Ladies and gentlemen (not sure if there are any gentlemen in the audience), let's meet the contestants! coughharemcough!
(in order of appearance, because we all know the order of their meeting our female lead tells a lot about who she's ending up with if the mangaka won't throw anything unexpected, e.g.character death)
First up: Hanamia Terui
This dark-haired hottie has quite some points in his favor.
Appearing first, we know the guy the heroine meets first is the one she will most likely end up with. He's the only one whose ability isn't told to us. His main description in the manga is that he's some heir of some super big company while the others each have some special trait. He's laid back and is described by the heroine as taking things at his own pace, eventually leading others to keep with his pace.
The girls call him the legendary super famous Hanamiya Terui (which kind of makes me feel bad for him because he has no other defining trait other than being the richest among all the guys)
tagline:"I'm here to find a wife"
Next we have: Hatori Kanata
The bubbly-type who's obviously gonna be the comic-relief guy. He's the shortest among the guys which pulls down his chances of winning the girl. Not because of his height, but the obvious adding of him to the harem to just add to the number of cutie-pies.
He's got red hair which puts him behind the dark-haired ones (because hair color is everything in shoujo. The leads can never have the same hair color unless the manga's being realistic and has the characters with natural colored hair)
He's the artistic, musical popstar guy who all the girls love. Called 'super' popstar Hatori.
tagline:"Become my girlfriend, okay?"
Third, we have: Kazemachi Nagi
The golden haired prince-type. Kind, caring, and considerate, he makes all the girls blush and fawn over him. He's called the 'magician' chef Nagi and loves creating delicious(looking, because we'll never get to taste them) pastries. Among all the dudes, he basically looks the most fem among them. Because, of course, the bishounen who likes to cook and magic cute clothing has to be in touch with his femininity.
tagline:"I fell in love with you at first sight"
And last, we have: Tsukiomi Shiki
The cold calculating(actually tsundere) type. He's the amazing CEO of *company or something, said to be a genius and whatnot. He's got dark hair and is seen in the cover with almost the same cover space as Terui so we know he's the main other choice, leading with Terui. (I have the biggest girl-boner for this guy for some reason)
tagline:"Become my property"
They be all rich, hot, and (duh)popular, as you do with any male harem trope set in a prestigious academy with the supposedly not-special (who we learn is quite speshul) female lead.
If anyone's wondering why I decided to introduce the harem like some dating game thing, it's pretty much how we meet the guys in the manga.
Their intro in the manga:
They pop up in super flowery full page (gorgeous art BTW) centers each, with really lame pickups but you'll be ignoring that because of the art. They get little mini descriptions about themselves and converge in a full two page spread, saying in chorus: "Become my woman".
Talk about facepalm-inducing lines.
There is talk that she ends up with all four of them which will totally make me bump the rating to a 10 if it happens because it rarely does in shoujo while guys with harems get to keep all the ladies. Talk about revolutionizing reverse-harem manga!
The twist this story has is that in the beginning we learn:
"...If you make a wish and confess under the thousand year old cherry blossom tree, your wish will come true. But if you betray your wish, you will be cursed by the tree for the rest of your life." Thing is, they 'confessed' all at the same time and all five(guys+girl) got some weird sakura mark thing.
and many other plotlines that makes this quite unique because it pokes fun at the guys a bit.
Still, I'm enjoying this because I knew I wouldn't be getting anything extremely deep and insightful, but something fun and light. There's a lot poking fun at the guys themselves, which I found fun to read. The art is just lovely and you can't help but smile at many scenes. The heroine grew on me and the guys are total eye-candy.
NOTE: Manga still not completed so comment will be updated.
EDIT: OMG FINALLY READ THE ENDING AND I AM CRYING BECAUSE I CAN'T STOP LAUGHING I'M SORRY-NOT-SORRY and to the people who took this story seriously (for some reason) let me pat you on the back and usher you to read something else because this story just wasn't for you
Ending:
PLOT TWISTS! Everything suddenly went weirdly dark. Ok. Tried to go dark, maybe to achieve some depth to the story. But I still couldn't take it seriously. I felt like I was reading satire. And then BOOM We can conquer anything if we're together!
HAREM ENDING FTW!!! This was the first I've read of a reverse-harem ending this way.
Yes, the entire thing was convoluted to the extreme, but I can actually say I enjoyed reading this. It's not the greatest manga ever, but I'm giving this a 10 as promised.
Do not take this manga seriously. It's great Eye-candy, very convoluted plot, little to no resolution of the problem at all, and a really controversial (mostly because people can't accept it) ending.
(-26)
