This one's gonna be a short one. ~~Missed the mark on that one. Whoops!~~ Rather, this series only barely reached the point of getting a negative review from me. Because honestly, overall it was a pretty boring read and there's only so many ways I can say "eh, I was bored."

But the plot really ramped up the stupidity by the end, more than I was expecting, so it's earned a review. Therefore as the plot is really the only element of this manga that I feel is really worth discussing at length, I'm also just gonna drop an immediate

FULL SPOILERS

warning for this review. Because honestly, the moment I say what type of horror manga this is, you're probably gonna immediately predict the entire plot. Because I pretty much did myself when I found out, albeit, I missed the mark a bit because it went dumber than I thought it would...

#Oh yeah, and now that I've warned you of spoilers, I also should probably drop a CONTENT WARNING because on top of gore (duh) this series does also contain underaged prostitution and rape because of course it does.#

#Aisareru Yori ￮saretai#

So if you read the description of the series, saw the cover, and saw that the genres are drama, horror, and romance, and you guessed that it was a yandere series...

You my friend, were correct.

Aisareru Yori ￮saretai is a manga by Akira Yuuki about a yandere girl with a creepy obsession with the main protagonist boy. However, it is also technically a revenge series. Sort of. Kind of. And my main issue that it sucks at being either of these things.

First of all, all the characters suck. There's absolutely nothing to them.

You have our main protagonist who is a glasses boy who's smart and is grumpy because his mom is dead and he got into an accident causing him to go to a high school much lower than his first choice.

You have our main yandere, who is obsessed with glasses boy and just keeps seeming to pop out around every single corner glasses boy walks around because of course she does. She is such a discount yandere character that she's not even the best yandere character in this manga.

We have our second yandere girl, who is completely obsessed with the main yandere, and basically wants to murder glasses boy for even coming close to main yandere. I'll talk about why she blows main yandere out of the water a bit later.

You also have the other girl character who prostitutes herself after school because of course she does and also this is a trashy horror manga so you have to get nudity/a sex scene in there at all costs. But the true reason for her entire existence in the manga is main yandere needed another girl to try and go after glasses boy so she could dispose of them.

Admittedly, I kind of liked that she was done away via acid but I feel like if acid ate away your face as much as it did hers, she probably would have noticed way way way sooner than she did. Because... while I've never personally experienced acid eating away at my face flesh before, I would assume it would probably hurt. Especially if you're unknowingly spraying it directly onto your skin? Granted, she does actually mention her face hurting a little, but then when she looks in the mirror basically her entire face is already eaten away.

But whatever. And then you have other male character because I don't know, glasses boy has to have at least one friend.

He's jokey and annoying, but he does have a role to fulfill at the end of the manga.

Now, I know what you're thinking. That's a fleshed out cast of interesting characters, am I right? No. ~~Oh yeah, I guess there was also that bully character but he doesn't even make it past chapter one.~~

Obviously, the only characters that really matter are the main couple. And there is absolutely nothing to their relationship, and what is there to their relationship should have probably been a red flag. ~~Yeah, another red flag aside from the fact that she's literally stalking him.~~ She’s all like oh wow you have a dead mom? I have a dead dad! What a coincidence! We’re so alike!

And before they’re even dating she’s putting her blood in his food and stealing his hair and dissolving it in acid so she can eat it because remember kids, you shouldn’t eat the hair of someone you’re completely obsessed with because hair can’t be properly digested in the stomach apparently.

~~Say what you will about this manga, it did technically teach me something new. Even though it was a fact I never would have ever wanted to know.~~

And then when they do start dating (he accepts her confession because I guess he ~~likes that she’s obsessed with him~~ thinks she’s cute) all they do is kiss and talk about his mother’s death.

So wait, she was there on the day glasses boy’s mom died? Oh, she definitely murdered her to isolate glasses boy.

So it turns out the story she tells him that his mom jumped into the river to save yandere girl who was actually the one who fell in the river, was of course complete bullshit. In actuality, she stole glasses boy’s umbrella and made it look like he fell into the river which gave her the chance to push her in so she would get pulled away by the current and then drown.

This… twist… as I’ll call it to humor the mangaka, I’m reluctant to say that I guessed. It was so fucking obvious that she killed glasses boy’s mom. ~~Even before she's shown putting on the necklace she stole from her.~~ The entire manga we the reader are shown that yandere girl is in fact yandere and thus is just completely off their rocker so why even attempt a twist? Really, the true twist is that glasses boy, as fucking idiotic as he is, even knows that her earlier story was complete bullshit.

Ah, good, so this character actually isn’t dumber than a box of rocks! What a pleasant surprise! I wonder how he’s gonna handle this situat--

...Really? Your love for this girl who you had a single interaction prior to high school is so great that you’re just gonna… I’m not saying he should have did what she asked and stabbed her to death because that’s obviously what she wanted but…

Why not just throw the knife off? And then I don’t know, bleed to death in front of her. Or stumble off and try and find help? Literally anything would have been better than just effectively committing suicide.

The fact that she doesn’t just jump right after him is proof enough that he was right about her not really loving him. Because rather than just accepting that she could still die with him, she really wants to act out her suicide fantasy and actually get stabbed to death by a guy. Jumping off a cliff? Nah, I’d rather someone who loved me stab me to death after learning that I’ve been lying to him this whole time and actively ruining his life.

Meanwhile, yandere girl 2 is on the ground a few feet away from her bleeding to death.

Yandere girl 2 completely loved the main yandere girl, so much that she killed one person for her and directly caused the death of another. Like immediately after when she was first introduced, if main yandere had wanted her to, yandere girl 2 would have went all the way and just killed her and then herself when she was strangling her.

“I’m not into other girls so… instead, I’m just gonna manipulate you into murdering others for me while I absolutely ruin this specific guy’s life to try and get him to kill me.”

I mean okay, I get it. She doesn’t love yandere girl 2 but… she doesn’t love glasses boy either. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have just ended up starting to date the other male character just because he happens to be there.

Honestly, she probably just figures since he’s dumber than glasses boy, he’ll probably happily stab her to death as long as she asks him politely. ~~Or more likely, she’s eventually gonna tell him that she caused the death of his friend.~~

Why not just end the manga on glasses boy refusing her? Like okay, glasses boy decided to die to punish her by thwarting her plan. She has to live on knowing the fact she ruined the life of the person she supposedly loved for absolutely nothing because he was stupidly in love with her to the point of continuing to date her even knowing that she was probably responsible for his mom’s death.

“Nah, I’m just going to date the other guy and get him to stab me to death instead!”

And then the ghost of glasses boy watches as she goes, realizing that his entire life had been a waste and he had died for nothing.

What the fuck was the point of this manga?

If it’s supposed to be just a trashy yandere series, there's nowhere near enough actual murder in it. And again if you were deadset on doing a depressing ending it should have ended earlier. Because if it had ended with glasses boy’s death, it would have still left it open as to whether or not yandere girl actually loved him. Instead, nope. And the revenge element just felt horribly tacked on and just unneeded.

Like glasses boy’s mom distracted yandere girl’s dad and he ended up getting hit by someone else and thus killed.

...You know what I absolutely hate even more than bad writing?

Bad writing if you just even slightly alter it you could make IT A 100% BETTER THAN IT WAS WITH AN OBVIOUS AND EASY FIX. WHY MAKE IT CONVOLUTED? HAVE GLASSES BOY'S MOM BE THE PERSON WHO WAS DRIVING THE CAR. BUT OH IF SHE WAS DRIVING THE CAR THEN I DON'T KNOW SHE'D PROBABLY GET ARRESTED FOR VEHICULAR MANSLAUGHTER OR SOME SHIT. BUT APPARENTLY NOT BECAUSE ACCORDING TO YANDERE AND YANDERE'S MOM THE ONLY ONE TO BLAME WAS THE OTHER BICYCLIST AND NOT THE PERSON BEHIND THE WHEEL OF THE CAR THAT RAN THE GUY OVER. BECAUSE THAT MAKES PERFECT AND TOTAL SENSE.

"WHAT'S THAT DEAR? YOU'RE GOING TO GO TO THE SAME SCHOOL AS THAT WOMAN'S LITTLE SHIT OF A SON? I'M GOING TO GO FUCKING HIT HIM WITH MY MOTORCYCLE WHICH WILL HELP YOUR FUCKING STUPID LOVE SUICIDE MURDER FANTASY."

God, this manga is awful. As an added fuck you to the reader, there’s actually a bonus chapter following the final chapter. I thought like oh maybe it’s like a chapter showing the future of yandere girl but instead it’s like yandere girl 2’s final moments.

And it shows her remembering how her dad raped her, and befriending yandere girl 1 and…

Was it really necessary to sneak in rape at the very end? Like really? ~~I mean, it's brought up in the manga itself too but only for like one panel.~~

“Hmm, this character that has been barking up the wrong tree the entire manga and as a result ended up getting stabbed and is now bleeding to death… she’s a pretty good tragic character, but I feel like she’s missing a bit something. Wait a minute! I’m doing a horror manga! I can just throw in a flashback of her getting raped by her dad! I’m a genius!!!”

Ugggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggh.

#Conclusion#

...I don’t know what it says about me as a person that it’s actually preferable that this manga ended up like this than what it appeared to be at first. As if it actually just had been nothing more than a trashy yandere series, I probably wouldn’t have even reviewed it. ~~Though, I probably would have enjoyed it more.~~

The fact that there’s so many weird decisions with the plot makes it more interesting than it would have been if it had just been more straight forward. Like the only reason why yandere girl 1 didn’t actually commit any murders herself was just so she could get away in the end. But why even let her get away at all?

This character is responsible for five deaths and she just gets away to try to fulfill her love suicide fantasy again. I’m all for overly depressing endings where the antagonist succeeds, but not when it feels like the creator’s only motivation is just trying to piss off the reader. And also the antagonist actually being likable helps. She’s just psychotic. And not even psychotic enough to be entertaining.

This manga is a dumpster fire. But it’s not one that I would recommend.

A 1 out of 10.