Spoilers Ahead
The Quintessential Quintuplets is a manga that I randomly discovered a long time ago in my perfectly legal manga app. I fell in love with reading this manga. I got hooked so I read all of it in a few days but when the ending came and it was all over, I just felt disappointed. Because it could have been so much better. It could have been the best harem of all time but for the time being "The World God Only Knows" still holds that title for me. So let's get into what made The Quintessential Quintuplets so special and why the ending felt so disappointing.
This manga was different from many other generic harem manga that I have read. It didn't have much fanservice and many characters got actual development. Everything up till the scrambled eggs arc was great. We had good moments, Nino got a massive development, everything was looking bright but then…. The sister war arc nation attacked.
Sisters war arc:
Most of my problems for this arc come from Ichika. Specifically the way negi handled her character. See Ichika before this imo had the best chemistry with Fuutarou. If you asked me who was the most likely to win before the sister war arc, I would honestly say Ichika had a very good chance to be the bride. So in the end of the scrambled eggs arc, Yotsuba tells her to do what she wants to do. Cool so now she won't take all the burden to herself. That was a great moment. So now, what are we getting? We are getting a massive development like Nino right? Yeah so… Ichika goes psycho mode and betrays all of her sisters so now at the end of the arc she says goodbye and now has no chance of winning anymore. Yayyyyyyyyyyyy :D. But that's not the worst arc in the manga. Oh no it can be worse. It can be… the festival arc.
Fireworks Festival arc:
The idea of ending all of the character arcs in a single arc was a cool concept. Too bad the execution was disastrous. The main problem of this arc was how Itsuki's and Yotsuba's characters were handled. Yotsuba was mostly a background character up till now. We found out a little earlier that she was the girl that Fuutarou met when he was a kid. We never got that much development of her relationship with Fuutarou compared to the other quints so you can't do her full character arc for her in just these few chapters. Her arc is basically Fuutarou's friend telling her to move on and boom done. Now that was bad but Itsuki arc is way worse. So this biological father that we have never seen or heard from appears and just goes away after a couple of chapters. So wtf was the point? Itsuki, like Yotsuba, is a background character for most part but unlike her, she has some moments with Fuutarou. I see their relationship as a slow burn. Itsuki has supported him the most and Fuutarou's whole character is that he wants to be necessary so they really match together. They go from hating each other in the beginning to becoming friends in the middle. Itsuki's feelings have been kept secret from us. So keeping this in mind instead of getting to know her feelings, We get this biological father bullshit. Wow, what a way to conclude her character. Now let's move on to the final choice.
The Final Choice:
The final choice was uhh how do I say this? Oh ye, It was bad. Yotsuba makes 0 sense since what has she done in the future that made Fuutarou love her. Keep in mind, I am not talking about the child Yotsuba who changed Fuutarou's life since Fuutarou doesn't know it's her. Even if he knew it would be such a shitty explanation since that means none of his current interaction with the quints meant anything. The reason he gives her is support which ok if he is talking about the whole series then ok that's bullshit since Itsuki exists. If he is talking about the fact that Yotsuba supported him first then yes ofc since she knew him. Yotsuba already had an advantage from the start. Wouldn't it make the whole series meaningless if the final choice boils down to the first interaction he had with them. Even the first interaction logic is dumb since Miku also supported him very early on. She also supported him when Yotsuba didn't. So huh? The ending came out of nowhere, It was just "Oh I bet you never saw this coming". If you wanted to make Yotsuba win all along then at least give her a proper development. We can now also assume that Yotsuba was the one who kissed him which takes away the moment from Ichika who was the obvious choice for the kiss but also adds many questions since why did she kiss him?
Ending:
After the random choice of picking Yotsuba, I still had hope since maybe they will show how their relationship has changed. So what do we get? We get a conflict with Nino which was ok Ig. We get a reveal about Itsuki's feelings towards Fuutarou in a single chapter after she has no chance of winning anymore. Yeah great payoff to all that build-up guys. First biological father and now this. Then we cut to a timeskip, Fuutarou guesses the quints and lastly all of them go on a honeymoon. Not just Yotsuba and Fuutarou but all of them. A story about character development ended with none of them moving on.
Final thoughts:
The Quintessential Quintuplets just screams waste of potential to me. It started off good, turned great in the middle but went downhill in the end. I give this a "You tried/Great"
