Jul 30, 2020
Ai wo Chodai is about a young variety show personality named Marumie and her various adventures in romance. The characters and story are to be perfectly honest, pretty paper thin. As typical for many a reverse harem, Marumie is kind of an idiot (though you're supposed to find it endearing, relatable, and funny), and inexplicably obsessed with her cannon love interest Kandagawa despite how they never really have any really meaningful interactions. They don't really have any conversations beyond his insulting her and telling her he hates her, and yet somehow they just end up having steamy makeout sessions anyways. Meanwhile, she's got
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so many other guys interested in her that I can't help but think why this one? Their interactions are so superficial that there really isn't any reason I see for choosing Kandagawa over any of the other hot guys with whom she also seems to have very superficial interactions, but at least they don't insult her and tell her they hate her? And hey, her childhood friend is actually nice to her, takes care of her, and does all her housework for her. Not that they ever seem to interact as actual friends with him rather than him one-sidedly fawning over her. It's a relationship dynamic I'd probably hate for Marumie treating her friend like trash, except again the writing is so thin that her friend doesn't feel much like a real person I can empathize with. I guess you're supposed to root for Kanagawa because he's just trying so hard to be a tsundere, but because it all feels so thin, it just doesn't work for me, when normally I really like the tsundere / bickering couple trope. I need some other reason to root for the relationship other than the one time they made out was just so hot.
I also should warn that this manga contains casual homophobia to a level that I'm going to guess it's from a period when that kind of thing was normal. The part I'm referring to is over relatively quickly, but it was also a pretty big turn off, and really hurts the manga's appeal for modern audiences. Not that I thought this was all that good a manga to begin with.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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