I will try to keep my review spoiler free.
Jitsu wa Watashi wa is a shounen comedy manga for most of its length. Romance is just sprinkled here and there (but quite dominantly in the beginning volumes).
After the main couples started dating
, the plot then shifted to one of the most shounen cliche in manga history: the ideal high school life, which every characters will try to accomplish. The author even added in more characters just for the sake of this cliche.
Judging by being shounen, this manga is an example of how author-san could write an awesome shounen manga but got held back by the often forced comedy and pandering to romance aspect. And it's good to see author-san works after this manga go for the more pure shounen type.
Judging by being comedy, this manga has its good and bad moments of humor landing perfectly and humor landing flat. It's subjective of course, but for me, the flat humor sometimes made it hard to binge read.
Judging by being romance, this manga is a prime example of how it's not recommended to write romance in such a way, as it is heavily manipulated to happen, even the main couple's one is just a means to achieve "the ideal high school life" cliche towards the end. The only somewhat organic romance development comes from the
student-teacher pair
.
Final thoughts:
Reading this manga looking for romance, you will find it to be 6/10.
Reading this manga looking for a nice shounen comedy story, you will find it to be 8/10.
Therefore, this manga is 7/10 in my book.
I read this in 2022 after having gone through many rom-com series, and for a romance-main reader, this manga is enjoyable at times, but I always keep thinking, author-san would be better off writing a less messy and better story if he could just stop trying to force the romance as it is not his expertise (which is, as I mentioned, shounen).