14-sai no Koi
Love at Fourteen

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"Two dorks in love" – is, imo, how you could sum up the main love story between Yoshikawa and Tanaka. It is simple, honest, pure and overall really heart warming. Sure, the story is mainly as easy as that, but this manga doesn't aspire to be a complicated romantic drama, so no point in judging it as such.

A "deeper" topic in the story would be the struggle with social "masks" that are so important within the japanese society, namely keeping up the tiring act, being praised for one's fabricated character while musing, whether you could ever show your "true self" to anyone, all happening on ... the background of first love.

What I found more intriguing, however, was whatever it was going on between Nagai and Hinohara. Forbidden relationships are forbidden for a reason and this just didn't feel right on more than just one level. Even so, I ship it, I want it, it is my new otp and I can't wait to read the spin-off manga that follows their story.

14-sai no koi was initially a very cute romance story involving two adolescent teens who genuinely love each other. At first it was very nice to see the two main characters just interact and try to hide their relationship (which they do not need to btw) however as the manga continues, it will start to concern many readers.

Let’s start off with the positives, the characters especially the main cast are great, and the best character is the first LGBTQ person we meet which started off as an obsessive lonely type then evolves as they must conflict with their own feelings and the feelings of the ... one, they love. All around they’re the best written character in the manga and reading their story was very entertaining, and keeps readers invested as their story is second only to the main couple's.

Now let's move on with my qualms about the manga, there are a few other side stories/relationships in this manga, and they involve age gaps that made me personally feel uncomfortable. Many of the relationships involve fourteen-year-olds and adults in their mid twenties that the manga tries to play off as cute but to many will just come off as creepy instead. If it were only a one side love of a 14-year-old having an unreciprocated crush on an adult that would be fine but some of the adults in this manga have romantic feelings for the teens and depending on your sense of morality many will be split on how they feel. Now if we ignore the underlying problems here the side stories present are quite good and can keep a reader invested in how certain character's relationships would turn out, your enjoyability in these stories will be based on your sense of morality and how you can separate fiction from reality. By the way many of these relationships are developed in these chapters all named "intermission" which are chapters that connect to the main story but don’t necessarily progress the main relationship all that much.

All in all, the main relationship will be enjoyable to most readers and the side characters are certainly enjoyable to see come to life on paper however how you view fiction and where you draw the line concerning age gaps in fiction will dictate whether you will enjoy the side relationships. Many readers are going to probably want to skip or skim through the intermission chapters where these types of relationships mostly progress.

I don't want to be rude or anything, but this is my first time being so disgusted by a manga.
The story tries to introduce us to the relationships and feelings of 14-year-old teenagers, where there is the discovery of new feelings and self-revelations.
The manga fails in everything it sets out to do, there is no story, there are characters with feelings and such, but there is no real development, either in the characters or in the narrative. The chapters are EXTREMELY short, the author couldn't even make a story interesting enough to fill a chapter, and had to make several very short “extra” chapters. This ... entire manga is so poor that it doesn't even support its main problem, which would be Kanata and Kazuki's secret relationship, but the manga doesn't even make a point of explaining why they hide it, like, are there any restrictions? Because it doesn't make any sense. It's exhausting to read this, but the length of the chapters or the lack of story wasn't what bothered me most, but rather the pedophilia present. It's not new that many manga have a huge age difference, and that has always bothered me a lot, but now seeing a manga dealing with the relationship between an adult woman and a 14-year-old boy in a normal way makes me sick. I don't want to accuse anyone, but this manga made me think that its author probably has some kind of pedophilia fetish, because it's not just one couple that this age difference occurs, in addition to the physiological difference, it happens in at least three couples from the manga. There are more extremely hideous couples with crazy age differences than there are normal couples. I understand that when we are young, at the beginning of puberty, we tend to be interested in older people, but everything changes when much older people become interested in teenagers who haven't even left elementary school. My reaction to this manga is disgust. There's no story, there's no development, there's no explanations, but there's a lot of pedophilia.

~Nine <3