is a simple but effective way to create a seemingly dense MC, where the denseness is caused by a past trauma, which makes a lot more sense than the usual autistic MC that can't pick up
...
any social cues.
Actually, Dual Kanojo's MC is pretty manly considering the fact that he was bullied by the main girl. He's fairly self-aware and confident enough to take action towards the girl he likes. He's great. On the other hand, the girl is about as basic as a tsundere could be. She's pretty extreme with her soft and harsh sides, that's where most of the comedy comes from. The dynamic between the two is nice and simple. So, overall the story is entertaining enough to have a good score, at least until the ending.
From this point on I will be discussing the ending, so spoilers ahead.
The manga ends with the MC getting together with the two personalities of the main girl and her maid (lmfao). First off, the fact that the girl still has two personalities is very confusing to me. The whole point of having split personalities as a plot device, is for them to ultimately integrate back into a single one at the end. Especially if the split was caused by a flaw in the character's personality that they want to reject. The reintegration is supposed to show that the character has grown to accept who they are as a person, kinda like in the Persona games. So, the girl still having two personalities, despite the fact that she already overcame her fears by confessing to our MC, doesn't make any sense. It just reduces the value of her entire character arc. The other personality is treated as a whole different person, which just means she's qualified to be a patient at a mental asylum.
Secondly, why the hell did the maid join in on the relationship? There was no indication that she was into the MC, besides the one chapter where they went to have some coffee. There wasn't even any romance in that chapter. And the way this whole thing was revealed was just wild. The MC and the maid kissed at the end to shock the main girl enough so that her personality was split back into two. It was at that moment that the maid revealed that she was into him. If that's not trashy, I don't know what it is.
So, I wouldn't recommend Dual Kanojo unless you want to be bamboozled by how a story ends. The whole manga feels a little pointless at the end, with unimpressive characters and unsatisfying arcs. Though I'm not too offended by the ending, just confused. If you want to read a better romcom manga about split personalities I would recommend Uwagaki, though it's less traditional in the way the split is shown.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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