Great bittersweet romance that deals with adolescent love adeptly. Hanabi is a great thoughtful female MC whose character is immensely developed. Each character gets their own shine. Though Moca could've benefited of some more and definitely Kanai-sensei. The strong core cast of this story are Hanabi, Mugi, Akane and Ecchan. The art is delicate yet pretty.

Alright, this manga series actually made me create an account for this webside to write the following comment. I will try to talk about the manga without direct situations, but it will be a rather big spoiler nevertheless.

The series starts promising, with a clear 2 main character plot a little bit more focused on the perspective of the female protagonist. The structure in which the story is told is only more or less linear, but makes very good use of flashbacks to show what the other characters knew and felt beforehand. It is a bit like Memento that the plot falls into places after several chapters sometimes, even if the original szene is already done for a while. Full points on story telling and art from my side.

With a good, but maybe a tad bit slow start the series is a great read as soon the author gives dept not only to the second Main Character, but also to the side characters. With flashbacks we get insight in their motivations and much more important: In their own a bit screwed but normal perspectives on the world. This is where the manga shines, as he uses the plot to portray the emotional world of anyone not ending up in a happy relationship. I tried listing the different motives that were familiar to me in this series, but to cut it short: It very well displays the tension and feelings between appearance and inner perspective, love and selflove, desires and admiration and more general the different prospects on love. The high point of this series in my opinion is chapter 13 where we get a good understanding of the inner life of one of the important side characters.

Afterwards it goes downhill. It doesn't end up being a bad series, but I have to admit that I stopped by chapter 29, picked it up again to read to chapter 33, just to see that it got even worse. On the one hand the tension build up can't be kept for such a long time. I wish for a good, a bad or just a realistic end, but no avail. Some might find it to be realistic, but it falls into the typical japanes plotholes. Newly introduced problems feel a bit artificial, as talking could resolve them easely or there are a bit far fetched, because japanese dating culture is a bit strange, when seen from the west. While a struggle with depression or two-timing might be an appropriate thing to end/follow along on one character developement, but on all of them? I've read that japanese had a different connotation or cultural imbeddedment for fucking around, but that's a bit much even for a liberal western big city boy. I started to find the actions incomprehensible and cringeworthy - a rather big change from the initial good start and storytelling.

I've been in several situations displayed in this manga myself and at a certain point you have to stand up and open yourself, talk about it and if shit is not going to work out, get up and leave. I still give this manga a grand total of 8 points for making me stirred up quite a bit, which could be considered an archievement.

... Last updated on January 5th, 2017, 7:51am

But it really just gets worse. This is the sort of story that should have ended (at least) ten chapters ago. Things move way too slowly, and the character development (if you can even call it that) is not enough to keep me reading. I really like the beginning and found it pretty realistic, insofar that people have desires that they want fulfilled, and those don't always align with traditional ideas of love and affection. But somewhere along the line, the premise of the story got lost, and the characters weren't enough to drive it forward for me.

this is good you could say its a novelty BUT
when threre is a problem it leads to lust everytime (i read a lot of hentai so im used to it) not that i hate it, its just that it lead to that everytime

I salute this manga for delivering something different, that being said the experience of reading this manga is like watching a hamster run in a wheel all day long.
The 2 main characters attempt to use their fake counterparts for their emotional/physical needs but this has very little effect as they continue to pine after their perspective one sided crushes.
The 2 sensei's do develop their relationship.
Our 2 main MC's also seek sexual contact with other people which only shows how weak the relationship between the 2 of them is. The fake relationship isn't enough so they need to find solace in other places as well.
Although this is a genre of work that I usually find interesting, I am finding it harder and harder to empathized with the MCs in the 3 vols released so far.
The only thing that is holding my interest is the female sensei who looking at the raws is a lot less pure and more devious than she appears. Looking forward to seeing the chapters regarding her translated.
Seeing how she behaves in the RAWS does sort of make me forgive the female mc for still pining after the male sensei and looking for support elsewhere as she can't really complain about the female sensei to the male mc as he is smitten with the female sensei. Still doesn't take away that her constant obsession towards a person will never consider you a love interest is annoying.

... Last updated on October 15th, 2014, 5:49am

Keep you on edge all the time. My heart was beating so fast as the end of each chapter approached. I don't usually read seinen but this is seriously really good!! The art is clean and the girls' figure is not disproportionate (you know what I'm talking about... big boobs, hour glass figure like she hasn't eaten for months...). I can't wait for more releases. The feeling feels so real!!

Well as there are only 2 chapters translated so far, I can only evaluate the lingering potential this manga has.

It's a quite unique premise for a story these days and surprisingly well executed so far. The struggle between a platonic relationship that won't bear any fruits and a physical relationship without deeper emotions, is very well portraited in this manga and this is indeed a difficult task to make within such a story. The inner conflict of the protagonists and their day to day behaviour is very realistic IMO. In this regard, I see this manga not only as a romance story but also as a psychological one, as it deals with the emotional difficulties and sufferings of unrequired love and age gaps. Thus said, I've high hopes for the developement to come.
The Art of the manga is quite good (as also seen in yokoyari-sensei's other works). Nothing to coplain here.

In short, for those who are into seinen romance with a focus on longing and emotional conficts will have a good read here.

... Last updated on December 6th, 2012, 4:50pm