I came upon this manga through the anime, which I came upon through Anilist's recommendations. There aren't too many reviews for the manga and having not written a review before, I wanted to give a shot writing one. This review contains what I consider minor spoilers for character introductions and story arc focuses but the real spoilers are hidden.
The story follows protaganist Makabe Masamune and Adagaki Aki as they enter a strange romantic relationship. The twist here is that they were friends when they were children and Makabe was insulted by Aki for confessing his feelings for her. Makabe then trains for eight years to go from being an obese child to a handsome teenager, changes his family name, and transfers to her school to get her to fall in love with him and then dump her spectacularly, all for sweet, sweet revenge.
The beginning of the story capitalizes on the absurdity of this well. Aki has turned down every man who has approached her and is quite wary of this new Masamue. Masamune, who has never dated before and hates Aki, forces himself to try many different approaches to get close to her, many of them ridiculous but he somehow succeeds a bit in the end. It's a great dynamic and leads to many cute and hilarious moments. It's likely what hooked most people when they read or watched it.
After the beginning, Masamune-kun begins to show a couple flaws in it's writing. It introduces a number of characters who, despite large introductions, become more glorified plot tool than real dimensional character (some more or less than others). It's awkward that so much time is spent on these characters when they don't really develop that much and leave as soon as their usefulness is fulfilled. These characters often don't play a direct part in the climaxes of the arcs they are involved in either, it's just feels strange. Additionally, the manga introduces two love triangles and while the first does have interesting moments, the second feels like it's missing some tension. All of this feels wasteful, especially when it pulls attention away from the interactions between Masamune and Aki, which was what was so fun about the manga in the first place. I would consider the ending of the manga agreeable but there is a very sudden aspect to it. It's not the worst but the last few chapters are definitely some of the weakest unfortunately.
EDIT: Realized after there is another series called "After School" which provides a few chapters of epilogue after the main manga. It softens the blow a bit and has some nice moments but it isn't enough to redeem the ending of the main series.
All that being said, it was an enjoyable read. Even if we see less scenes with interaction between Masamune and Aki, the focus is still tightly on their relationship. Combined with the good pacing (except for the end), it feels structurally very solid and that supports it through some of the weaker moments.
Here are some extra thoughts that contains spoilers:
The french otaku girl has a very big introduction for a character who doesn't last more than a few chapters. Gasou also kind of fizzles out a bit over time. Even though they are both part of the cause for their arcs' climaxes, it's feels weird that they aren't involved directly in them. Why introduce and set expectations for these characters when they never really see development or resolution that feels enough? Neko has a bit of this problem too although not as much, her romantic feelings for Masamune come back occasionally to add tension, it's especially cheap at the end.
Speaking of which, that final ending with the fake outs is almost insulting. It's such a cheap way to try and shoehorn in some extra tension since by this point we all know what's going to happen, the whole point of the story was Masamune and Aki getting together, going another direction would have required a lot more work towards that prior to the end. I would have liked some time spent on them after the start of their real relationship, it would have smoothed out a bit of the rushed weirdness at the end and just let the story do what it was doing best.
I'm maybe not the best judge of manga art but the art here is quite good. The characters look great and are always on model, the background art is coherent and gives a good sense of the space they are in. Panel composition is mostly pretty functional but there are a few special moments that takes some liberty. I'm a bit too inexperienced to have an idea of what could be done better so I can't give much more critique than that.
If you enjoyed the anime and you want to see how it was supposed to end, reading the manga is probably worth it. If you're just looking for a romcom manga, this might be worth it even without the perfect end. My bar might just be lower since I mostly watch anime but it's hard to find a romcom anime that ends this well, even if there was still something left to be desired.
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