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"Promising" is the word I would use to describe MARRIAGETOXIN.

It's rare for characters to build such a genuine friendship as quickly as this one, but the circumstances and character writing for Gero and Kinosaki make it refreshing and believable. I'd also like to give a shout-out to the power system. It's a soft one, with lots of wiggle room to be used narratively; which is okay because it's not the focus of the story.

The "flavor-of-the-week" prospective marriage partners formula is fun to read. Each of new character has been developed enough to be interesting in their own right. Additionally, hints about our ... duo's respective backstories have been dropped, building the way toward a larger world beyond the current formula.

If you're looking to watch a new bud sprout into a flower, give MARRIAGETOXIN a go. It's got all the right pieces to be something good, and with any luck it'll be something great.

BUNGO, like many other promising manga, starts with a bang and then slowly fizzles out. This review will be spoiler-free.

The first eight volumes worth of chapters were tightly paced, with story beats that matched its real-world style of storytelling. The characters were engaging, and the interactions between the main cast felt rewarding to read. It held my interest in baseball despite not being a fan of the sport. What was most enjoyable though, was the dynamic between the four members of our main cast: Bungo, Noda, Makoto, and Hakamada.

**However** from around ch.85 onward, the story took a gradual but significant downward turn. Needlessly ... drawn out drama about team positions that lead to pacing issues. Additions to the main cast the worsened the bond and interactions between the main four. Bland and two-dimensional side-characters who don't do anything to drum up emotion. While it is easy to see where the author was going, every single one of these things was **executed poorly.** What makes this worse, is that all of these negatives crowd out the positives that made the first part of the manga so enjoyable. Multiple story arcs could have been cut in half and still had the same exact effect on the story. The author meandered for far too long, and lost the reader's interest.

BUNGO is a manga that will leave a sour taste in your mouth because it will always be a "what if." It does not fail quite as spectacularly as something like Food Wars did, but it fails all the same.

**After reading over 300 chapters, I feel like my time investment was wasted, and I cannot recommend BUNGO.**

This is might be the only case where I genuinely believe the movie adaptation is better than the source material.

In my opinion, the additional story provided by the manga only lessens the quality of the story. I will discuss the primary reason below: it contradicts the movie's main theme, growth.

There are extra character moments in the manga which don't serve to enhance the narrative payoff of the ending. I can understand why they are there: to add motive to characters like Ueno and Kawai. However, these moments don't build up the characters in a way that's congruent with the story's ending. These extra chapters spent ... on side characters don't showcase their growth, in fact, it showcases their lack thereof in the face of an event that SHOULD spark change. The movie's choice to omit this aspect and focus solely on the two leads makes a more powerful statement than the jumbled last 10 or so chapters.

Additionally, the manga's ending feels significantly less rewarding than the manga's. The story is about self-knowledge and growth, and the only ones who truly better themselves are Shouya and Shoko. Because the manga tried to involve more characters than it should, the ending is forced to include them in a contrived manner. In the movie, the ending is given to leads, and it displays the end of their journey with a great moment of visual storytelling.

If you've come from the movie and are interested in the manga, I would say it's not worth the time. If you're looking for a first experience of this story, go watch the movie.