I was super surprised to find that the author who wrote Cat Street was the same one who wrote Boys over Flower, and oh my god, Boys over Flower was so bad (I remember watching the anime adaptation of BoF and there was a sexual assault scene that plays off as romance. It was horrible)
But I'm glad that I went into Cat Street not knowing this fact because Cat Street was completely different from BoF. There is no stereotypical douchebag guy / nice girl melodrama, female rivalry, crazy love-triange, family-intervention, and all that weird stuff in BoF. Instead, what we have is an extremely mature, josei-like story of a girl who tried to become a better version of herself, through learning to make friends, fall in love, get hurt, and find a career for herself through the timespan of 3 years.
It read more like a bildungsroman in manga form, focused more on Keito and her desperate attempt to overcome social isolation, emotional immaturity, and trauma, rather than a cliche boy-meet-girl falling-in-love kinda story. I am surprised to find that the side characters, such as Kouichi, Momiji and Rei are very well-developed as well. I can't help but finishing this whole manga within 1 day (it's only 10 volumes). Definitely recommended.
