(Transfering my review from my MAL)
This series was an interesting one. The manga is unique in premise and somewhat lacking execution. But somehow even with that glaring issue with the execution and story direction, it still kept itself extremely entertaining from start to finish.
With a premise revolving around a school of powers and our cast having to hunt these power holders, there's only so much room direction-wise. To put it simply, once we find all the witches, there isn't much direction for the story to take revolving around the premise. So the solution and my problem with the execution was spoiler add more witches and conflicts revolving around them. Basically, the entire manga and its arcs can be summed up to find witches, helping witches, getting them on our side, and likely at some point have some memory loss arc. Normally this repetitive arc structure is annoying and would make for a boring story, but in the case of this series, it often makes interesting choices progression-wise each arc. With the characters changing with each witch hunt and the conflict also changing, there's plenty of room for intriguing turn of events to be placed into the story. With this we see the writer's best skills at hand, foreshadowing, and writing in new things. Foreshadowing is self-explanatory and used really well throughout the manga. When I say writing in things, most people are going to think negatively but for the most part, it works here. The writer left a lot of gaps information-wise from the start. The gaps would be progressively filled while also leaving room for plot twists that fit the constraints of the story. Those plot twists, the unraveling story, and likable characters allowed for the series to stay extremely fun and entertaining despite its repetitive arc structure.
When mentioning the cast I don't have much to say, they aren't outstanding characters but have personalities that make you want to root for them. Yamada and Shiraishi make a cute couple, Yamada and Miyamura have a funny bromance dynamic, Yamada and Ushio have a great childhood friendship. The rest of the side cast meshes well together and makes for some generally fun interactions and funny jokes. The Harem is kind of just girls admiring Yamada from afar after gaining feelings for him. They avoid unnecessary romance drama besides one annoying portion of the story during the election arc.
Other than that, it was all fine and dandy until the final arc. From the start of the arc, I wasn't fully on board but progressively grew to like it as the purpose of it became clear. But the worst case scenario happened and it kind of just rushed to its conclusion. The last chapter itself was really nice though and wrapped everything up nicely.
Overall this manga was a fun read with a unique premise and likable cast, far from devoid of issues but definitely worth checking out for romance fans who are tired of the more traditional stories.
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