When I finished reading "Koharu no Hibi", I was left wanting more and I felt like the story was rushed and was plagued by missed opportunities and dropped subplots. This is a manga that probably could have benefited from being extended by an additional two volumes worth of chapters.
[spoiler] an example of a dropped subplot would be what appeared to be a supernatural turn where Koharu forces herself into Torii Akira's dreams beginning in chapter 5, but it goes nowhere and isn't brought up again. I guess it was only for that chapter. [/spoiler]
The depths of Koharu's depraved desire for her senpai Torii Akira are wonderfully executed through visual artwork. Linework is exaggerated, closeups are detailed, and her soulless eyes depict not a person behind them, but a predator fit for the yandere title. She does the usual stalking and snapping photos, but she is obsessive, and comically so. "Koharu no Hibi" initially begins as a sort of horror manga, which is typical of many featuring a yandere as the titular deuteragonist, but the mask quickly falls off, too quickly for my taste. All scare and shock tactics wear off once her habits are brushed off as adorable and quirky, yet the mangaka strangely occasionally returns to drawing and writing Koharu in her initial horror depiction even after stripping her character of the mystique and fright she's supposed to convey. At the time when a chapter's cliffhanger in volume 3 ends with Koharu in her darkened room surrounded by pictures of her beloved senpai with her dialogue bubbles drawn in a spooky font, I didn't feel anything. Why should I fall for it when she's been through multiple chapters as a person none of the characters take seriously any longer? Even after telling his friends all of Koharu's issues in a chapter of volume 2, they just brush it off, and Akira just ends up reciprocating Koharu's feelings anyway. There's not much in the way of stakes. After it's been established that she's not truly dangerous, all these fakeout scare scenes that are sprinkled throughout even until the final volume were getting tiresome. I wasn't appreciative of the mangaka's devaluing of the horror aspect of "Koharu no Hibi" by inserting Koharu in humorous scenarios and placing her in a non-threatening position. Although, the cliche of the enemy perceived as being a friend by the supporting protagonists simply because of the enemy's tiny frame and deceptively unassuming appearance was welcomed here. After the first volume, the horror aspect surrounding Koharu's character dissipates and all suspense is practically ricocheted and never effective on the reader again, even after the manga attempts to return to depicting Koharu as scary and unpredictable. She's totally predictable after the first volume because limitations are put on her. She's limited in what she allows herself to do. The protagonist "figures her out", essentially, and is able to, for lack of a better description, turn her off or remove her batteries or disable settings, so to speak, to get her to behave more appropriately. He tells her "no" and she backs off. He tells her "don't do that again" and she stops. Not very threatening, even though she is continued to be portrayed as such. Koharu starts off threatening from the protagonist (and by extension the reader)'s perspective, then becomes non-threatening. She starts off unpredictable, then predictable. She starts off scary, then gets downgraded to just being unusual. It was disappointing seeing this retrogression, but I enjoyed what I could get at the beginning. Torii Akira is a pushover, for the most part, so he just goes with the flow, despite his internal turmoil and protests within his inner monologuing. He puts up with a lot of stuff and it's not clear why he goes along with Koharu's weirdo antics. Even though his friend Natsuki instigates much of the situations he gets put in with Koharu at school, he still volunteers to go out with Koharu and spends dates with her on his own volition, so his thoughts and his behavior are rather contradictory. He's visibly distressed about it all but the blame can only be put on him. Even after what Koharu does to his childhood friend in volume 3, he still ends up reconciling his relationship with her. I thought we were going to get some more lasting consequences and a few fights, but this is as good as we are going to get with the length of this manga. Maybe if it were longer, everything wouldn't be resolved quickly in a way that makes the characters more flippant and emotionally unbalanced than they already rather are.... I don't know.
There's not much in the way of character development, naturally, given the manga's amount of pages. You have at most 5 characters who contribute anything to the story's progression. Parents are nearly non-existent, and frivolous interactions are kept to the bare minimum. I don't mind that in general, but I've already expressed with this manga in particular that I would have liked for it to be longer for it to flesh out the story and characters more and made better choices regarding Koharu's characterization. There's a character introduced later in the story in volume 3 and she is just your stereotypical tsundere and childhood friend trope. The tsundere is the rival of the yandere here. She tests Koharu's devotion and the reason for loving Akira. It was an interesting development and brought some of the mystique back to Koharu, leaving me to wonder if she was going to break any boundaries and push herself. She does, in a disgusting and twisted way, but her senpai scolds her and she backs off and acts all depressed until her and Akira make up. The two end up kinda becoming friends, anyways, so the drama escapes as quickly as it started and the status quo is reset. Again, not much in the way of stakes. Volume 3 had me for a moment, though, since Koharu's yandere tendencies skyrocket after chapter 16.
The manga does get somewhat sexual, and features fan-service. You might get uncomfortable at the weirdness, like with Koharu
[spoiler] defiling her senpai's recorder with passionate saliva or practically orgasming at her name being whispered into her ear by her senpai or sucking her senpai's first kiss from her rival's mouth and molesting her [/spoiler].
But I suppose that's the whole schtick of a yandere archetype; to make you uncomfortable, on-edge, and weirded out at the yandere's obsession and devotion. She loves her senpai because he was kind to her, that's it. Some girls are actually like that in real life, though. To the question of whether or not Koharu's "love" is unrequited, I don't really know, but somehow it's a no. They do kind of like each other in that way, but I'm struggling to find a motivation for the Torii Akira to return Koharu's feelings. Koharu's just a total creep, but we don't read yandere manga for the realism, do we? From what I can surmise, he basically just enjoys being doted on by his kouhai, and she's "cute" by Akira's own admission in the first chapter. I guess any man could get behind that, but with Koharu's level of hopeless dependence and Lemming-esque unquestioning loyalty? He can have her. By the way, Koharu negates the common yandere attribute in that she isn't maniacal or dangerous to anyone, so if she gets what she wants and no one comes in the way of her and her boyfriend, then there is no further escalation. She remains content, so there's that.
The ending was a nice wrap-up to an otherwise short and inconsequential story. The ending is a "we end where we started" type ending, which I always like.
[spoiler] the two pair up together and have a yandere daughter who falls for her school senpai and it's essentially a repeat of what we just read through [/spoiler].
It's a story you pick up not expecting to be wowed, and with just the knowledge of the manga's length, you might not feel like you wasted your time with such an optional read at the end of it. I'll praise the manga for its artwork, simple to follow story, and its basic but unoffensive characters.
(-105)
