The core premise isn't horrible. A man who due to cruel bullying in school is scared of women, and he works through relationships to overcome that fear and become a better person. A more horny version of The World God Only Knows.
Except that isn't what this story is. The women he encounters exist only for the scantest of moments before they are unceremoniously left behind only to be mentioned again when the author wants to use them to forward the plot.
But worse still than that... He doesn't grow! None of them have a lasting impact on him, and right up until the end he is the same pathetic person who can't speak up for himself or express any real confidence.
There is no conclusion to his arc with the bully, nor his arc with most of the girls. It would be daring to claim some of the girls even had an arc with how swiftly they are discarded by the story.
None of that is the real problem with this story, though. The pacing is bad and the characters are all over the place, but one beacon stands out as the shining testament to how shit this story is.
Kaoruko-san.
Kaoruko is effectively the female lead, she is the aunt who takes the main character in and sends him on this quest to woo women to become more like Hikaru Genji. She isn't just a soft hand pointing him to the next girl whenever the last relationship ends, she actively manipulates him in every waking moment to get him to comply with her research, shattering potential relationships just because she wants him to move on to the next girl. And she does this repeatedly as the pathetic whelp of an MC nods with little more than a yes ma'am.
The series even has its own psycho yandere called Rokujou, yet somehow all her manipulations feel utterly mundane compared to the utterly vile level of psychotic control Kaoruko has. The narrative itself makes this clear, because she effectively has Rokujou on a leash listening to whatever she says!
I knew this series was based on Genji Monogatari. I knew from the start Kaoruko was endgame and that the MC was being taught to be the perfect man, because that is literally what happens in Genji just with reversed roles. But the method in getting there was just horrible. I should find this character charming, someone who helped the MC to be a better person and find love, but instead I hate her very existence. The author somehow managed to write one of the most manipulative characters in fiction yet completely missed they had done so and instead acts like she is exemplary and something to be wanted.
I'm not complaining that it's grooming. I'm not complaining that it's incest. Those were obviously on the docket from the start, this series is smut based on smut. I'm complaining about the callous and cruel manipulations lauded by the story that literally did not need to be there, we would have reached the same endpoint without them!
The only praise I would dare give the series is its art, and even that dramatically differs in quality depending on the chapter.
(-70)
