This review is in honor of my good friend @HenwithTie, my beloved sweetheart, who suggested me this series in the first place. Honestly, my mind was racing between an opening line about my favourite type of girls and an opening line about girls with abs but, if I really think about it, neither openings are good ideas, so let's just get this over with.
The series I'm talking about this time is called Saotome-Senshu, Hitakakusu, both written and illustrated by Naoki Mizuguchi sensei.
Tsukishima Satoru, our main character throughout this series, is a member of the boxing club at his local high school and, despite his best efforts, he can't seem to accomplish anything regarding boxing. On the contrary, Yae Saotome, a fellow member of the same club as Satoru, is a prodigy when it comes to boxing, and that is why, when Saotome confesses to Satoru, he initially refuses, fearing that he might bevome a burden to her boxing career, but ends up accepting in the end. When the coach finds out the two of them have started dating, she makes Satoru into Saotome's coach, as to aid them in their newlyfound love story.
The story is a fairly classic Coming of Age Slice of Life which distinguishes itself thanks to its sporty boxing trope, which is a really well-made part of the story: The panels depicting fighting scenes are drawn with a great eye for realism, which makes for pretty good scenes.
Despite the premise being mostly about sports, the manga has an overall fluffy and wholesome feeling to it, given mostly by the fact that neither of the two boxers have any idea how to deal with their love story.
The chapters themselves are not that long, spanning from 10 to 20 pages each. That being said, the series makes up for the short chapters by having a whole bunch of them, 124 to be precise.
I picked up this manga during a phase of mine where I only ever read RomCom SoL's and, if I hadn't done it at the time, I'd honestly read it again now. Don't get me wrong, it's nothing extraordinary, but it's easily able to make you smile, which is a wonderful thing in a manga like this.
There's obviously quite a bit of fanservice involving abs, but that's just to be exepected, and honestly is welcome.
The pacing of the manga is quite balanced, not too fast and not too slow, and both the love-story storyline and the boxing storyline come to a good and fulfilling close, a thing that's hard to find in these type of manga.
Comimg to a close, this manga is definetly a nice read for fellow sports manga enthusiasts to refresh themselves on something smile-inducing easy to read which deserves a fair 8 out of 10 rating from me.
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