Story:
The initial premise of the story is a fairly predictable rivals --> lovers premise. Two characters are forced into an arranged marriage but neither actually wants to get married so they try and break it off.
Now you'd think that's what the plot would focus on, but it's like an average teen's attention span; non-existent. Seriously the ML starts off with the premise of not wanting to get married to FL, but from almost the very beginning doesn't actually do anything about it. Hell he even admits at the end he fell in love at the first dance (which happens at the beginning). The FL is slightly different but not much better. Her approach to the whole thing is to just be a dick for whatever reason, which okay I guess.
So most of the story is instead the two going on various adventures around the capital, ranging from events like balls to stopping a demon conspiracy to destroy the world. And this leads to the worst crime about this story
It is childish as fuck
Seriously, everything from the banter between the leads to the resolution of conflicts all feels like something ripped out of a generic isekai, only this time you have a strong independent female lead added to it. Cliche villainess character tries to kill the FL but her only friend wants her to live? Yeah lets just exile her or smth (which clearly does fuck all because she comes back towards the end anyways lmao). Girl who's been a fucked up yandere since she was a kid wants ML for herself? Yeah just beat her up a bit and now she's as good as new. Literally, FL deals with a conflict by insulting some generic bad guys breath lmao wut the fuk. Speaking of villains, they either range from generic thugs who only exist for the leads to beat up, or villains committing the most heinous acts with some piss poor contextualization to make you feel something I guess. Doesn't matter because the leads will yeet them away anyways. Even the main villain gets killed off-screen because cool i guess.
One thing I do give props though is I think the romance is quite nice. It's a slow burn romance so don't expect lots of flirting and signs of affection early on, but unlike a lot of slow burn romances there is a genuine level of interest BOTH leads have towards each other, which grows as the story progresses. The romance part of this series really is the best aspect of it
Art:
A lot of people seem to dislike the art, but it really isn't too bad. Maybe early on there was some jankiness with some of the characters' anatomy, but it never really felt like it was violating the Geneva Convention tbh
Characters:
This is the main element of the story that I have a problem with. When I said it's childish as fuck part of what I was referring to was the banter between the leads. Usually with great back and forth couples, part of what makes their banter so great is how they bounce off each other. Think like Positively Yours for instance.
But here the "bantering" between the leads feels like something out of a 14 yr old's wattpad fanfic levels of flirting. Now you could attribute it to them being actually 16 yr old, which I would agree with as how they behave post time skip is definitely much better than pre. However, that falls flat when you consider during the main story how perceptive they are when it comes to deducing things like villains trying to be manipulative or coming up with plots to take down a heinous slave trade from a duke. Like this series plays the typical "age is just a number" thing most series' in the medium do.
ML - The ML isn't too bad of a character. His bantering is about as effective as the ML from Nagatoro-san (aka fuck all) but he's a lot more levelheaded of the 2. Plus he's the only one that somewhat had a backstory to him
FL - The FL on the other hand, has some issues. Now she is one of those strong independent notliketheothergirls women, which isn't a bad thing by any means but she's also a dick for the sake of being a dick. The story tries to push it as her trying to make herself look bad so that he would request a divorce (why he has to be the one to do it who knows), but it's not like he isn't aware of her feelings, she literally tells him early on she doesn't want to marry him. Like there really is fuck all reason to be that big of a dickhead when it's not even like the ML acted like a huge dick in the first place. Other than that apart from a romance perspective FL doesn't really change all that much
The best thing about the 2 is definitely the power balance. Typically in these kinds of #notliketheothergirls kinds of series' it tends to just flip the roles between the ML and FL, so to see both ML and FL genuinely be on equal footing (more or less) was a nice thing to see
Enjoyment:
Overall this did have a lot more potential but just falls flat. If it went the full gag route ala Gekkan Shoujo, then a lot of what transpires would've actually worked out quite nicely. But when the series tries to incorporate serious elements in it, it should be viewed as such
