This manga is, to me, a published equivalent of all those fanfics I read when I was 12-14. You know the ones. The ones where us writers and readers didn't understand how relationships really worked and we thought that a jackass could be a jackass as long as he was cute and things like sexual harassment and attempted rape weren't as traumatizing as they actually were. We were ignorant kids back then, we didn't really know until we grew up how absolutely embarrassing our works were back then.
But this. This is a manga that was penned by a grown-ass woman who should know better. Perhaps this is the Western egalitarian in me, and Japan is kind of skewed in how it blurs feminism and shameless escapist fantasies, but my God. This comic is bad.
Its characters are bad. The female lead is a dunce and way too forgiving. The male lead Renge Kai, is a fucking ASSHOLE. An absolute asshole with no redeeming qualities. Absolutely none. If your very first introduction as a romantic lead is you mistreating the wait staff (who is ALSO the female lead!!) how the hell am I going to respect you from then on out?
The art is also terrible. The mangaka has no idea how fingers work, how body proportions work, how any of that shit WORKS. The art is so consistently bad that I actually screencap different panels and send them to my friends so we can talk about how laughably horrible the author's art skills are. Truly horrendous.
The smut also ain't that great, mostly because I find the male lead to be a bastard that needs to be kicked in the balls. There is nothing positive about this manga, and IF you actually LIKE this manga, I weep for you. I truly do. There are manga out there that are above and beyond better than this in every category--art, characters, tone, plot progression... Don't settle for this. Don't ever settle for something worse than mediocre.
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