I already wrote a review for the anime in which it was a creatively bankrupt disenchanting experience with the flattest characters ever. Somehow, in a new medium, this description has gotten worse for Quintessential Quintuplets.
For those who echo the same ideas such as: "it was fine until the ending" or "ending ruined the story!!!" or the dreaded "i loved all of it until he rushed the ending!!!!!!" a huge news flash. This manga is terrible from chapter 30. Despite my pretentious warning, I like to think I am pretty reasonable and fair especially when concerning media. I do not expect a lot from a manga if it does not promise me a lot. Why would I expect a lot from a flat manga like sakamoto days or jujutsu kaisen you know? With that being said, Quintessential Quintuplets is the laziest manga ever. Just look at the premise. 5 women are supposed to be on 1 dude. You would expect that the women in question would have their own separate reasons for liking this dude. Right? Wrong. This manga thinks that having completely nebulous and asinine reasons why girls like dudes is a great idea!! Makes your characters look completely realistic and human!!! Definitely not ragingly autistic with zero tact. Closely examine why each woman likes Uesugi and you only fine arbitrary reasons why I wouldnt even buy my co-worker lunch. Miku likes him because he talked about sengoku old dead warriors? Ichika likes him because he talked to her about movies? Nino likes him because.... the author said so? The justification for this thing happening is so bizarre. The fact is, if the girls had a more competent main character to bounce off of this would not feel so utterly contrived. If our protagonist was not a blank piece of cardboard with zero defining traits then I could actually buy women, let alone people, liking him. There is a fundamental issue resulting in story failing to connect the characters to the premise. If Uesgui was more charismatic or likable or not completely on the spectrum, the girls could naturally like him. The girls would not need a "uhhh i think hes nice" attitude to justify why they love this guy. So all of this was to say, the ending did not ruin anything. If the foundation of your story has more holes than a bucket of straws, it is clear to see that the bullet that pierced the skull of this manga only shot a reanimated corpse.
So we established that the reasons why the women like dude is completely unnatural at worst and contrived at most. Now we can dive in and crack open the skull of these "character arcs" that people like to praise. Quintessential Quintuplets does have character development. The characters go through things that change them and they come out the other side as better people. Is what I want to say. The "character development" and "character arcs" of Quintessential Quintuplets are development in a denotative sense only. A REAL character arc is properly establishing a characters flaws, their needs and desires, then executing characterization through intention and obstacle.
In a conventional sense this is how the best character arcs are made. You cannot get a Zuko from the half-baked nonsense in Quintessential Quintuplets. What this manga opts for is telling us the characters are changing after the constructing the laziest event in which we can explore one or two characters. The best example I can think of is when Nino was staying at a hotel and Itsuki at Uesgui's house. People can say, "hey thats when she starts developing feelings for the dude and starts opening up" but here is no deep character exploration or revelation to draw readers in. It essentially ends with "bitches be trippin but its aight". It is the most trite and lazy way to explore characters. What are nino's flaws? What are her fears? What does she learn? How does she grow? These answers, if there are any, are uninspiring and mediocre at best. In my book, this manga severely lacks development. I am not going to give out participation awards just because Quintessential Quintuplets tried. Hell no.
The characters are so bad because of one simple reason that I am not going to daunt over, the manga's structure. You would expect a manga with 6 main characters that is also a slice of life set in the real world with no other characters to really worry about would be character-driven. Right? Dead Wrong. This manga seems to pride itself on a mystery element concerning Rena (which we will tackle later) and slowly dropping hints and tidbits toward the revelation. This decision was utterly terrible and an irredeemable skid mark on the manga's integrity. This is because the addition of Rena to the manga fundamentally changes this story to an entirely plot-driven narrative. It is revealed that Ichika had not lied and she was actually the woman from 5 years ago? SIKEEEEE it was actually Yotsuba. Yotsuba was the real culprit while Ichika just had talked to him a few times. Such effective misdirection, I just wish the characters were not all boring flat pieces of cardboard. The story keeps rubber-banding back to this Rena thread instead of actually giving some quality character work. I truly do not understand why this author said "yea lets go for a huge harem romance but instead of like a cool mc getting girls, lets make it around this mystery. oh yeah thats fire". Who wants a mystery with flat characters, especially, in the genre of romance where your characters are literally everything??? Uesgui, on the bus ride to the festival, literally has a narrator text box alluding to the failure of the first day of the festival. The characters can never breathe in a controlled environment because Rena is like an arsonist to their character writing. It is the typical width > depth that One Piece fans are so accustomed to. Unlike the biohazardous serialization vs episodic storytelling debate, this manga would have been objectively better in a more episodic approach to flesh out the characters and make them 3D. The author choosing to air ball the character writing and rely on his 5'8 center named Rena to get each rebound is a dastardly decision that further spits on the rotting corpse of Quintessential Quintuplets.
I spoke on the structure of this manga but the plot is simply garbage. Not a single waste of time let me tell you, the plot to this manga makes me want to vomit. We see 5 girls that are so damn stupid they get 100 on a test combined. But we get a flashback to right before this event in which 4 of the sisters passed their test and did not get expelled? How are you able to pass the final test but when this dude tells you "pass this test and im out of your hair" you completely bomb that mf like yoshikage kira?! I wish I could suspend my disbelief but that literally makes no sense. Because the premise involves studying and romance, you would naturally assume, the better grades the girls get would be parallel to how their relationship with Uesgui develops. Right?...... Studying is only the contrived way to get all these characters together. There is never any meaningful progress or symbolism behind the women passing their tests in the future. Complete swing and a miss. Other plot points are either extremely contrived or extremely unnatural and jarring. It is like the author only has 2 modes: nonsense mystery or nonsense everything else. The sisters' dad bans Uesgui from their house so what do they do? They buy a fucking house. Think about that. This dude they knew for a couple months is apparently important enough for this underage autistic band of sisters to completely abandon their rich livelihood? Try again with someone with zero standards. Absolute Bullshit. Next, Ichika can no longer join the tutor group because of her career so what do they do? They buy a fucking movie about tutoring. This author only cares about the Rena mystery because his brain literally cannot create something that makes sense for his life. The sisters' mother had her husband walk away from her. You would naturally expect for this to either never appear or be extremely important if it does but this manga chooses neither. This manga would rather have the dad comeback for a chapter or 2, shit on Itsuki (the best sister), then get disrespected by a couple teenagers and never ever appear ever again. Such a satisfying resolution.
Finally. We have finally made it to the larger Rena discussion. I have talked about how Rena fundamentally ruins the story from foundation up but larger than that, how does Rena tie in to the story. Foreshadowed early on, Rena is presented to the audience as a woman that changed Uesgui's life. The story builds this up as omega important. As in, it is the entire reason why Uesgui is the man he is today and that he will not even let people see the picture of him and Rena. When we actually see this flashback with Rena.... lord have mercy. This dude Uesgui changed up his entire life and dedicates his mind body and soul to Rena because she gave him a fake motivational speech. Are you serious? I am sure we have all been moved to action before but worshiping this person as a someone who saved you? Bad business. The big problem is, you have to suspend your disbelief to believe that this little girl can completely change this dudes life. If a girl who is also poor tells me "hey i wanna get supa smart so i can not be a burden and take care of my family", wouldnt I (person who is also poor with family to take care of) at least THINK of that fucking idea? Look at monogatari's love interest, Hitagi falls in love with Koyomi because she was so distressed she could have fallen in love with anyone at the time. That, accidentally, seems like what happened with Yotsuba and Uesgui. They fell in love at 12 years old because they had a bit of fun then shared their grander ambitious resulting from being poor? Do you see this? In what way is this a satisfying reveal or well done plot point. Completely asinine at best and story-breaking at worst. Let me iterate once again, the problem is the fact that it is completely unbelievable. Just like those women buying a house for a dude they met 3 months ago. Completely asinine at best and breaking the story at worst.
Quintessential Quintuplets is what happens when popularity meets mediocrity, introduced by incompetent media literacy. The only good thing about this manga is that there are 5 women with slightly big breasts and its kind of funny 4% of the time. Believe it or not I was trying to minimize my issues and criticisms. I could ramble for hours how the Uesugui family are all incompetent weirdos who shouldve been deleted or how all the characters are flanderized versions of themsevles by chapter 30 but there is no point. This manga is an interesting premise stabbed and plagued by bad idea after bad idea.
