The story follows Kaoru, a borderline social outcast who becomes the target of a grim reaper, who demands he either get a girlfriend or lose his soul. Having only 24 hours to do so, and fearing failure, he asks 4 girls, who all say yes. Then, because harem animes be harem animes, the grim reaper demands he must remain in a relationship with all 4 for 3 months or else they will all dump him and he will be killed. A little contrived, I know (at least two of the girls make it abundantly clear they don't want anyone to know he's dating them, so he could have dumped them and made his life a little easier), but either way, I'll bite.
What makes this story different is that the main character starts out by dating all of these girls, and has to keep his relationships separate, even as they continually run into each other. This differs from the standard formula of every girl holding a one sided crush on the clueless and indecisive guy. As a result, it's more like "The World God Only Knows" than "Shuffle", as a character whose not usually a playboy is forced to act like one.
The female characters are surprisingly unique. Yes, they all fall into certain molds. Ones a closet pervert, ones a Kuudere/Tsundere, ones a Yandere, and the final one is a sadist (You'll never guess which is which until they get behind closed doors). It helps each personality pop, and also allows him to play on the girl personalities to help him keep his secret. This felt like an interesting mix of characters, and never felt cliched, even while playing with the cliches.
The genuinely loved this manga, but the main reason i didn't give it a hire score is because it got axed and rushed an ending with only 19 chapters. Half the girls really were under developed, the ending isn't satisfying, and I would have loved for this story to go on another 20 more chapters. There were so many things that could have been done with it.
However, if my biggest complaint about the manga is that there wasn't more of it, I'd say that makes a manga pretty worth reading.
