Kimi no iru machi is a manga that will pass to history not because of its beauty, but cause of the original yet weird ideas from its mangaka. First one third of the manga was really enjoyable, quite a nice story between the two main characters developing a relationship while struggling with some typical high school problems and family issues. Romance on this part of the manga was really good, quite a cute story. After that is when the story took a very twisted turn. Perhaps as an attempt to make it more dramatic and interesting, the mangaka came up with a very interesting and original new love triangle. This might be the very first manga where the main character, Haruto a guy, gets stolen by his love rival; yeah, you heard me right, he, not his girlfriend, gets stolen by the other guy. I guess love lost against friendship on this part of the manga. If you have ever heard the phrase "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer," well, this manga took that phrase to a new level. Later on, after those events, the manga became a slice of life centered on what Haruto wanted to do in the future. I do enjoy slice of life mangas, but the problem with KNIM was that it was only in the perspective of Haruto, who was never such an interesting character to follow, and not to mention that the romance part was barely present and lost its quality. Haruto struggles for about half of the manga about what to do for a living, even did weird things that went completely against his character, like breaking up with his girlfriend for a random job he got, only to end up becoming, what was really clear since the very beginning of the manga, a chef.
Art was really good, perhaps the only talent and strength of its mangaka, but even the art also lost a bit of quality towards the end. Towards the end, the heads of the characters had a weird shape at the top, they look a bit like the Coneheads but with hair.
Charaters of KMIN, what can I said about them, they lack development. They fail to show any maturity at the end of the manga. I would even venture to say they were more mature at the beginning than at the end. Sure the mangaka came up with the really great idea to just make other characters say "yeah, you have grown" as prove of their development, but their actions still showed otherwise. Something very funny is how most people did not like the main characters at the end of the manga. The choices taken by the main characters were never that popular nor understood by the readers.
Anyway, If somebody decides to venture and read Kimi no Iru Machi, I would suggest read just the first one third of the manga, when they become an official couple, and then drop it and just read the final chapter. And if you do that just ignore the helmet at the end.