TLDR; if you're looking for a nice Romance to read, read something else. The only person I see this manga being good for is someone who just wants to read something with light drama and fanservice, if you care about storytelling and characters, this isn't for you.
Characters: 4/10
First, I want to talk about the characters- because despite my incoming harsh critique of a lot of other things in the manga, there were actually interesting characters, like Nisaka. Nisaka's mere existence clashes with the governmental system. It makes him a neat in-between, since he's suffering from this system in multiple ways. I was excited to find out how the story would deal with this. But instead, I was greeted with "oh yeah, it's pretty much the same except you have issues finding jobs. You'll still get assigned a partner doesn't really matter lol". This was probably one of the most disappointing things in the story for me, simply because of how much potential was wasted with Nisaka. But here's the issue: Nisaka is nothing but a side character, and he's more likeable than the actual main character.
Speaking of which, Nejima was probably the most annoying Romance manga MC I've seen in a good bit. Now, don't get me wrong, it's hard to find a good manga MC these days anyways, but he stood out to me. His inability to take action, his cowardice and his lack of personality are a spectre haunting the manga. And anyone reading this before finishing the manga should be warned that none of this will get better. He has so little personality that his only personality is that he's interested in weird rocks. The chapters in which he isn't present feel like a long due weekend after a hard week of work. What makes him diffferent is that he doesn't have a redeeming quality- not interesting from the get-go, and certainly not any more interesting at the end. Atleast other cowards in Manga have some sort of redeeming quality. Like, atleast Subaru (RE:Zero) is trying to learn. Atleast Jonathan (JJBA: phantom blood) is defined by his kindness, and can be likeable despite how boring he is. Jonathan managed to be more memorable than Nejima, even though we only saw Jonathan for nine episodes, which should tell you plenty about Nejima. I think he doesn't have a strong will, or strong feelings about anything/anyone in that matter I think the fact that his love for Misaka was swayed so quickly when Ririna showed up just shows how he never had strong enough feelngs for either, and this really shows in the later chapters.
The two main girls were fine. I personally prefered Ririna for her boldness and honesty. She's like the opposite of Nejima at the start, unlike Misaka, who plays directly into the manga's pattern of annoying coward, to put it bluntly. Of course, there's a lot more to her character, but I generally found her self-sacrificialessness (is that a word?) and desperation for Nejima to chase after her to be an obstacle to the story, not a part of it. Since Nisaka is the only character I ever felt invested in while reading this, I'll give the characters a 2/10. I'll delve a little deeper into the three main characters (Nejima, Ririna and Misaki) in the next segment, the story.
Story: 2/10
This is my main gripe with the manga. It's what you see with many manga nowadays: Good concept, bad execution. So, if you've read the sypnosis, you know that the gonvernment assigns you a partner that you will be with for the rest of your life once you turn sixteen. Unfortunately, our main character Nejima already has a crush on a girl. He confesses to her on midnight, but gets assigned to a different girl.
Now, this might spark an interesting story. Maybe a story with the lesson that you can't know what exactly what you want from life at the mere age of sixteen, that the government can't ever know who you are on an individual level in the first place, and that only you yourself can truly know what is best for you. That is, if this was a good story. None of the above-mentioned conflicts ever get an in-depth analysation in the manga. Of course, you'll passingly see characters annoyed with this (especially at the start) but that's kind of it. The story introduces something it calls bad, and then never explains why it's bad. And, of course, this is a Shoujo, so I shouldn't be expecting deep socio-political analysis, but you should atleast try to engage with the univerese you yourself have created.
Nejima still gets to be close to Misaka, despite his assignment, and we never see what exact hardship he would face if he rejected his assigned partner. This manga suffers severly from the opposite of show don't tell: The plot will tell you about consequences that could potentially happen, but you never actually get to see these consequences, which makes it feel as if the governmental assignments didn't even exist.
Another thing I want to mention in this segment is "Misaka's secret"- ever since the first few chapters, the reader will know that Misaka has some kind of secret. This secret is... Very stupid. I think the issue isn't the secret itself, but the build up to the secret. With the amount of secrecy and mystery surrounding this secret that was built up over hours of reading, nothing could ever live up it. No plot-twist is cardinal enough to allow for such a long, draging, and tedious amount of wait. Her secret doesn't make sense from a character stand-point (aka why the fuck would anyone ever do that) and doesn't feel like a cool little plost twist. I've mentioned this before, but the manga makes it feel like Misaka is an obstacle. She's not a character to be explored, she's something that's in the way (especially in the way of Nejima's character development), and it stays like that until maybe the last few chapters. At first, I was interested in what Misaka was hiding, but by the end I just wanted to get it over with.
In retrospect, I think what destroyed the manga is the author's need to give the fans what they want- which is why if you look up the manga, you'll realize it has two endings. That's right, you just wasted hours reading a crapy, tropy romance manga, and you don't even get a satisfying conclusion. You get something much worse. This might also be why the manga drags on and on with unneccessary arcs that do nothing.
This manga in general is for people whose brain is fully turned off while reading, which isn't a bad thing- sometimes you just want to read or watch something to get your mind off of things. Sometimes you just want a nonsensical drama with random fanservice. But for the people who are looking for intricate drama, and something that is fun to theorize and think about, this isn't it. There are many romance mangas that do this well, unfortunately this isn't one of them. There really isn't anything to say about the story other than "oh look, something happened!", but it still had some fun parts to read, like Nisaka's arc, which explained his character and criticized the system a little bit. The art was also pretty good, just the usual shoujo artstyle. The thing is, usually I like all media I consume since I atleast had some fun reading it. This is an exception, because the only reason I read through it all was to find out what happens in the end, so unfortunately I can't even say that I enjoyed reading it, since the pacing is as slow as a snail. All in all, I'll give this a 4/10.
