(Contains Mild Spoilers) (TL;DR at the END!)
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You Got Me, Sempai, which I will shorten as YGMS in this review, is actually a great manga. It’s not just a romance manga. It’s not all happiness and slice of life. This manga leaves you with questions you ask yourself and changes the way you view relationships. And it’s a comfortable amount of edible chapters which you can easily binge in one sitting. (It took me two months, though, because I was a big procrastinator.)
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What is YGMS?
YGMS pulls you with a sort of differently done concept. A confession in the first chapter. The point of YGMS is not the journey to gaining a relationship. The journey IS the relationship. YGMS is great in the sense of well written and believable flawed main characters. YGMS seems like a slice of life on the surface. It looks as if it’s going to be a manga with wholesome love and butterflies. But what I notice about YGMS is that relationships aren’t wholesome all the time. YGMS is a form of a crush. It’s not like stories where friends have feelings for each other and end up a happy couple. YGMS starts off as a crush, with no true feelings for each other, evolving into what a relationship is.
YGMS explores themes such as doubt and fear. Especially in a high school setting such as this, can we really confirm we will be with the one we love forever? They are only teenagers. Teenagers are inexperienced. They make dumb decisions. They don’t even think right. And their failures are what lead to growth. And growth sometimes makes you grow apart from the people you love. Maybe you had that one friend who you were really close with but ended up drifting apart. Drama is unavoidable. Drama happens as a way to give you experience. The point is, YGMS deals with a fair amount of growth. A lot of couples end up losing their spark after the so-called “honeymoon phase”, which is also the time when most couples break up. These themes are what makes YGMS special, to me. It taught me a valuable lesson.
> A relationship is more about the will to be together than the time spent.
YGMS explores this, by repeatedly reassuring us readers, that equal effort is what keeps a relationship healthy. Can you really expect to gain love when the other person doesn’t even love you? A lot of couples break up because they lost their will to be together, focusing on the time spent, instead. But truly, a relationship, be it friendship or dating, only exists, because of that will.
YGMS made me uncomfortable at times. Some chapters made me doubt my friends, and my relationships. We do question ourselves sometimes. Do we truly deserve love? What is it, that I am looking for in a relationship? YGMS may be a romance manga, but it might as well give you life lessons not only for your future love life, but for your social life as a whole.
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Character Analysis
Serina is our girl lead. She’s a casual character. A good representation of what a girl wants. If you’ve seen any edgy anime, or perhaps seen the perspective of an incel who hates couples, you would see she is the type of character that represents the “scum” in the world. But Serina isn’t scum. Sometimes the simplest things are what makes us happy. And the fact Serina is happy, is pretty amazing, and therefore, she is not scum. Serina isn’t a perfect happy-go-lucky girl, either. She is flawed. And I mean flawed-flawed. She is happy, yes, but she also has times she isn’t happy. And when she isn’t happy, her flaws show. Serina is someone full of doubt and fear. Her relationship with her boyfriend, Mizukawa, is indeed healthy. But there was some parts that made it unhealthy. Her fears that her boyfriend will love someone else, her insecurity knowing others are more nicer and prettier than her, and her doubt regarding her feelings towards her boyfriend. But it’s all these flaws that make Serina, a great character. And it’s the promises this manga makes to us, that enables us to be able to see Serina’s growth as a character. Serina might not have changed much in the long term, from start to finish, but her mindset and her willingness to stay strong; her willingness to learn from failures, is what makes Serina great.
Mizukawa is also a great character. And like Serina, he has flaws. His insecurity is more complex. He takes the problems with the relationships and keeps it to himself, burdening him. He tends to suffer alone, for the sake of being able to maintain his relationship with Serina. It’s his insecurity of being unable to live up to expectations of Serina’s (she loves him either way), and his fear of losing what gave him light.
But it’s these two main characters. Their dynamics, their interactions, all of it. They are each other’s enemies and each other’s strength. They complement each other in their writing. They get character development, from one another.
But even for a manga like YGMS, there are some shortcomings. Some of the characters are indeed not fleshed out, despite them getting their respective conclusions.
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The Art
The art of YGMS is unique. I either haven’t read much manga, or this author just really has a unique style. It may be a bit inconsistent (few chapters have different styles), but the way I see it, the author must have been testing out different styles. The character designing, however, is a nitpick of mine. At some point Mizukawa had white hair, so it was quite hard to distinguish him between 3 other characters. It also doesn’t help that the other characters weren’t as memorable. But again, just a tiny nitpick. Maybe other readers could differentiate them easily.
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TL;DR and my overall thoughts
So, should you read YGMS? Yes. I went in confused. I came to read wholesome sugary stories, but ended up staying for the life lessons I was gaining from this. This manga, to be put, helped me grow. There are quite a few life lessons that can be taken from this manga, and it can be applied in real life. I didn’t expect to get emotional reading this, either. Most of the contents caught me off guard.
YGMS makes you ask yourself (and maybe your current relationships) an important question.
Are you willing to fight for your relationship?
