Fuufu Ijou, Koibito Miman. - Reviews

I hate the Mc, childhood friend shit, and how they put the romance. Akiri is the ONLY one that has her mind on straight when it come to feelings. MC AND THE CHILDHOOD FRIEND IS THE MAIN PEOPLE THAT DRAGGING ALONG EVERYBODY.He kissed Akiri and Shoiri while Akiri was the one only doing that stuff with him. Why didn't we get a story on WHY Akiri "like" for blondie. Why does everyone like each other🤨?Why add lgbt representation just for her to be a "I like my friend but I'm a GIRL so it will never happen"🙄 BFFR. I STAND BY AKIRI BEST GIRL AND BEST CHARACTER.

*spoiler free* Thanks to reading 28 painful chapters of this manga i have found out i hate it. after around chapter 13 things start getting repetitive and boring, after this i had to force myself to read it which wansn’t fun thanks to the MCs having the “look at me i’m so dull” and the fem MC having the “once things are going my way i freak out at you” trope. *spoiler warning for chapter 24-26 i think* and its so annoying when the only reason femMC tries to go after MC is because she got rejected by her crush. *end of spoiler* also the trope of MC being a virgin is so awful.. oh and the MCs best friend is just the worst part.. every time he appears i find myself wanting not wanting to read anymore. here are some other things i hate: childhood friend, otaku trope, “i cant decide” trope, things ending right before they get interesting, the entire premise of the manga, just almost everything is garbage. but as other people have said its a hit-or-miss. i say give it 10 chapters, if you like it good for you, and if you don’t then also good for you.

This manga is really a hit or miss. The premise is just... Literal shit lmao. It's basically a "high school cohabitation" romcom but make it mandatory to graduate with no explanation given, and no consistency or objective reasoning in what will or won't make "points" go up or down. And also it seems to be like the only school that does this? And in order to change partners you need to get a high enough score cuz fuck you. 

The art is decent and cute but v shojou meets ecchi. The character designs reflect this. All the girls with names have huge boobs except for one. Most of their faces are interchangeable except for hair and fashion style. The color pages have SO MUCH saturated color there's no where to rest your eyes lol.

The characters are interesting in some ways, though because it is an ecchi romcom there's the typical frustrating love triangles, and contrived ecchi scenes with some gratuitous fan service sprinkled everywhere for no reason (even in non-ecchi scenes). The MC comes across as a cringe psuedo-incel in the first couple chapters (tho that could've been greatly enhanced by the translation i was reading), but his kindness and consideration for others is likeable. He takes other ppl's feelings and situations seriously, and a lot of his flaws are due to self confidence issues and social anxiety which are relatable, tho can be frustrating. The main girl lacks depth for awhile, as a trope-y tsundere type, but she does get more development. The rival girl is the trope-y nadeshiko/pure girl good at homemaking childhood friend, but she also gets more development. Some of my favorite interactions are between these 2 girls because they are kind to each other despite the jealousy and insecurities they feel, and they help each other grow. The rival girl makes a lot of effort to grow as of chapter 57. The rival guy is one of the most interesting characters imo. He is the perfect prince type but has his own issues that are explored a bit, and his motivations and feelings start as an unknown and continue to unfold slowly. 

The characters can be frustrating particularly due to their bad communication, which is expected in a romcom and of teens in general. But they do gradually grow and develop better communication (tho growth isn't linear) with support from friends. One of my biggest issues with the main and rival girls is how a lot of their interactions and behaviors are so clearly framed as fan service/moe/dere. Particularly when interacting with male characters but also just as they exist in general. Again, to be expected of the genres, but disappointing given the potential for more character depth.

But sometimes you just wanna read a horny cute romcom for mindless entertainment. And this does v well in that regard.

TL;DR 

Awful premise, common frustrating genre tropes, but some interesting characters and great for light horny entertainment with romantic angst that makes your chest squeeze

The premise of cohabiting as some sort of school assignment is dumb and extremely far-fetched, but it works as plot device to move the story, but becomes increasingly irrelevant in later chapters. The series has very good moments combining romance and ecchi. It reaches into your heart for that romantic feel in combination with some quite spicy scenes. This is one of the strongest aspects of the series, which got me hooked. It doesn’t contain any explicit nudity. It’s one the soft spectrum.

The male lead Jiro is as the story goes more and more insufferable albeit he is trying to lift himself up. His constant internal wailing in feelings of unworthiness becomes increasingly annoying. This causes him to ignore obvious signals of affection from opposite sex aimed at him. Typical trope to make romance story way longer than it would be otherwise. Typical trait of lead character people will hate.

It wouldn’t be romance, if there weren’t other typical tropes. In this case there are two girls, who like Jiro. I’m unapologetically on the side of Akari, because she is more interesting and better match for Jiro. The second girl is Shiori, who is childhood-friend/childhood-love of Jiro. She appeals to more traditional Japanese sensibilities and here design screams of pure type.

The initial twist is Jiro gets paired with Akari for the husband-wife assignment with another often used twist of both having crush on someone else. This is leading in sort of agreement to help each other. However, that isn’t going to work as well as both start to have feelings for each other especially Akari. Interestingly in the beginning it has really strong balance and I could see easily the main male character ending with either of the girls. The feeling of having seeming impossible task to choose one of the two options is aspect that surprised me. It manages to hold this tension over several volumes.

The story switches perspectives not only to main characters Jiro, Akari and Shiori, but to other secondary characters as well. Among those are the popular boy trope and athletic tomboy girl trope [1].

Visually the series looks very good. Aesthetically it combines romance and ecchi quite well with sufficient level of detail.

I would give the series very high score, if it didn’t start to drag in later chapters, which are increasingly more mundane school-life romance drama. I agree with assessment it has cute moments, but has frustrating points as well.

Japanese difficulty 5/10 (see my profile for details about various difficulty scores)

The series contains furigana, but the text density is quite high and doesn’t hold back in terms of vocabulary. For that reason, I give higher difficulty score and do not recommend this as your first manga to read in Japanese. This is more appropriate for someone, who wants something bit more challenging, but doesn’t want to give up furigana yet.

This review is written after reading 9 volumes (all released).

Spoilers

[1] It has twist of the tomboy girl Mei being in love with her friend Shiori.

Let's set aside how authoritarian, how unethical, and most importantly how pointlessly impractical it would be for a school to require its students to act lovey-dovey with another randomly-chosen student, supposedly for the purpose of having the students practice what it would be like to be newlyweds (it's like playing house, but with the possibility of failing and hurting your academic record). That dystopian scenario is being used because it creates a sense of romantic tension. Jirou and Akari are set up as practice marriage partners, but they both have crushes on other people. The only way to switch partners is to receive a high grade and the only way to receive a high grade is to play for the cameras watching their every move in the house they're forced to share, to act like they love somebody that they don't have any feelings for. Will their facade eventually lead to them developing actual feelings for each other?

And how can they trust Shiori and Minami, the people they have crushes on? If their crushes achieve high grades, wouldn't that mean that they acted lovey-dovey and got along well with their partners? What if they've actually developed feelings for each other? This manga follows the self-doubt and awkwardness of loving somebody when you feel uncertain whether fe'll love you back. I hate Shiori...just thought I'd put that out there.

[Reviewed at chapter 20]