Back to bbxyz8's Profile bbxyz8's Profile

Warning: this review is long, and I aim to be thorough without spoiling anything that would prevent a prospective reader from truly experiencing this story. If I could sum up this entire review into one sentence, it’d be *stop reading this manga after ~chapter 70*.

Just to preface, I’ve read up to chapter 111 of this manga. Would I recommend it? Yes and no. Tsuki no Oki ni Mesu Mama, in my opinion, is truly worth reading up until a certain point. After you get to said point, you’re honestly just going to be met with nothing but frustration, disappointment, and boredom. As invested as I ... was, I’m unlikely to pick this one up again.

The first half of this manga was fantastic. It was hilarious, touching, well-paced, and fun to read. The characters were likeable, the relationships between all characters felt organic, and there was no shortage of comedy and wholesome romance. But then you get around 70 chapters deep and, well, what happens from here on out ruins this world the author spent so, so many chapters carefully and beautifully constructing.

In the latter part of this manga, a random ass character gets tossed in to play a massive role in driving the plot and adding melodrama. All of the sudden, the plot derails, leaving you extremely frustrated by, and in a lot of cases frustrated for, the characters. Drama isn’t uncommon to driving a plot. However, when it’s introduced poorly and continues to be executed poorly, you can’t help but ask why it happened in the first place.

*Mild spoiler* — if you couldn’t foresee this from what’s been stated earlier, the new character is meant to serve as this “rival” to the male lead and the main couple’s already-established relationship in the later chapters. We don’t really get to see the main couple’s growth or genuine, sweet moments that we expected to see from the beginning — all because of this new character. Instead, we get compromises and mediocrity. Chapters ~70-95 give you this recurring theme of the male lead fighting for their relationship, and the female lead having borderline manic episodes whilst enabling some random ass guy to overstep his boundaries. The author could’ve used this new “second-lead man” as an opportunity to show the main couple’s trust and loyalty to each other, particularly on the female lead’s end. Instead, we’re given a half-baked soap opera that leaves you agonizing over and fearing for main couple’s relationship. A lot of the events that take place at this point left me immensely hurt for the male lead and extremely disappointed in the female lead, which is devastating, because so many fun, lighthearted chapters were spent growing to love both of them. Now, the characters and story itself feel unrecognizable.

This manga starts off as a feel-good read, but it’s no longer a feel-good read when the only times you’re content with the later chapters are when you’re settling for mediocrity. I honestly recommend you stop reading around chapters 65-70 and pretend the events surrounding this time are the true conclusion to this story. The way things were written, it seems that the true conclusion of this manga was supposed to be around chapter 70 anyway. If you read past this point, it genuinely feels like you’re reading a different story with an entirely different plot and genre — you’d be in for a lot of frustration and embarrassment you even invested that much into this manga to begin with.