Quite often, I have read a manga or novel only to discover halfway through that it's not nearly as good or interesting as it seemed to be. Maybe the story's quality takes a dive or the characters turn out to have been written quite clumsily. "Asahina Wakaba and her chubby-chubby boyfriend" though, despite the LN-esque title was quite the breath of fresh air for me. With each chapter, I only felt the story getting better and better, and the character interactions were quite pleasant to see. Most importantly, seeing the mc grow as a character- from someone who could never raise a hand against her bullies and suffered immensely due to them, to someone who could genuinely be happy (even if under the pretense of relationship) and make friends- was extremely wholesome.

This manga deals with some heavy topics, like bullying, so keep that in mind because it's not something that ought to be read casually. To start things off, the protagonist is bullied and insulted publicly at school. All of the events that lead up to the two main characters meeting can't be described as anything less than unfortunate.

By framing the mc for breaking an expensive compact mirror, the bullies force her to confess to a fat otaku that they hate. Their relationship's foundation was built on a lie, and it was inevitable that the truth would come to light at some point. The cruel treatment of the mc by the bullies doesn't of course stop there, and it continues on a bit further but we're introduced to the infamous otaku that she's now dating. He's unabashedly an eroge fanatic, and yet unexpectedly he's also a very cheerful person (and surprisingly has good friends).

That's one of the things that struck me about this story. Rather than dressing up its characters in stereotypes and force scenarios to make progression between the two, the story excels in naturally constructing the interactions between them. Unlike what you might expect, the mc does not fall for him instantly. She realizes that he's a good person, and yet hasn't fallen head over heels over him immediately? Manga writers take notes.
But jokes aside, while the romance does progress between the two, she also has to constantly deal with the fact that their relationship in essence started from her deceiving him. She gaslights herself and tries to avoid the truth so that she can keep living a blissful delusion. I felt like the story might almost classify as partly in the "psychological" genre while reading that part, but regardless her emotional and mental state were deeply unstable because of how she had to be disingenuous to the people she cared about. The story gets quite a bit more interesting from there too but explaining anymore would just be spoilers for the ending, since it is admittedly a rather short manga.

I enjoyed binge reading this manga, and though the way they dealt with the ending felt rushed, for 18 chapters that was probably the best they could've come up with. It has it's fair share of wholesome moments and drama and it actually manages to combine both quite well.
9/10