Renai Kaidan Sayoko-san

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A supernatural romantic comedy, Renai Kaidan Sayoko-san will leave you laughing one moment, laughing another moment, and laughing even more. The greatest strength of this manga is its well-written comedic moments. The story does not feel forced and flows well, although as a slice of life manga, there are not too many notable developments. This is not an issue, as the development focuses primarily on the characters and not the story or world.

Starting first with the characters, we have your generic but believable protagonist, Inaba Den. One thing I like about seinen romances is that no character is perfect, and acts in ways that are ... similar to a friend you may know in real life. Inaba definitely has many traits which I see in my friends all the time: reusing plastic bottles to put your own tea in? Check. Being incredible dense to his own romance, but relatively sharp regarding others? Check. Not believing in the occult but being too nice to say otherwise to someone who does? Check. Meanwhile, we are introduced to Sayoko in a slightly negative light - she's a strange character. And while she retains her quirkiness throughout the manga, we see - once again - many of these real human traits within her. As we continue reading, it is difficult to not relate to Sayoko's troubles in pursuing Inaba, and we feel a strong desire to support her efforts. For sure, stalking your crush is definitely on the creepy side, but I think many of us have also happened to "coincidentally" run into their crush before. Or perhaps you've also felt flustered and avoided your crush after confessing to them. Although it may be difficult to relate to these characters on a personal level, there are many personality traits and events which make you think, "Haha! I had that happen to me before, I know how exactly that feels." Unfortunately, with these types of characters, that also means that few of them particularly stand out. Although I do like the characters in this manga, if you asked me to pick a favorite, I would not be able to choose any of them.

Moving onto the artwork, as another user has mentioned, Renai Kaidan Sayoko-san has a more shoujo-y feel to its art. It is not dark and sketch-y like many other seinen manga, but I do not feel that is particularly an issue. One thing I particularly like about the artwork is how the author uses different sections of a pattern for different sections of Sayoko's kimonos - instead of using one large pattern for the entire kimono (looking at you Boku Girl). The characters are all distinguishable from each other, although some of the female characters share similar faces. Even the less-frequently-seen side characters are easy to identify. The only exception to this are the many spirits which accompany Sayoko: although they vary greatly in their designs, many of them appear only once or twice and are quickly overshadowed by the main spirit-cast. Aside from this, my main complaint with the artwork is that frequently, the author draws the human characters' hands as being far too thin and/or elongated. Sometimes the anatomy exaggeration is played for comedic effect, but it can be quite distracting in more serious scenes.

Overall, a summary:

+ Great comedic moments.
+ Realistic and varying cast of characters.
+ Easy to get into, little investment needed.
- Mediocre story, slow paced.
- Does not leave much of an impact.

tl;dr: A manga that starts off really interesting, but doesn’t do well in going beyond the initial premise. 

This manga has a core story that is pretty cute with Sayoko pursuing Inaba being the main focus. Overall the relationship development was pretty solid and I thought it ended in a pretty satisfying manner. However, I think it was most interesting at the beginning and as it went on it started getting duller up until a bit of a spike at the end. It starts off being focused around Sayako’s strangeness and bizarre antics in going after Inaba, which was really amusing at first. But this remains the central aspect of the comedy ... from beginning to end, and to that end it started getting pretty repetitive. It seems to add more serious story later on to add more variety, but I feel these stories weren’t all that great, even if they ultimately did end up arriving at a good conclusion. The main reason for that is that they seem heavily character focused, and though Sayako is pretty interesting, most everyone else felt like pretty weak characters. Inaba had some character but not as much as was needed for one of the two main characters. The side characters felt like they had little to no character whatsoever, completely lacking personality and purpose. This combined with the slow pacing made it feel a lot like everything was simply dragging on at times. The art style too was really interesting at first, being an interesting combination of an art style that looked a bit shoujo like and a horror like art style. As it went on though, once the novelty wore off it didn’t seem all that great, and certain aspects of it like the repeating long faces just looked kind of dumb. 

So going in to this manga my initial thoughts was not that high. Mysteries girl plop up from no where and meets a boy. Sound like your standard type of romance manga. It wasn't clear for me until later that this supernatural setup and the girl Sayoko is a great mix.

The story is more or less told through varies of small encounters between Sayoko and Inaba in there daily life where Sayoko tries to get closer to Inaba through different methods. It may not sound too exciting at first, but once you get to know Sayoko better and better you will be surprised how ... funny and unexpected the characters are in this manga.

The art is as always very subjective and is really hard to say how good or bad it is. But since it is my review I will try at least to tell you my thoughts on it. I like it. I like it since the mangaka have gone to the lengths of at least trying to have side characters to have there own look to stand out. The two main characters Sayoko and Inaba are kinda standard design thou, but even here the change of clothes and Sayoko hairstyle is changed from time to time and the backdrop is detailed, so the art is good yet simple when it must.

What this manga excels in is the character department at least when it comes to Sayoko. Sayoko is the mysteries and oddball type of character that you acquaints with from time to time in other storys. The twist is that we actually get to know Sayoko more or less from the start here and she is a refreshing character indeed. She is not that sweet and innocent girl like you might think. Even though she have those characteristics as well she is a bit of a stalker, pervert and jealous type of person and whats even more refreshing here is that she is all this without being your typical yandere girl. Then you have Inaba, kinda your standard type. Unlucky in life with job and girls, but is an honest and nice person. Really, Inaba is not that interesting type of a character but the mix between him and Sayoko is nice and it works quite well. Then you have your side characters which all do there job. You have a goofy type of guy who falls in love with Sayoko at first sight. Your greedy fortuneteller that do almost anything for money. Then you have the spirits that possesses Sayoko, they all try to help here to get closer to Inaba but are a bit worried over here methods to do so and they also act as her guardians and try to protect here from going to far in here quest.

Overall I would say this is a sweet and funny manga worth reading. It is not over the top type of manga neither is it bad. It works if you want something funny to read and are quite tired of your typical romcom.