A short and cute read all about a senpai that is just too cool. · Waifora

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Name: A short and cute read all about a senpai that is just too cool.
Item: The Girl I Want is so Handsome
Rating: 70
Author: SoulBlade17

This review is all subjective and my own personal opinion. You do not have to agree with it, nor am I asking you to. I hope that this just helps you get an idea of what the manga I am talking about is like and form a basic and general consensus on it. The ratings I give anime and manga are mostly my personal overall enjoyment. This review should not contain any significant spoilers. There will be some images sourced from the manga, but they should not contain any major spoilers and are all sourced from chapter one. TL;DR will be at the bottom.

Introduction

'The Girl I Want is so Handsome', written and illustrated by Yuama, is a story about Hinami who soon bumps into her senpai Shiki, immediately becomes infatuated with her. She is quick to confess her feelings, but being as dense as she is, it goes over her head. Will Hinami be able to get her true feelings across to her?

Plot
This manga is quite quick to get into things, with this in our faces as soon as we begin reading the manga.

Something that can only happen in manga. Stumbling headfirst into Shiki's chest, Hinami is understandably quite flustered. Here we are promptly introduced to Shiki's cool personality (a word often used to describe her) and Hinami falls in love. With that, the two main characters are quickly established, not wasting meaningless time, which is vital given the short length of the manga.

The swift introduction is indicative of the pacing of this manga. Like I have stated before, this manga is not that long, it is only ten chapters. Thus, a fast pace would be expected. There are sometimes where it moves too fast, but overall, it was not terrible. Again, understandable given the manga length.

What happens in the manga is pretty simple. Most of it revolves around the two main characters, with some side characters sometimes involved. This manga goes for the cute and wholesome route, so keeping it simple helps ease the reader into a pleasurable experience. It was pretty easy to enjoy what the characters get up to. 'The Girl I Want is so Handsome' very easily made me grin and laugh, that was just the nature of the plot events. It was pretty easy to get into the flow of it all.

A decent portion of the manga is related to the basketball club that Shiki is in, but to be honest not that much related to actual basketball happens. Most of it is just about the members of the club, which is just really three characters. This was probably the best choice, as this manga focuses more on characters and the romance instead of sport. Trying to focus on too many things at once would lead to an undeveloped story. The basketball club was just a means for Hinami to get closer to Shiki.

The development present in the plot did suffer from the fast pacing at times. Due to the pacing having to move things quickly, there were some changes that did not have enough build up and thus ended up not being as good as it could have been. The plot was very convenient for Shiki and Hinami's relationship, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Characters
Other than the six characters you see in the manga entry, there is not really anyone else.

The story is presented from the perspective of Hinami Ayukawa. Hinami falls under the trope of being the cheerful girl. She can be quite over the top with her reactions as seen in the images I have posted of her throughout this review. Despite being a somewhat simple character, she was pretty easy to like and brightened up many moments in the manga.

Often described as handsome and cool, Hiragi Shiki is the target of Hinami's love. A big part of Shiki's character is that she is pretty much perfect, nice, helpful, cool, and handsome. The only flaw she had was that she was stupidly dense, which could be a little annoying to read. Her almost perfect nature was a big part of her character and made her a little boring for me. However, as the manga went on and the relationship between her and Hinami developed, she became more interesting.

Miyamoto Rei is a prominent side character that appears in the manga. Rei is more of a cold person, as her appearance may give the impression of. Despite this, she gets over her cold nature (especially towards Hinami) very quickly, just over the course of one chapter she is more jovial with her. For me, this change in character was too quick, it was something that should have happened over at least two chapters. Then again, I suppose the author wanted to get it out of the way and spend more time focusing on Shiki and Hinami. Aside from that, she proved that she was able to be an entertaining and contributing character to the story.

Adachi Hanna is another side character present in this manga. I cannot remember much about Hanna to be honest. There were not as many moments she was featured in the manga, and in the moments she was it was a little forgettable. She is in a relationship with Miyamoto, but this is overshadowed by Hinami and Shiki's relationship. Trying to add another romance on top of the main one within a small chapter count means that one will inevitably have to overtake the other. As such, their relationship was underdeveloped, but I suppose that was not the point. It gave more flavour to the two's characters. One could describe Adachi as the wise character in the story, she is sometimes seen giving advice to Hinami. But other than that she does not really do much else. Because of that, it is not easy to dislike her, you are just likely to forget her quickly.

There are also two other characters that appear in 'The Girl I Want is so Handsome', but their role is so minor I am not going to bother too much discussing them. The role they play is that they are the friends to Hinami, but their role is so insignificant they may as well not be in the story at all. I cannot even remember their names, but I think you can find their character entries on the entry for this manga. They are not bad characters, just incredibly minor.

There was no real antagonist in the story, and there did not need to be one. If there was one, it would have just gotten in the way of the story and reading experience.

In the end, the characters in one way or another fall into tropes commonly seen in Yuri manga. I know that this is an issue for some readers, but it was not an issue for me. I do not really care about tropey characters as long as it is not over the top, and I am used to it after reading quite a few Yuris. Furthermore, the manga is quite short so it is hard to get tired of it.

It is also important to discuss relationship between Hinami and Shiki as it is a vital part of the manga. When I was reading this manga, I initially thought that the relationship was too easy (for a lack of a better word). Shiki was overly nice to Hinami for seemingly no reason other than she is a kind person. But that is just a personal gripe I had and that problem lessened as I read on. Like I stated earlier, this manga goes for the wholesome, cute, and somewhat comedic route, and a lot of relationship was like that. It was able to elicit a smile in me whilst I was reading it, so I would say that it did its job well.

However, the development did move quickly, but that is understandable given the length of the manga. Within a couple of chapters, they were already taking significant steps in their relationships. It was a bit too fast for my liking, but it is an issue when a romance spends copious amounts of time building up the relationship for nothing. This manga did not have much of that luckily. Although some of the development the romance between the two was predictable, it was nevertheless welcome.

Art
The art style of 'The Girl I Want is so Handsome' certainly fits the cute nature of the manga.

It can be pretty over the top with the expressions, which works well with what this manga was aiming to do. The art style further helped Yuama convey the feelings they desired to have. The art also drew the characters nicely. The settings and backgrounds were not as focused on as much.

Conclusion and TL;DR
Despite some of the issues it had, this was still a nice short read. It ultimately suffered from the short chapter count and the fast pacing it needed to implement to compensate that, but the positives outweighed the negatives. This was just a simple, short, cute read. I was not really looking for much more. I can recommend this to fans of the Yuri genre who want a short enjoyable read. To summarise the review:

A short story that needs to up the pace to compensate. As a result some developments and events are rushed.
The manga goes for the wholesome and cute route, and manages to achieve that through its characters and plot to support it.
The main two characters and their romance are the stars of the manga, which were enjoyable to read.
The other characters mainly stay in the shadows and play a minor role in the story.
The cast of characters do fall under tropes and are a bit basic, but they can still be entertaining.
The art style compliments and uplifts the cute nature of the manga, and it easily brought a smile to my face.

That brings us to the end of the review. If you want to send me feedback on my reviews, please post a comment on this thread. Hopefully you were able to get something out of this review. If you did not like this review, then I apologise for wasting your time.