I think these two reviews sum up this manga. Particularly, this from daisybuttercup,
This manga has a quite unique tone at first but then gradually it turns to be that kind of low level depression shared between two overly moody and beaten up people.
And this from hatsumimi99,
Yori is a career-woman searching for the meaning of love at a point in her life where most women are already married with children...[she] agonizes over love and loneliness...
hatsumimi99 is right on the central theme of this story and how Yori's actions are defined by them. On the surface, Yori is the woman who has it all. She is good at her job, she's not unattractive, and she's self-sufficient. However, this manga opens with her overhearing two of her colleagues degrading her for those very things by calling her an "unmarried noble" (an unmarried person living affluently) and "loser dog" (a woman over 30 without children). So from the first page of this manga, we get an idea of the world Yori lives him without being beat of the head with it: she's defective because she's not married and she's defective, once more, for not having children. Yori counters this with humor, calling them clueless and herself a "bloom flower." However, this whole interaction is sandwiched between unexplained attacks of sneezing, which is both an omen and an indication that this opening scene is pivotal to the story that is about to play out.
This is kind of where daisybuttercup's review hits the core of these characters: Maki and Yori are two people who are deeply unhappy with the choices they've made in life, maybe because they thought these choices would make them happier. They are the architects of their own unhappiness because they didn't bother (or maybe have the courage) to try and seize what would have really made them happy. Instead, they both settled for replicas of the real thing. And then when the real thing does come along, they take what they can get in their own emotionally stunted way.
I do have some thoughts on who really has the power in this relationship though. Everyone seems to think the male lead is leading and Yori is following. But we see so very clearly how much Maki is obsessed with Yori -- I mean, come on, to the point of marrying (or my theory, paying for the surgery to make a woman look like) a clone of her. She holds all the calm cards here, Maki moves with desperation rather than dominance. We see their dynamic shift more openly in the later chapters, but from the beginning Yori could always say 'no.' Even when she slept with him the first time, she had such a flimsy reason for doing it...but she wanted to do it. Someone like Yori just needs an excuse to do it (as an apology for accusing him of stealing, lol) because if she just said "oh, he's offering and I haven't had sex in so long and yes yes yes," it just validates all the things people say about her -- she's lonely and defective and a "loser."
I think that's what people are reacting to -- without keeping everything in context, it feels trashy when the author is really trying to tell a story. However, admittedly, just because someone is trying to tell a story doesn't mean it always lands or it will be your cup of tea (sometimes this isn't the story you care to be told, even if you understand all their motivations...you can still think they're acting like idiots, I think this is fair.) For me, some of the dialogue did lean toward dramatic and eye-rolly, but I generally like the themes presented.
(+2)
(-20)
