Could a relationship like this happen?
Well, the details of the tough working-class world it's set in look 100% real to me. This setting looks like an American city, not the far prettier, neater, and cleaner scenery in which so many school and love manga take place.
Ditto the people. The couple, who are both around age 20, are each very odd people, but for some reason I never had the slightest hesitation accepting each as almost as real as people I know. (The group of loser boys from which the hero eventually graduates look way too much like me and some of my friends of long ago, as a matter of fact.)
Would this boy want this girl, and vice versa, given that they each seem so far outside the limits of what each would normally expect the other sex to be? I think so, based on the fact that I've been much like the male lead for most of my life, and I think this girl is fantastic! It's less clear why she would be drawn to him.
But it's a pretty unlikely sequence of events, after all. I think this story has worked tremendously well for 30 chapters because this mangaka knows how to communicate the intensity of the feelings that routinely come to 20-year-olds as they start to learn how to survive on their own in the world. His drawing communicates that excellently, and the uninhibited outbursts of almost all the characters does too. Where there is intensity of feeling, there is the feel of reality. In fact, it's having feelings that make the world and other people real to us on the deepest level. Because this manga has so much true feeling, it makes me believe it's true.
This is a jewel of a manga. I think it has the potential to become as moving and successful as, say, "Genshiken". Already it has gone way beyond what I expect of manga and anime. To me it's already gone way beyond anything I expected when I started reading it.
AND NOW IN APRIL 2017 IT'S BACK!!
Thanks, Totemo Sugoi Scans!
And again in the last half of 2018 and the beginning of 2019, trident brings it back. Thanks!