SukiMega might genuinely be one of the most boring romances I’ve ever had a chance to read–and I’ve read a lot. A lot a lot. It is one of those cutesy-vanilla romances that take their time, with which I’ve zero issues, but there always comes a point in those romances where I genuinely just give up and drop the whole thing. To elaborate a bit further, I’ll be spoiling a bit so read on with caution.
I genuinely don’t care that I’ve read 81 chapters and that the pair had made virtually no progress. I’ve read 140 chapters of Takagi-san with even less progress so that’s not an issue for me. The issue is that SukiMega is just not fun. Whereas Takagi-san and many other slow-burn romances understand that they can’t front their love story and, as such, give readers something else to indulge in, SukiMega has nothing past its miserable love story and the cutesy heroine.
The story is beyond slow, and it facilitates all the romantic cliches known to man, but it isn’t even the worst thing about this manga. Once you’ve read enough romance stories in manga, you’ll come to realise that they’re literally all the same. They’re just a spitfire of repetitive cliches and tropes that marry into a semi-cohesive narrative that either ends rather abruptly or way overstays its welcome. What carries every single romance manga out there are its characters, and characters in SukiMega just plain suck.
I decided to drop the story at the end of one specific chapter where the main character regurgitates the self-loathing spiel for like the 11th time–and I was done. From like 40th chapter onwards, it became more and more obvious that if I continued to read this story, I would come to loathe the main guy, so I eventually dipped before my dislike turned into outright hatred.
I understand that the kid is like, what, 13-14 years old? And that I was hardly less awkward than him back then, but I simply don’t care anymore. His character had gone well beyond the realms of insecurities straight up into the realm of needing genuine professional help. What’s worse, I cannot for the life of me fathom where those insecurities come from. The kid was never bullied, and though he comes from a divorced household, his mother seems to love him and cherish him enough. He’s always had friends, and was never isolated. So, where in the ever-loving kiss of Jupiter do the insecurities the size of Mount Vesuvius sprawl from?
It is honestly beyond baffling watching this kid try to navigate any social interaction with the main girl. Nobody who’s read shounen romances is unfamiliar with the overtly shy main guy who blushes at the snort of the main girl, but this might yet be the worst one of the bunch. Virtually the only reason I even remotely endured for 80 chapters was the main girl, and it was not because she was cute or adorable (though she may be all those things), but because she was literally the only one of the two pushing their relationship. But enough’s enough. There is slow romance, there is mid-2000s shoujo slow romance, and I can read both of them, but I cannot read boring romances. Comedy is sparse, past like the 50th chapter the story starts taking itself way, way, way too seriously–like, really, it’s a story about a pair of 14 year old kids experiencing first love, and the author started treating it as some kind of coming of age, The Catcher in the Rye, biblical anthology of agonised youth.
If you like fluffy romances, you’ll likely enjoy this one too. If you’re allergic to lethargic main leads, you’ll likely grow to hate it as I did. While the main girl is a breath of fresh air in shounen romances, she was not good enough to carry the tepid, beyond boring, self-insert memory that is the main guy. Read like 30ish chapters to get the gist of it, and then imagine that the main guy was not a social inept alien experiencing human contact for the first time and the remaining 50 chapters become 2. Cheers.
