Kimi no Iru Machi is a story that changes quite a bit, but at it's core its about the relationship between the two main characters, Haruto and Yuzuki as it goes through a lot of twists and turns over a pretty long period of time.
It starts off as a pretty standard high school romance set in the country. There's some drama as there are some complexities to the main characters relationships, but it's pretty lighthearted overall. The biggest problem the protagonist faces is their own lack of maturity and ability to understand and deal with their own feelings, as is standard for such manga. Still, while it's not particularly unique, it does do a solid job of developing the start of the relationship of the main couple. This lasts for about the first third of the manga.
After that it changes quite a bit, with what is known as oft called the Tokyo arc. The best way to describe it is that it becomes a storm where things get incredibly intense and things change tremendously. This change is painful due to how the relationship in the main couple was already built up, especially as the manga does a good job at conveying Haruto's and Yuzuki's pain and how it influences their actions. It's well written with major twists and good pacing. Still, it does intentionally make a mess of things, which filled me with a sense of frustration strong enough that I actually dropped the manga here at one point before rereading it all again from the beginning later on after having watched the anime.
And then the storm is suddenly over to the point it feels abrupt how quickly it ended, though how it ends certainly isn't happy ending. Still, while its done a lot of damage to the relationship between the main couple, it leaves things outside that very stable so the manga actually returns to being peaceful and pretty lighthearted. At this point the manga has introduced essentially all the main characters so it just casually develops the bonds between all of them as friends and sets the foundation for their circumstances which persists for the rest of the manga. It's decent at what it is, but while I was reading it it felt pointless due to the lack of the main relationship and heroine of the manga.
But it turns out that was just the eye of the storm and things return to being chaotic once more, though its a bit strange in that you don't realize it's actually returned to being a storm until pretty much the end of this phase when it reaches it's climax. This arc is messy, even messier than the first part of the storm. Still, it felt like the messiness of it actually added to its value and helped further establish the value of the main relationship. I liked what it was doing here a lot more than I liked the first part or eye of the storm so to speak and in hindsight the direction that this takes the story and how it uses what was built up over the rest of the storm makes it feel like those parts had a lot of value in what they built up, even if I really didn't like them when I was reading them. The core of this part isn't really developing the relationship of the main couple, but rather going over it and reaffirming it by bringing a lot of what was built up before together and also showing how the two of them had grown. It's written incredibly well with by far the most powerful moments in the series with chapter 137, which as expected is critically important as one would expect considering it's named after the title of the manga itself, and chapter 141 also being incredibly memorable.
This time things don't just completely drop on the intensity scale as in the opposite case of where things were left after the first half of the storm, now the main relationship is strong but everything else is in shambles. So while things aren't as intense as they were, there's a decent level of drama that persists for a while as things are rebuilt. Intermixed with that though, is just a couple doing couple things with a decent amount of fluff. Eventually it does reach a state of pretty peaceful equilibrium though.
However, that occurs about 2/3s of the way into the manga. The majority of the rest of the manga is mostly just lighthearted fluff and comedic moments in a series of short episodes, with some parts even going to the level of ecchi gag manga. Still, it's good fluff, and with everything that had been built up up to this point I was heavily invested in these two's relationship, so even that fluff was really enjoyable with a lot of the simple happy moments or simple reminiscence to earlier events managing to be quite impactful. There's light drama here and there, but it's usually really short and quickly resolves, just feeling like minor squabbles than anywhere near the intensity of earlier events. The old characters are all still there and it adds a few new ones as well which ends up adding a decent variety to the short stories that keep things amusing even if it is mainly focusing on Haruto and Yuzuki.
And though there's not a lot of major plot events for the main couple, quite a lot happens to the rest of the cast of characters with a lot of character and relationship development that also manages to be quite impactful, though that's somewhat of a double edged sword in that it results in feeling like some characters don't get enough time. It is also somewhat strange that while all this development is happening with everyone else, Haruto and Yuzuki feel like they're staying pretty static. Over the course of the manga Yuzuki already grew a lot and it becomes very evident during this part. Haruto seems to have already grown in aspects related to how he deals with relationships, which is very strong growth, don't get me wrong, and which leads to some cool moments during this portion. However, in matters outside of that it doesn't seem like he's grown at all, rather it even feels like he's regressed a bit, in that he simply goes with the flow and isn't very decisive regarding where he wants to go in life, which leaves him looking kind of lame.
Then the manga reaches it's final arc, which to be quite frank it tremendously rushed. I feel the author was simply in a rush to start their next work, which literally began the same time the last chapter of this one was released. Still, this may have had it's advantages. It starts off immediately being kind of painful due to how strongly it had built up the main relationship, then proceeds into reaching a heart rending level of painful, and then suddenly reaches a happy ending. It was abrupt yes, but at the same time, I don't think I would have wanted it to remain painful and especially not heartrendingly painful for long, and I think I really would have hated it if it was dragged out.
Still, it feels like we ended up missing a lot, including a lot of important events. The ending very much emphasizes Haruto's lame aspects of simply being dragged along by the flow and not willing to fight it, with the happy ending ultimately being achieved due to not his actions but things outside of his control rather than him fighting for it. However after that, in the time skip epilogue, he suddenly seems to be a very different character capable of doing what's necessary to achieve what he wants even if it results in things getting messy in that he does what he should have done long ago when he was heading towards a bad ending. How he got there is skipped over entirely and thus it feels like we missed the climax of his character arc. How rushed the ending was also results in it feeling like some side characters stories were pretty much left dangling without any closure. Still, despite it being rushed, I found the ending satisfying even if it isn't completely clear how it got to where it was because it did a good job of showing the most important things, and thus I I felt happy with it but I really felt like I wanted more of it as well, fluff and all.
Lastly, the art is exceptionally good and used really well. In general the quality is high but certain panels and things like chapter and title covers are often amazing. It is kind of funny though that even though the level of quality is so high, the author can't seem to decide on various character's hair colors and they seem to be pretty inconsistent across different color pages and covers.
