Imagine if some woefully bored and talented artist decided to saute an assortment of toxic shoujo tropes, plated the dish within the mold of a wholesome slice of life series, and served it with a touch of store-bought romance on the side. However, Nijiro Days ends up being a lot closer to fast food than being a main course served in any restaurant. It scratches the itch for romance and high school slice of life vibes for the genre with its accessibility and convenience, but I'd look elsewhere if you were looking for a fulfilling meal.

The curtains rise with the story hitting the ground running, showing our hopeless romantic main character Natsuki Hashiba getting dumped on Christmas by some faceless girl and immediately falling head over heels for our female lead for having a pulse and offering him some promotional tissues as part of her part-time job. He responds to her minimum-wage inspired generosity by re-gifting a scarf that was originally intended for his now ex-girlfriend and walks away being already smitten by this nameless girl whom he knows literally nothing about. How fucking romantic.

We then cutaway to our pal Natsuki recounting all of this to his group of homies at school who don't hesitate in the slightest to roast him and offer their respective perspectives on what he should do, and we begin to learn their main qualities and traits immediately as they're introduced. We meet the horny-on-main "what's consent?" playboy Matsunaga, the stoic quirky weeb Tsuyoshi, and the bubbly BDSM-enthusiast Keiichi. The manga does a great job of making each character in the group feel distinct from each other in both design and personality, which certainly adds flavor and texture to their group dynamics. However, the humor and comic relief can rely way too hard on some of these wacky character gimmicks to the point of caricaturing its own cast to sometimes obnoxious degrees, such as Keiichi brandishing a whip at school and threatening to "punish" anyone who irks him. Fortunately, the series moves away from these low-hanging gags and punchlines in later chapters as the characters are developed more, but it can make the earlier chapters feel hard for some to trudge through.

We learn that the girl he met on Christmas, Kobayakawa Anna, goes to the same high school. Man, what are the odds! She's joined by her overly protective helicopter friend Mari whose personality is out here collecting toxic personality traits like they're goddamn Pokemon cards, and thus we have our core cast. The series then weaves the budding romance of our two leads within the slice of life flow of the story, occasionally developing other character threads in tandem of each other with some incremental payoff and reward.

A lot of my frustration with reading this series is rooted in the cesspool of cringe that it tries to pass off as lighthearted at best and quirky at worst. Within the opening chapters, we've already been exposed to grooming, a non-consensual kiss, unhealthy possessiveness, and a dude who was close to breaking up with his girlfriend because she dyed her hair a different color. This display spans across pettiness to literal assault, and we didn't even reach chapter 5 yet.

The pair of characters that encapsulate the absolute worst in this series are Matsunaga and Mari. Mari's possessiveness towards Anna manifests in her obsessively territorial bullshit that antagonizes anyone that remotely looks in their direction, and she's quickly pigeonholed as being the fun little wrench to sabotage our hopeless romantic MC's rose-tinted goals without any room for redeemability. Her obsession with Anna stems from the fact that she was the only person who wasn't immediately turned-off by her shit abrasive personality, and we soon learn that her desire to monopolize every waking second of Anna's attention is rooted in her unrequited crush towards her. Enter Matsunaga, who being aware of this unrequited crush, begins to fall for her and decides to take the reasonable route byproceeding to force himself on her in a multitude of figurative and literal ways in every moment they share together. The story attempts to develop their connection in earnest as some genuine romantic thread, but fails miserably at accomplishing anything more than making me wince with every passing line of dialogue exchanged between the two.

These two not only encapsulate the worst tropes this series had to offer, but their dynamic is reflective of the absence of any substantial character development. Most tension and drama in the series highlighted character shortcomings, but the resolutions failed to inspire tangible growth among its cast. Instead of fostering positive change, we just see the characters insulated in their toxic traits as the story just sweeps them under the rug without meaningfully challenging them. This uninspired character writing seeps into the romance, which presents itself as vibrant and tantalizing as skim milk with textbook milestones such as hanging out one-on-one and riding together on a Ferris wheel taking the place of any remotely substantial personal interaction.

The story's biggest strength in the nucleus of the main guy characters riffing off each other was a double-edged sword that took focus and time away from developing the main love interest, our lovely Anna herself. As a result, she has the personality of single-ply toilet paper whose only point of tension in the entire series manifests as not knowing what it means to be in love. This fed into the lackluster romance of the two characters, with low-hanging dopamine hits serving as breadcrumbs and marks of progress.

All in all, Nijiro Days tries to be a fun and wholesome romantic slice of life series, but gets too lost in the sauce with trying to maintain its lighthearted tone that it forgoes meaningfully challenging any of the characters on their problematic shortcomings, and instead challenging its readers' threshold for unsavory tropes and uninspired romance. It's yet another mediocre entry that scratches the itch for fans of the genre on a surface level at best.