The main attraction of this series is the girl, Maria. She is an enigmatic character with a lot of mystery surrounding her.

Honestly, though, I enjoyed how Maria slowly becomes more and more normal and integrates with society. It's realistic that she was no longer a "strange, exotic, mysterious" character since we came to understand her backstory, but I wish she developed beyond the reveal. I never got super attached to the character, as the story was so plot-centric and melodramatic. If only more of Maria's developments beyond her trauma were shown.

This series started off okay for me. I didn't dislike it, but I didn't feel that there was anything particularly awesome about it either. What I did end up loving about the first volume was Maria. It's interesting to see such a blunt, honest character that's still vulnerable a naïve in a lot of ways. Watching her form her circle with the other characters became more interesting with each volume. Though the plot wasn't particularly new in terms of shojo, I found the themes to be rather new and that made the story coast from okay to something more.

This series was pretty funny in a lot of ways, but things got a little too melodramatic for me towards the end. I also felt that Maria dealt with some rather serious drama and it didn't quite play out realistically enough for me. I was also annoyed by the fact that the mangaka felt every guy needed to fall for Maria.

I did enjoy the romance here, but I almost gave the series a lower rating because I hoped for a better ending. It wasn't bad. It was actually realistic given their ages, but with all the drama they endured, I want them to be together in a more concrete manner after all of the drama. All in all, this series is a rather nice character study. Despite the issues I had with it, it was well written and I loved the art.

... Last updated on January 21st, 2016, 7:24pm

First off, the art is fantastic. I've been reading the VIZ translations from my library and seeing the printed art, especially the cover art for the tankouban and chapters, it's simply beautiful.
After reading the comments here, I decided to just read it til the Anna arc so I asked Suxxinn who told me that it started in volume 5 and was alright at first and got progressively worse.
After reading the first 4 volumes, I left the series very satisfied.
The main characters are pretty fantastic. Maria sees through everyone's bullshit but has a terrible social life because she reacts to people's true thoughts and intentions rather than their facade and false words. The two male characters try to teach her otherwise.
Shin reacts to people's bullshit by simply interacting with others to the bare minimum but being tolerant of it enough that he isn't hated. Thus he's an outcast, though nowhere near as much as Maria.
Yuusuke kind of embraces people's bullshit. While at first he seemed like an incredibly annoying character, it's all an act to cover up how much he despises his true nature and, from his point of view, the neccessity of putting on a mask at all times.
Really the whole series seemed to be about how our physical appearance is almost totally unrelated to who we really are. I really liked that.
This can be best seen with Yuusuke early on, and then Tomoyo.

Then a couple of months later I saw volume 5 in the library and thought to myself 'Why did I stop reading this again?'. So I grabbed volumes 5 & 6.
More ont hat later, gtg to work 😛

EDIT: Ok it's 9 years later and I don't remember AT ALL what my impressions were. But I DID drop the series so...I'm guessing I really really didn't like what happened in those volumes, much like all the people before (and now after) me. 😛

... Last updated on December 30th, 2022, 7:47am

So I found something that's actually much more annoying than cliches...stoic female leads. I understand how people are drawn to strong personalities much better than stereotypes,but this is nothing realistic at all.
What do you expect? It's fiction,I get it,but to think that the whole bullying part was a bit too exaggerated to make it believable makes it even more annoying.

Maria...how should I say it? She's a very strong character yet she lacks expression and depth. She's basically lacking everything,so she's also very dull.I couldn't see anything interesting in her at all.
The plot seems interesting at first look,but upon examining the rest,it gets boring and cliched. I really did not see the point in dragging this at all.
Most of the characters were drawn beautifully,so i guess that's the only thing that seemed convincing to me.

I used to LOVE this manga and read the scanlation as soon as it was out, but now something's changed in the manga that I'm not as obssesive about reading it. Consequently, I can no longer give it a 10. If the quality continues to decline, my rating will drop accordingly.

I hope the Japanese readers voiced something similiar so that by volume 8, the quality goes back up to its original awesomeness.

... Last updated on August 16th, 2010, 10:28am

Started out really good but then gradually got worse. It becomes overly dramatic and the heroine who was originally a strong character turns out to be ignorant and delusional and has a extremely warped perception. You can argue that it's because she is humble...but there's a limit to how humble one can be before they're mistaken for being stupid. What's worse is that she's stubborn too, so she's set on being in denial about almost everything. Frankly, this manga becomes very irritating to read. I'd recommend reading the first 15 chapters or so and then just drop it because the plot is going nowhere.

this manga is soooo good! you wont regret reading it. At first i couldnt get in to it because well... i though Maria was weird... but now she's one of my favorite Shoujo Heroines ever! She's cool, blunt, not wimpy, strong, cute!! she's so cool!!! and Megu... GOD i love him!!! i do like the other guy but we all knew that she would be with Megu, and he wasn't much of a threat, its not much of a love triangle we just know the other guy is crushing on her. But we all know who we like better, the other guy is more of a friend

... Last updated on January 28th, 2013, 12:04am

This manga had a quite high marked, that's why i picked it up. I found the girl bit bizzare at first..but i think she's very frankly and had a very unique mindset. It's quite refreshing to see such a strong gals like that..

... Last updated on September 10th, 2010, 9:08pm

I love how she can speak her mind, a trait I wish I had. I understand her ability of knowing how people really are, in this world there ARE superficial people (this is realistic!). People will say one thing to either gain something or raise their status, when they really think something else. NightSwan I have to disagree with you, teachers even ones that seem nice and professional are still human. Many manga's portray whiny and beastly people as females with issues, but teachers are adults and can get jealous or cautious of there status (Maria is making him look bad and he constantly wants to look good in front of his superiors). This manga is very deep and I like that about it, not the flat, same, overused plot where girls likes hot guys and has to choose from them. Maria is drawn more beautuiful then other characters to stress how Maria looks like an angel, but says things that don't seem very angelic and again I love that about the manga.

... Last updated on May 25th, 2010, 3:29am