Ham-fisted and childish. Predictable trite. Actively frustrating Mary Sue protagonist with a cast of cardboard cut-outs and stock aesop characters plus a romance that falls flat. Do not recommend. Would actually be a good series for children though (that's not sarcasm) to teach them basic morals.
Story: 3/10
The focus of the manga is ostensibly Machida-kuns growth and yet he also doesn't really change in anyway. He's essentially perfect at the beginning of the manga and at the end the only real difference is that he's in love. What growth was there?
The messages the manga tried to deliver are the standard shounen stuff, be kind to others etc. However, the delivery is so ham-fisted it makes me cringe. Considering the majority of this manga is delivering these trite platitudes, this is a significant problem.
It's almost insulting how simple and easy things work out. You can't make me care about what's happening in the chapter when every chapter follows the same pattern. Someone with complicated issues meets Jesus-kun (aka Machida) and within the chapter they've found the meaning of life, turned their life around and won the lottery. It's ridiculous and it robs any sense of importance or drama from the manga when we know Machida will fix an problem he sees in a few pages.
I actually didn't know the manga was a romance when I started reading it, it's clearly not the focus for the majority of the run-time yet the ending seems to rely on the romance to hammer the point home. Unfortunately, the romance wasn't very interesting, both Inohara and Machida are flat characters who aren't very interesting together.
Character: 3/10
Machida is the ultimate Mary Sue. Everyone falls in love with him immediately after meeting him, figuratively or literally. One character is kind of explicitly gay for him. A teacher falls in love with him and confesses her feeling within a day of meeting. Do you see how incredibly annoying this is? I want to read a manga, not a fan club for a fictional character. He's supposed to be a super nice guy, and make no mistake that does come across in the manga but most of what he does feels so surface level that the entire cast fawning over him feels incredibly forced. There honestly isn't much else to say about the main character beyond: he is nice and he solves everyone's problems. We get some insight into how he feels and his views on the world but it's absolutely shallow, everyone in the world is his friend and family blah blah. Surface level stuff that we teach children. By the end of the manga I absolutely despised Machida, both for the false ‘deep’ philosophy and the over the top Mary Sue nonsense he pulls off. He feels like a parody of a caricature of a shounen protagonist but it's entirely unironic.
Inohara is supposed to be the love interest and is the key behind Machida growing as a person. This is a mistake because she has no personality. Her one problem is resolved instantly and then she becomes the generic doe-eyed love interest the author needed her to be. I honestly could not describe her personality to you. She's good with her hands? That's the only thing I can think of, and only because the manga explicitly points it out because she painted someone's nails once. The ending of the manga is clearly about Machida's growth, as shown through his relationship with Inohara. This might could have been good if Inohara wasn't a hollow character with no real chemistry with Machida. Basically she was bullied and so is truant constantly, then Machida says a few words to her and now she's fine. Then she falls in love with him immediately. They hang out a little bit, Machida is as dense as a typical shounen protagonist, pervs on peoples hands for a bit and then they get together. Yeah. he's grown so much, from a perfect messiah to a perfect messiah with a girlfriend.
No one else really matters, they're all just Machida's fan club. There are few other reoccurring characters either. In fact, one character is saved by machida jesus and then basically just hangs around in the background of a few chapters so it looks like he has actual friends.
Art
Decent art. Not amazing but not bad. Nothing more to say here.
Overall: 3/10
Cringe-inducing, that's how I would describe this manga. It was such a frustrating read, seeing complex topics being simplified into “well Machida-kun is just so nice, it all resolves it self”, one man's marriage is saved by simply being in the presence of Machida! Machida isn't even aware of it! That's basically how all of the chapters that aren't romance focused go and it's not only incredibly boring, it's all just so shallow. The romance itself is barely present and the love interest is so bland that I just don't care.
I don't recommend this to anyone but young children.
