Kyousei Harem Keiyaku
The Obligatory Harem Contract

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*This Review may contain Spoilers*

This was a classic case of good idea, terrible execution. It is a pseudo harem with 5 girls and the main character as the guy, but it doesn't get much into romance or ecchi.

Story (4/10): The story was spastic. It starts off with a fun harem promise of 1 guy trying to date 5 girls to stop their deaths and the death of his sister, and a interesting story gimmick of precognitive dreams. The MC is motivated and skilled, and rapidly gains the attention of the first girl, and they hint romantic interest. Similar case with the second and third one.

Then ... they rapidly drop 90% of the romantic part of the harem. Then the story proceeds to off the deep end, with murderous mascots with freddy powers to kill in dreams, mysterious dream doctors, robot suits, and magic dream powers. In the end, it is a happy ending, but a rushed ending, and feels like tying up loose ends by soaking them in superglue and bundling them together.

It loses all coherence and just goes for action, and characters and plot are just thrown aside. The third girl's plot arc is thrown aside for contrived intrigue, and has little romantic harem interest, and the 4th and fifth girl barely get a plot arc, and their characters are left undeveloped and shallow. The villains feel like they don't know what the f*** they want to do, either. Overall, after the second girl, the plot kicks in, and the story collapses.



Art (4/10): I mean, it was OK most of the time, but occasionally head sizes, body proportions, and facial quality were so inconsistent that sometimes I felt like the main character had a gag face during the normal parts of the story. This was especially true towards the end.



Character (4/10): Don't judge the initial characters as the standard, this manga is exemplary at the art of going downhill. The MC started off strong. He had a strong sense of justice, an interesting power to see the future, and didn't lack any confidence. The first girl was a rich girl, but spirited and fun (and decidedly not a tsundere, unlike the norm for rich girls), with a fun bad cooking gimmick to add more character to her, and she likes to help the MC. The second girl was fun, with a interesting transformation from a simple looking but hard to read girl to an energetic idol, and she could gather animals to her like a disney princess.

Now remember all those things I just told you? Get rid of half of them. The main character loses confidence, becomes less passionate, and his dream powers become less useful. The first girl rarely ever uses her money for anything from the end of her arc onward. She never cooks ever since the first time. She loses her energy and becomes a background character for the MC. The second girl only uses her disney gimmick like twice, and she never transforms into the idol version after her arc.

On top of that, all characters introduced after the second arc are shallow and undeveloped. You have a cut and paste yakuza daughter who can call for backup, and little to no personality, and she rarely uses her backup. You have a feisty mech using girl, whose powers are largely unexplained, and feisty is about all the personality she has to her name. And the fifth girl... WAIT THERE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE 5 GIRLS! WE'RE MISSING ONE! Yeah, the fifth girl never shows up in the story at all, which was very mysterious to me.

As for the other characters, we have the sister, who is pretty boring until she gets a twist... whereupon she's boring and unlikeable. Then we have a mysterious doctor, who can access dreams... and they reveal... she's a doctor who can intervene in dreams! Yeah, that's pretty much the plot twist. And then you have a girl who gives the MC things that intervene in dreams... and it's revealed... she made things to intervene in dreams! Yep. Advanced plot twists.

As for enjoyment... 4/10. It would be 5/10 for most of the story, but it would be 2/10 for the end. I'll compromise.

Overall, I bet you can't guess... I give it... 4/10, because that seemed to be the number of the day. Can't recommend, because it feels like watching dreams get crushed, almost the same feeling... as if your childhood idols died in a car crash.

I'll cut to the chase, don't read this unless you just want to waste some time.

Story 3/10:

Interesting premise, great start but poor execution and the story was extremely rushed and unplanned. To avoid spoilers I'll point out one main problem I found annoying about the story, the plot twist - the idea was good and could have done better but the execution was too rushed and instead of readers being amazed the twists in the story were well generic if I'm being kind but dumpster fire if I'm being honest. There were no hints and the twist makes certain characters just have a complete 180, ... everything was explained through some- well story based shenanigans which if I'm being honest got more crazy as holes were being filled. I am a fan of plot twist but it will only be a great plot twist if it was executed in a planned manner, else like what happened in this story we are put in a roller coaster of every chapter after the twist being just an endless dump of random acts and events just to make the initial twist work. What I'm getting at here is that at one point in the later parts of the story things pick up, a twist occurs and from there on we see nothing but endless mindfuck to the point that you just don't care about the story anymore.

Art 5/10:

This is more simple, the art was great but there were many backgrounds and even panels that were, lazily if not drawn in a rush. The story was not the only thing being rushed it seems as the quality of art was slowly decreasing the closer you get to the ending. White spaces become more prevalent but are made "part" of the scene through simply "plot" reasons. This is not adding to the issues of details that create depth being lost the closer you are to the last chapters. Overall good start but rushed at the end.

Character 3/10:

If not for the fact that early on in the series characters had depth this would have been a big fat 1 or zero if possible. The issue is not about being cardboard cutouts of other manga even. The main issue is that characters had decent depth and personality but plot twist occur and every fleshed out character just losses all the development and is instead twisted to being unrecognizable. Imagine it like this, what if in Naruto, Madara was not fooled by Zetsu to become a vessel for Kaguya's revival, instead Madara was literally Kaguya all along and all she was aiming for was to turn her reincarnated male body into a female one before doing her big plan. Yeah lots of plot holes but that's what happens to the characters in this story, EVEN THE MC mind you.

Enjoyment 4/10:

Still enjoyed it a bit, up to the chapter 25 or something it was still tolerable and interesting but after that all hell broke loose as mind fuck after mindfuck happens. Not because the story is complex but because it was almost being retconned every other chapter that it almost didn't seem like the same story it was up to chapter 25.

Overall 4/10:

Not the best, not average but still a pretty decent manga. It has some good points but overall its more like a testbed or rookie manga than anything.