May 6, 2021
Super Lovers the Manga...
After watching 2 seasons of the Anime I still had a lot of questions about what was happening or what was going to happen to our main characters Haru and Ren. So naturally I'd look at the source material if it adds any more context to why a very grown man in his mid twenties should be interested in a teenager. But unfortunately I did not find said context, even after thirty plus chapters.
In my other reviews of the anime I already explained why it's harmful to normalize relationships like that as it reinforces how codependency begins and how it can
...
be very unhealthy especially at such a young age for someone like Ren, who's already had to deal abuse and neglect early in his life.
This leads me to my first critique of this manga: The Story.
I gave this a 2 because I feel like after the many chapters I read, I don't know where the author is going. It's hard to tell if I'm still at the beginning of the story or are we somewhere near the end. For whatever reason a lot of plot points raised in the story are either not resolved in any satisfying way, or they where dropped and never seen or heard from ever again..
For instance, in one of the chapters, the cafe was pretty much ransacked, I know it's technically a spoiler but if we were to take this part out of the story, it wouldn't change the trajectory of what happens. We don't even find why it happens or even who did it. We can pretty much say that for most of the drama that happens, if it doesn't add or change anything to the story, then it's just drama for drama sake.
This manga seems to avoid answering of the major problems or trauma surrounding either of the main characters. That leads me to my second problem: The Characters.
I also gave this a 2, at first I thought this was just a problem of the anime due to pacing which of course happens with many adaptations. But after reading the Manga, there's still a lot of questions about the characters I have that didn't get an explanation.
Ren's probably the only exception to this, seeing how we're mostly following what he's doing for most of the manga, we know his motivations and why he does certain things. Fundamentally this is a coming of age story for Ren if we take the romance out if it.
But that leave the big problem of characterization to the other main character Haru. After 38 chapters, there's still a lot we don't know about him. After the first few chapters we aren't even sure what his motivations are as a character after he moves in with his brothers and opens his cafe. The times we are let in to his perspective it doesn't really explain what he's thinking and why he's thinking it. He doesn't like talking about his past but we aren't told why in much detail. Just having a chapter or two on him could help him be more developed, being pretty or handsome isn't enough to be an interesting character.
The same could be said for the secondary characters in this manga, some of which are more interesting to learn about than even Haru at times. Whenever a new character is introduced I know that their presence isn't really going to affect the long term of the story, so there's not a point to be invested.
The Art, I gave a 7 and it's one of the things that I didn't hate. It's nice, but when you think of the overall topics covered in the story? It gets a bit creepy, almost like a midsommar vibe when I ignore what else is going on because it looks good.
Overall I found it hard to stay immersed in the story because there's just not much substance.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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