While I love romance series, one of my biggest gripes when it comes to romance manga is how they portray the 'harem,' love rivals, whatever you want to call them, because it's almost always obvious that the main guy will end up with the first girl that kicked the story off. And you know what? My favorite aspect of this series is subverting that 'main girl' mentality and making every single girl a viable choice. Even the one person who I was like "He'll never pick her," had a chapter that changed my entire view of the story. I am eternally grateful for the author to make the "who's he going to pick" option that makes romance stories so fun not too obvious.
The second aspect that I really love about this series is the characters. I really love the Quintuplets. There were 2 characters I hated, then one of them became my biggest supporter and the other managed to get an "I respect you" moment by the end. While the main goal of the manga is to find out who Futaro marries, I think it was equally as satisfying to watch these girls grow into their own individual selves with important, but different, character arcs.
The story has a solid pace. Feelings developed much more naturally than I would have expected, and I really respect that this series tries to ask the question what love means to different people. Usually romance manga plots will have the guy do one specific thing and then all the girls act the same whenever they're in love. Here, though, it really makes their relationships feel deep and meaningful when they all love the same guy, but that love is showed and expressed in different ways, and ultimately they're trying to figure out if it's platonic or not.
If the series had any faults it happened in the last few volumes. I don't think the series was rushed, however, that last arc had me cock my head a few times because I wasn't expecting two sepcific plot points. The reason I didn't expect these two plot points was because it almost felt beneath the series to bring those tropes out at the end. I identify that it does bring out certain events in interesting ways, but also at this point in the story it didn't need it. Like, without spoilers, one of them is about fatherhood and the way the story was going I didn't think it needed to add that to connect the girls with their father's relationship. That's something you'd do to extend the story, not when it's winding down. The last arc felt like it had quite a few of those little details that didn't need to happen, and inevitably it felt stuffed. Not condensed, because I think it definitely sought out what they were trying to go for, but because these tropes were added it felt like it messed with the plot device of going through the festival through the POV of the quintuplets one at a time, which could give off the feeling of being rushed.
Then there's the one.
The girl that was chosen.
I have stayed in my little bubble trying not to have this reveal spoiled, so I have no idea how other people felt about this. What I can say is how I felt, and it goes like this: Of the five girls I was in love with two of them getting to the end, I was okay with two of them if they were picked, and I would have really hated one of them if she were picked (like if she were picked I would have given this series a 3 or 4). The one that was chosen was neither of the girls I was in love with, but that's okay. I still think it's satisfying and not just a subversion for the sake of storytelling. Because of that choice, I think this may have one of my favorite epilogues in a romance manga, because it didn't just end with that choice, it allowed the characters to live with it and express their thoughts.
I can definitely see people not liking the ending considering at least one of my favorites to win is probably a fan favorite, but again, I think that goes along with the themes of what love means to these characters and I had an emotional blast.
