Back to hexashadow13's Profile hexashadow13's Profile

tl;dr: An anime about pursuing dreams that’s somewhat messy but still hits some really strong emotional highs.

This anime is themed around fashion and modelling, but that’s really just the backdrop. Before I started this anime I knew essentially nothing about fashion and modelling, and to be honest after watching it I would still say that I know nothing about fashion and modelling. However, despite that, it was still really easy to appreciate the character stories of people trying to pursue their dreams as they’re pretty well written and have a unique feel to them.

Though it may not seem like it at first, the protagonist of ... this tale is Tsumura Ikuto, a high school student that has always loved making clothes and dreams of being a fashion designed. However, because he’s the eldest son in a family with a deceased father, a mother that’s constantly in and out of the hospital, and three younger sisters, he looks towards pursuing a career that’s much more immediate and realistically achievable. What pushes him into actually pursuing his dream is a classmate of his named Fujito Chiyuki. She’s someone that had always dreamed of being a supermodel and walking Paris Fashion Week, and when she was a child she seemed like a prodigy for whom it was inevitable. However, she suddenly stopped growing at 158 cm, which is far below the 175 cm that is essentially a requirement to being a super model. Despite that she remains determined to achieve her dream regardless of how impossible it may seem.

The two of them are constantly faced with rejections and difficult situations as a result of their dream, with a constant pressure to just give it up and pursue something else. They face a number of complications that put them through the ringer and make it feel like the world itself is conspiring against them with crazy coincidences piling up and bringing them down. Though at the same time, there are major lucky breaks that push them forward as well. Such writing could easily fall into the trap of feeling pretty forced or cliché, but here it manages to navigate that pretty well, delivering really strong emotional beats without getting trite.

There are other areas where the writing excels. For example, how it show cases the bonds between Ikuto and his family is incredibly well done with his sister Honoka especially coming across really well. But there are also areas where the writing failed completely. For example, everything involving Kizaki. Though I found more of an issue the areas where it didn’t quite fail but didn’t quite reach it’s full potential. The biggest example of that would be centered around Kokoro. She’s another character who’s doing her best at pursuing her dreams despite there being a lot standing in her way. And honestly, I found her to be an amazing character with a really well told story.

The problem is that she overshadows Chiyuki, which makes Chiyuki’s side of the story feel off. The way things are framed Chiyuki should be the deuteragonist of the story, but the amount of focus she gets feels equivalent to the amount that various other side characters get, or less when compared to Kokoro. The way the anime is structured in switching between the two feels strange because it feels like its emphasizing that she’s important, but doing it in a really rushed manner, which kind of makes it feel like it’s intentionally snubbing her. I’m not particularly a fan of her, but it still felt kind of strange.

Furthermore, she isn’t the only instant of this strange writing. There’s a lot of minor events here and there that one would normally expect to be shown to at least some degree that are skipped completely. For example, the second round of a competition is skipped over entirely and it just cuts directly to the protagonist listening to the rules for the following round. It’s easy enough to figure out everything that matters from context, but it still feels jarring. Another example where things are even more muddled is the end to the anime, where it feels like it jumps around a lot to try to give the anime that feels more like a proper ending. But in doing so it takes a lot of oomph out of the ending to the arc itself and leaves a much weaker final impression overall.

The art and animation are pretty solid. As mentioned, I don’t know anything about fashion, but there were a lot of interesting and nice looking clothes. The regular character designs I think also worked well in making characters stand out and fitting with their role in the story. The soundtrack was fine. There’s a lot of what would be called runway music I guess, but I’m not much of a fan of that it seems so it didn’t do much for me. The OP and ED are pretty solid in terms of audio and visuals.

This is a collection of NGE one shots from a number of mangaka. As one would expect from a collection of one shots, things vary tremendously from one shot to one shot. The only thing that almost all of them have in common is that they’re trying to be comedic, though there’s one that’s even an exception to that. To be honest I felt that there were far too many similar stories that relied on pretty much the exact same humor so the comedy got a bit stale, though I suppose that’s to be expected from the fact that it’s by multiple authors without any ... coordination between them. There were definitely some very unique and great stories, with my favorite being Shinji and Asuka’s Hot Day, but there were also some pretty awful ones. The same applies in terms of art, wherein there were chapters with fantastic art and chapters with terrible art. So all in all a mixed bag with major ups and downs that I suppose is worth going through for the highlights. I will note though that it doesn’t just parody main NGE, but a couple chapters also reference The Shinji Ikari Raising Project so you’ll need to be at least somewhat familiar with it in order for the jokes to land.

This is an officially licensed parody manga. It’s composed of a lot of mini stories, most only a few pages long. As for the comedy, sometimes it lands and sometimes it just doesn’t. Some parts I thought were really witty and felt really true to the characters so in a way they had some depth to them. Other parts didn’t have depth but made fun of pretty interesting aspects so they were pretty funny. And there were also parts that were just crude and vulgar without really anything much more to them. I suppose with any comedy routine, some parts will land and some parts ... won’t, and that’s definitely the case here. Still, all in all I found it amusing enough to be worth reading. Also, the art is pretty bad but that actually fits the rough gag nature of the manga pretty well.

tl;dr: A very unique manga centered around a boy obsessed with having individuality.

From the duo that brought you Medaka Box comes yet another very unique work. This one is centered around individuality and the lack thereof. As such, one of the core aspects of this manga is that it does not have proper nouns. The hero is simple referred to as ‘boy’ and the heroine is simple referred to as ‘girl’. Though there is a bit of a twist as you would expect with NISIOISIN in that the boy is written as 症年 instead of 少年 and the girl is written as 症女 instead of ... 少女, in both cases replacing the 少 which means small, with 症 which means illness.

The plot involves the boy having a disease that involves him being unable to see the individuality in others and that will also result in him dying when he reaches the age of twelve. Rather than lament over his fate he’s actually super happy because being a tragic child dying of a mysterious new disease gives him a tremendous amount of individuality. And if he’s the first to die from the disease he would leave his mark on history as the disease would be named after him. However, his hopes are shattered when a girl turns out to have the disease, and she’s older than him and thus scheduled to die before him. Thus, to ensure that he obtains true individuality, he decided he’s going to kill the girl before the disease gets to her.

With that said, while him killing her is a core part of the plot from the beginning to end, it focuses much more on the character of the boy and the girl and their backgrounds. There’s a relationship arc between the two that makes little sense, but it actually resonates more emotionally due to how little sense it makes. There’s also a character arc in the boy centered around his views on individuality, and with that as its core the manga overall explores individuality quite a bit. Everyone wants to be special but what does that really mean? What does it mean to be unique in a world where everyone is trying to be unique? And who decides any of that? This manga gets pretty heavy handed about it, but ultimately it does convey what I felt was a pretty clear message about how pursuing individuality as a goal in and of itself is foolhardy. And though it does largely does seem to focus on the negatives, it does shine a light on the positives as well though within a pretty narrow context.

Overall, I found it really interesting and though it’s definitely a very strangely told story that jumps around a lot, due to how short and fast paced it is, I felt that worked well. I was also satisfied with the ending for the most part, though with one major exception. In the epilogue it shows and explains things it’s unable to beforehand. Certain parts I think definitely made the ending much more satisfying. But there were also certain parts that I feel were wholly unnecessary and overexplained things that there was no reason to explain at all, with the end result being taking things that were mysterious and cool and just making them kind of stupid and full of inconsistencies.

The art is interesting in that what it’s able to show is ultimately incredibly narrow as it’s from the perspective of the boy who can’t see the individuality in anyone or anything other than the girl, and thus the reader isn’t shown any as well. It’s ultimately just a gimmick but I thought it contributed pretty well to the themes and atmosphere the story was going for. There are also some bizarre dream sequences that have pretty cool art and some cool panels that involve crazy violence or crazy nonsense such as vomiting cloth and buttons. Still, character designs and how well they come across are a key element to me when it comes to how much I like art and this manga simply isn’t able to do much in terms of that at all so I can’t say I particularly enjoyed the art in this manga.

tl;dr: A solid though repetitive and generic rom-com, though one that would be better to consider it’s own thing despite having NGE in the title.

This is a really bizarre alternate take on Neon Genesis Evangelion. The manga itself really isn’t bizarre at all, rather it’s incredibly generic. But that itself makes the manga bizarre because it’s basically Evangelion stuffed into a really basic and standard rom-com mold. The world this spin off is set in, the Impacts, Angels, and what we know of as Evas don’t seem to exist. Rather the world seems to be running just fine. NERV still exists and is working on ... some sort of high-tech research, and SEELE exists and is trying to stop them, though it is not made clear at all what is being researched or why someone would try to stop it. All that really matters about NERV is that it’s everyone’s workplace. As such, plot wise the manga is essentially just about Shinji, Asuka, and Rei going to school while working part time at a lab.

In addition to getting rid of all of the plot elements, this spin off also gets rid of all the angst. Both of Shinji’s parents are alive and love him, with his father in particular being a very doting father. Asuka’s mom still isn’t all that great of a mom seeing as how she’s an airhead that spends almost all her time in her lab working, but in the little time that they do spend together it is clear that they have a pretty positive and healthy relationship. Rei seems to be a normal girl without any cloning or anything like that involved. Misato and Kaji’s dark past seem to not be a thing and both are just happily working as teachers at Shinji’s school. The love polygon stuff around Shinji, as well as the one around Shinji’s dad, both still seem to be there but are played entirely for laughs without any drama. Touji and his sister are completely okay and Kaworu in what little we see of him seems to be a somewhat eccentric but otherwise reasonably normal guy doing fine as well.

As a result of the changes to their environment, Shinji, Asuka, and Rei are very different characters as well in that they’ve been made incredibly shallow and generic. Shinji is still really indecisive, but not in a dark and complex way, but rather in a harem protagonist way. He also very much embodies the lucky lecher trope to the point it becomes one of the core aspects of this manga. Asuka is now Shinji’s childhood friend and violent tsundere who’s clearly in love with him but constantly hitting him, often a result of the lucky lecher aspects. And Rei is now just a really shy girl that falls in love with Shinji but can’t express herself.

The vast majority of the manga is just short unrelated situations as they live their lives with a bunch of a comedy and ecchi thrown around. It’s a really standard rom-com in every way. There’s not much in terms of character or relationship development. There is what seems to be relationship development at times, but it never sticks. That’s pretty normal when it comes to long running rom-com manga, but what makes it especially weird here is that it goes through pretty much the exact same situations multiple times but treats it as if it’s the first time happening each time. As such, this felt more repetitive than most manga that follow the same formula. Still, all in all it is pretty good at what it’s trying to do, so if you take it slow it’s pretty enjoyable.

With that said, I have no clue why this is an NGE spin off. The only things it takes from NGE are names and designs as well as some really broad concepts. It is distant enough that if the author had made a manga with different names and designs but kept everything else exactly the same then I don’t think anyone at all would consider comparing or connecting the two. The manga in and of itself isn’t bad, but it being NGE feels like a blatant crash grab. I also think that it’s resulted in the manga being received more negatively than it should because of people reading it for NGE rather than for it appealing to them on its own merits and then ending up disappointed. I can absolutely understand wanting to see the characters that went through all the pain and suffering in NGE just living happy normal lives and think that’s a really solid idea for a manga, but this does not seem like a good execution of that idea as it’s taking far too little from NGE for it to really resonate.

The art starts somewhat weak but definitely improves and is pretty solid for most of it. Character designs are from NGE, so they’re good as you would expect. The translation is kind of bizarre in that it’s a really loose translation that’s clearly changing things up a lot and even throwing in a bunch of really specific references and expressions that I think only Americans of a certain generation would be familiar with, while at the same time not translating a bunch of Japanese terms for which English equivalents clearly exist. Overall, I can’t say I was much of a fan of how it was handled.

tl;dr: A harem wish fulfillment type anime with no depth that’s very open about what it wants to do and manages to do it pretty well.

This anime isn’t an isekai, but it follows a lot of the standard isekai tropes. It features the protagonist, Noir, gaining a number of skills that make him overpowered and then a bunch of girls fall in love with him. What I think makes this a bit unique is that it felt like it was much more open and blatant in being a wish fulfillment fantasy compared to most similar anime, for better or worse. The primary example of this ... is that his OP abilities are literally powered by wish fulfillment, in that in order to use them he needs to spend LP points which are gained by fulfilling worldly desires. I believe this essentially means committed any of the seven sins, though with Noir that means a bit of gluttony, a bit of greed, and a lot of lust. To be clear the anime isn’t all that ecchi so things don’t really go all that far, but there’s a lot of hugging, cuddling, and kissing.

The anime doesn’t really have much of a plot at all. It’s just a bunch of small single episode stories showing the protagonist getting into various situations and resolving them in a pretty amusing manner. There’s no depth to any of this and very little carries over from episode to episode beyond the characters. There’s no character arcs though and characters are all really flat. There aren’t really relationship arcs either. There are a bunch of girls that very quickly fall in love with Noir, but that’s about it. Noirs abilities are somewhat interesting in that they involve using spending LP to gain or modify any skill, on him or others including both allies and opponents. This is very rarely used all that well though unfortunately. Still, despite all the issues, the anime moves fast enough and for the most part is a very clear on what it wants to do and sticks to doing just that, so it’s a pretty fun ride if you know what you’re getting and just turn your brain off and go with it.

With that said, I found the writing to be surprisingly lazy even considering what type of anime it is. Sure, I get it. The protagonist’s abilities are so overpowered that it would be impossible to have any semblance of a plot at all if he used them properly, so I’m fine with the gaping plot holes and steady stream of inconsistencies that arise from working around that. But even beyond that there was so much wrong that really felt there was no need to be. Like I can accept that the amount of LP points gained from specific acts and spent on specific abilities making no sense and being completely inconsistent because it actually factors into the story. But it makes no sense to me at all why the level scaling is inconsistent and nonsensical as literally all that needed to be done to fix it would be to change some numbers. There are also very easily solvable plain old mistakes, such as a part where Noir is shown to be losing a bunch of abilities, but despite having lost one he still seems to have it in the next scene. All that would be necessary to fix that would be to not show that as one of the abilities he’s lost, or to show him getting it back. There’s also issues like how there’s a flashback to 200 years prior and the world doesn’t seem to have changed at all from then, or how despite Noir claiming he wants to remain incognito he bizarrely explains his unique abilities to everyone he meets for no real reason and with no plot effects afterwards. It felt really amateurish, which I suppose makes sense considering it was originally a syosetsu web novel, but these issues usually get cleaned up by the light novel version, let alone make it into the anime adaptation. Now considering what type of story this is, in the grand scheme of things none of these probably matter at all, but still…

The art and animation are mediocre. They can look good at times, but are generally pretty weak. I did like the character designs for the heroines, though the protagonist is boring even by generic isekai protagonist standards. The soundtrack I suppose is decent enough at getting the job done but doesn’t stand out at all. The OP and ED are both solid enough in terms of the songs and visuals. There’s an accompanying series of mini-episodes with chibi’s, but it was on the weaker side of the things when it comes to those.

*Note: This is a review for all five seasons.*

tl;dr: A shounen sports style anime about cooking with a great cast and a really fun gimmick, that overstays it’s welcome somewhat.

This anime, as you may have been able to surmise from the title, is centered around battles fought through cooking, known as shokugeki. The plot revolves around the protagonist, Souma, going to attend Japan’s most prestigious cooking high school, Tootsuki Culinary Academy. This is an incredibly strict academy that one can easily fail out of at the drop of a hat. However, Souma is the type of guy that despite the danger looks straight ahead at ... not only graduating from Tootsuki, but in becoming the top cook at Tootsuki. And that involves winning lots of shokugeki.

The anime is heavily focused on comedy, much more so than most shounen. But beyond that, it still does a good job at fleshing out most of it’s main cast. Souma especially I was really fond of. His primary traits is that he’s someone that continues rushing forward giving things his all regardless of the chances of success, completely undeterred by how often he fails. Always giving their all is a pretty standard trait when it comes to shounen protagonists, but the heavy focus on Souma being someone that can overcome failure I thought was pretty unique for a protagonist.

Though it’s not that rare for side character’s it’s pretty rare for protagonists in shounen manga because I suppose they don’t want to show the protagonist losing that often. However, the writing here definitely wasn’t afraid to let Souma fail, with him losing just as often as he wins, including in major events. This is the core of his character from beginning to end so he doesn’t really have much of a character arc, but just watching him pulling off crazy victories alongside taking losses easily in stride makes him a really likable character. Plus, with there being a much larger chance of failure, the result of conflicts are much more unpredictable than the standard shounen manga which makes the plot more interesting on the whole as well.

The main heroine is Erina, is a girl that possesses the worlds greatest palate. And as the daughter of the school’s headmaster, she’s grown up pretty spoiled. For the first three seasons her character is half being bitchy to Souma, though he just amusingly shrugs it all off, and half trying to be more open hearted but failing, which is also amusing. She isn’t that likable of a character, but not hateable at all either. The fourth season focuses much more on her and gives her a proper character arc centered around her getting over herself and forming proper connections with other people. It has pretty solidly written character growth, and she comes out a pretty likable character. The fifth season tries to add another phase to her character arc, but that doesn’t really work, as is the case with most of the fifth season, but more on that later.

The last main character would be Megumi, a girl that’s on the verge of failing out of Tootsuki when the anime starts, mainly due to how she gets nervous and panics really easily. However, over the course of the anime she slowly but steadily grows tremendously both as a cook and a person. She’s still prone to stage fright, but she learns how to push through it. This makes her the most satisfying character to see succeed because she’s always the most shocked and gladdened by it. She very much wears her heart on her sleeve. On top of that, she’s somewhat of a counter balance to everyone else in the series in that while everyone else usually super hyped up and extreme, she has more of a tranquil presence, which makes her stand out quite a bit and makes her a really likable character.

There’s also a lot of interesting side characters as you would expect from an anime like this. Pretty much everyone people in the main cast compete against have a reoccurring presence. And everyone they compete against also gets somewhat of a reoccurring presence. Most aren’t fleshed out that much, but they’re fleshed out enough that holistically the entire web of connections and all the smaller dynamics between characters result in a there being a lot going on in the extended cast, which the anime makes very good use of to add variety and keep things interesting.

While this is a cooking anime and it does get very technical about the food, I wouldn’t say that it’s the type of anime that made me want to learn more about cooking, though it certainly did make me hungry at times. The general presentation is full of a lot of flash and pizazz. It makes the food look great visually and has such exaggerated reactions from the people eating, the infamous foodgasms, that its conveyed very clearly how good the food is. The actual cooking process for the most part felt like it was glossed over most of the time and not in focus. Still, it’s hard to explain in writing how awesome it makes the food seem. There are really elaborate visual metaphors that have a lot of effort put into them, way more than you’re probably expecting. I have no clue what they’re even getting at half the time, but just the flashiness of them make it very clear that whatever it is, it’s really cool. Also, they’re hilarious. And that alone is enough to hold up the anime a good deal.

The problem with that is that it starts getting repetitive eventually. The anime tries to vary things as much as possible around the actual cooking to spice things up. However, in the end it always comes back to cooking battles, and thus even with the attempts at keeping that interesting for as long as possible, it eventually did feel like it was getting somewhat dull. The first three season’s I think were great, wherein they played well into the series strengths in terms of characters and comedy while also keeping the cooking battles interesting. The fourth season continued doing really well by it’s characters, but during the second half it felt like it was becoming clear that shokugeki’s were just losing their charm. Honestly, the fourth season has such a great ending I feel like that would have been a great place for the anime to have stopped at, because it definitely has a lot of epic finale energy.

The fifth season has a pretty decent start in the first two episodes. However, after that it completely jumps the shark. The concept of cooking fights has always been somewhat ridiculous and the anime intentionally played around with that a good deal to great effect. However, the fifth season takes things to a completely new level of absurdity that just doesn’t work very well. The best way I can describe it is that the first four seasons are a pretty standard sports manga, but the fifth season turns into Yu-Gi-Oh. I can understand the need to do that because if it wanted to continue it needed to radically change things up because things were getting boring, but this attempt didn’t work. Furthermore, the pacing this season was also pretty bad wherein the overarching story felt like it was tremendously rushed and a lot of events were skipped or glossed over, while a lot of individual events moved really slowly. As such, while there were pretty good character moments somewhere deep in there, they didn’t land well at all in context. Thus the final impression to the anime overall is somewhat weak. Still, even if the last season felt pretty unnecessary, I was pretty satisfied with the overall series.

The art and animation of the anime start out really strong. However, they definitely decline over time. I feel the point where the drop was most evident was in the second half of the fourth season, though the fifth season falls even further, which is yet another reason they probably shouldn’t have bothered with it. The visuals are a core part of the experience, especially in regards to the metaphors and foodgasms, so the decline resulted in the anime overall just not having as much punch to it. Still, the static art to the food itself remained high quality throughout so I suppose that’s a plus. Character designs are pretty varied and work well in context, though none stood out especially. I did like the slight changes to character designs in season five. The OP/EDs were a mixed bag, but overall I would have to say they were pretty great in terms of songs and visuals. I really liked how they pretty much all went through small changes as the series progressed. I was also pretty surprised by how many iconic feeling tracks there were in the soundtrack. “The Texture of Decisive Battle” is the obvious one, but also “Study Both Sweet and Sour!” and “Shokugeki Start!”. Not to mention all their variants.

tl;dr: A mess of a manga that has a shock and awe of blood and gore but nothing else.

Smokin’ Parade is a manga about a group of fighters known as the Jackalopes who have been installed with mechanical combat implants in order to fight monsters known as Spiders, which seem to randomly emerge as a result of a reaction between some people and organ transplants from a certain megacorp. As far as the good points of this manga go, it has quite a lot of blood, guts, gore, and body horror and it’s drawn pretty horrifically. If that’s all you want from this manga this’ll ... be a really solid read. If you want anything more at all from this manga, then you’ll be left wanting.

The most obvious issue is that there’s no sense of direction to things whatsoever. The overarching plot is complete nonsense and the world building makes no sense. The smaller level stories are character focused, but characters are also terrible written with character arcs and development that is incredibly abrupt and really forced. The protagonist, Youkou, especially makes very little sense and the attempt at trying to show character growth in him was laughable. The main cast have pretty bizarre and extreme personalities, so that makes them somewhat interesting for a bit, but as a group they have no chemistry and the interactions and bonds between them aren’t all that strong. On top of that they’re just not all that likable. Thus, it’s really hard to get invested in their struggles and the attempts at trying to hit emotional beats pretty much always fall flat. Thus, the story just overall isn’t very good.

Just as big of an issue is that this manga just doesn’t seem that cool. The mangakas’ earlier work, Deadman Wonderland, also had a lot of issues regarding plot and characters, but it was really strong in sticking to it’s edgy rule of cool, and that was enough to hold it up. This manga just doesn’t manage to do that. The themes it touches on, such as human desires or family, are so weak that it’s not even fair to call them superficial, they’re barely even window dressing. The use of motifs and allegories is pretty weak. There’s a bit of psychological horror here and there but it really doesn’t feel like the manga is trying that hard at it, giving much more of an emphasis to an endless stream of violence that loses its impact pretty quickly. The general sense of style is a mish mash of cyberpunk, steampunk, and biopunk that feels haphazard. The action just isn’t as awesome, with no real progression to abilities, powers that aren’t eye catching, and just in general lackluster fights that are never really all that exciting.

The art I feel is actually worse than Deadman Wonderland, or at the minimum the design work is definitely worse. Deadman Wonderland was also full of extreme violence but could look genuinely beautiful at times. Smokin’ Parade never does, and as a result the art just feels dull.

tl;dr: A manga carried by having a really interesting core concept, but that overall feels like a waste of potential.

This manga is an adaptation of a novel that was also adapted into a Hollywood film, though the film is quite a bit different from the novel and manga. The central premise is that humanity is in a war against a mysterious alien force dubbed Mimics, and in the midst of that a soldier named Keiji learns that he loops back 30 or so hours upon death. It’s a very interesting concept and the first volume uses it really well. It fleshes out Keiji’s panic and ... confusion at his circumstances, and then shows him ultimately accepting his situation and then exploiting it to grow from an amateur into an incredible soldier, both in terms of skill and mentality. It’s well written and pretty satisfying.

The second half doesn’t fare so well, largely in part because it feels so rushed. A core part of the second half is Rita, another soldier whom Keiji grows very close to romantically. However, neither Rita’s character nor her relationship with Keiji is developed all that well, and thus the emotional beats centered around her fall pretty flat. This is especially disappointing because the premise with one person remembering everything and the other person nothing could have resulted in a really interesting relationship arc. It’s similarly disappointing that none of the rest of the cast got much focus either. There aren’t a lot of supporting characters and the few that there are aren’t developed all that well. Still, in what little we see of them it felt like there was a lot of potential to showing how they react to Keiji as he grows and changes which was left unutilized. It should also be noted that the plot gets a bit complicated towards the end. Not extremely complicated to be clear, but enough so that the rushed writing results in things being more confusing than they needed to be. This combined with the aforementioned issues with Rita results in the ending overall being pretty unsatisfying.

The art is pretty great, with good designs, consistently high-quality art, and a style that fits well.

tl;dr: A manga with an overtly simple premise that doesn’t evolve at all and gets boring pretty quickly.

This manga is about Takano who is going out with a girl named Sekime, but Sekime gets embarrassed incredibly easily when Takono is involved, so despite going out it’s hard for them to do couple like things. As such, them just normally interacting can be pretty funny. But the problem with the manga is that this is pretty much all there is, short chapters involving just normal interactions playing out in an amusing manner. It’s fluffy so it is pretty enjoyable at first, but its incredibly repetitive. Takano ... and Sekime don’t seem to have anything to their character at all beyond the initial premise which is incredibly simplistic. And without anything more they grow dull very quickly.

It’s not like there isn’t anything to them beyond the fluff at all, but it’s very half hearted and doesn’t really feel like it contributes enough to have an impact. There’s relationship development I suppose in terms of how their relationship is seen by other characters, such as at first keeping it hidden but eventually being open about it. However, this doesn’t really feel like it comes about as a result of any relationship development within the couple themselves, its just kind of thrown out there. Similarly, while there are moments where Sekime feels like she’s growing more accustomed to Takano, these are kind of randomly placed and it doesn’t really feel like there’s any sort of progression. Thus overall, it doesn’t really feel like there’s any sort of relationship arc or character arcs in this manga, and thus it’s hard to get invested in the characters or find them all that likable.

There’s also not really much in terms of overarching plot threads. The vast majority of chapters are stand alone. There are some multi-chapter arcs towards the end that are going for long term jokes that focus on side characters and try to move away from being solely focused on Takano and Sekime. However, these weren’t all that well written and didn’t land all that well, and thus don’t really help much. The side characters in general felt pretty lacking in that they were even more flat than Takano and Sekime and didn’t really contribute much to adding any variety to the comedy. So in the end it comes down to just Takano and Sekime and they’re just not enough to hold up the manga.

The art was pretty mediocre. The color art is fine, but with the style and character designs used the black and white looks too basic and not at all interesting. Furthermore, a lot of panels felt pretty rough and overall the art felt somewhat rushed and not very high quality.