My monster secret
I'm going to head this off by apologizing in advance as i write these off the cuff. I will absolutely say rude things that i don't fully mean. That being said. If you genuinely enjoy this manga from a critical perspective, you need to read more romcom. At every point that i can possibly think of, this manga falls apart at the seams. The romance is non-existent, the characters are bland, the story is contrived, and totally asinine, and this doesn't consider the comedy as that is even more subjective than the horrible writing. I'm gonna do what i normally do and go 1 by 1 on each point. I'll talk about the characters first as that feeds into the other points. Why are there so many characters? While i can still remember them, I'll list as many as i can. Kuromine, youko, shima, oka, sakura, nagisa, mikan, shiho, shirou, akane, koumoto, touko, genjirou, shirogane, shirayuki, rin, mei, yuka, and ryo. Out of the 19 names listed here, i will remember none of them. None of them have enough of an actual character for me to remember them by. None of them feel like they're characters at all, in fact. They feel more like walking tropes or plot devices. "The childhood rival." "The perverted one." "The love interest." "The rejected one brought back." It's like reading a character sheet. They're the things listed that you can see and nothing more. No nuance. No exceptions. This is especially disappointing since some of the main group seemingly have some nuance that wants to be applied. Shiho, nagisa, asahi, and youko. (not mikan) Instead of having any nuance to their characters, the easy route gets taken. They're either reduced to comic relief or get used in a pointless romance scene. Shiho is the biggest offender. I won't explain why. Just know that i despise what was done with her. It's not impossible to have a massive cast and have each character be just enough. Gintama and one piece juggle even larger casts and even something like 7seeds has a massive cast and does well too. A lot of why these characters suck is because most of them barely exist outside the realm of asahi. Sakura and his minor plotline have nothing to do with asahi. That's it. 1 character and their story don't involve the main character in some capacity. With a cast of over 19 characters, that's absolutely absurd. These characters revolve around asahi. These characters don't exist without him. Asahi is a chosen one. Now for the romance. It's just as boring as the characters. Asahi and Youko have no chemistry beyond a surface level. They like each other because...? There's really any reason for them to like each other specifically. Especially on Asahi's side. He likes youko for solely surface level reasons. He thinks her mannerisms are cute. If I'm not mistaken, that's quite literally it. It could be said that they both like each other because they're both hard workers for their goals, but that hardly means anything about themselves and each other. Asahi learns youko's secret and decides to keep it for her because he already likes her. Because he tries so hard to keep the secret youko eventually falls in love with him. That's it. There's nothing here. They don't like each other for any real reasons. Not every romance needs deep reasoning for the romance to work, but it at least needs something. I'll give examples. Take Lovely Complex. The main couple there don't actually like each other at first. They get made fun of at school for being at each others throats all the time, and it is reasonably shown that a relationship can't suddenly blossom from that. It has to be worked at slowly. Take something semi-related with Maid-Sama. Opposites attract and learn to better themselves because of the simply vastly different worlds they live in. Hell, take Hana Yori Dango where the same thing can be said. Hana Yori Dango has a better love story than this. A good romance shows why each partner likes each other. Even at a surface level, there can be conflict that will show flaws with the relationship and characters and what the couple needs to overcome if they truly love each other. When their thoughts infect each others mind and they cherish any moment they can possibly get. The time apart and the normality of being together. My monster secret is what you get when you make two dolls kiss and say they love each other. We are not shown how much they actually like each other. There's minor conflict with Daddy genjirou, but Mother touko is immediately all for it for some reason. The whole "keeping her secret so she can graduate like a normal student" isn't a good enough conflict. Even the fluffy and sweet moments feel hollow. They go on dates and do little cutesy things, sure, but that doesn't mean anything between two characters that, by all rights, have no chemistry. It's a matter of convincing the audience, or rather me, that these 2 actually like each other for each other and not just because they do. We need the rom in this romcom, and no one else can fulfill that sentiment. It's a wish fulfillment romcom with an airheaded love interest that will give you all of your desires. This doesn't even consider the harem aspects. Then there was the story. For the most part, the story revolves around asahi and youko's relationship. As they are human and vampire, they have some logistics to figure out. Or at least they would if asahi wasn't so "ride or die". They don't care that they are different from each other more so than that they care about what their friends think. This is why asahi needs to try so hard to keep the secret. Humans and inhumans can't live together without major sacrifice. The inhumans will be shunned by humans. This part of the story is fine. Akane plays a major role in it as she is the one to force a plan to have humans and inhumans live together in a school and make friends with each other. I don't really have much to say about the story because this is really all there is to it. 22 volumes, and that's all we get. So, while the story outside of the romance is admittedly fine, there's so little of it that it registers as just a minor blip on the radar. A tropical fish in a dead sea. So, the story with the romance. It's just not good. Whenever any progress with the characters is made, there has to be something to set them back. A new character gets introduced, a filler chapter, or a side quest in something for the future. For the longest time, the story bounces all over the place. 1 step forward 2 steps back. Until something is forcibly done to make the characters actually move. When things aren't happening, you can practically see a big pause button being hit. Things got too serious, and we need a noodle war or a meteor scare. This is a rom*com*, after all. The chain of events will be broken to tell a joke. A lot of serious moments get undermined by the breaks for jokes as well. Asahi needs to confess soon, or the timing isn't right? Let's do a sports festival or have every minor character come out of the woodwork to stop him for no reason. It'll happen eventually, so it's fine. No need for urgency. As much as people praise this manga for having the couple fully confess about halfway through, that should be the norm instead of the exception. Even romance shojo has its outliers with "will they won't they" stories, but a vast majority have the couple confess early on, and the rest focuses on the relationship. That's been done for so long that it shouldn't be praiseworthy anymore. This is a manga from 2014. It doing the bare minimum for a romcom and getting universal praise almost exclusively because of that is where i draw a line. It's a shame, because shojo romance does this a lot more and a lot better, and yet we still hold shonen romance up to a different, lower standard, and why is that something praiseworthy for a shonen manga but not for all the shojo manga that do it? (Thank you no one) If no, you need to expand your horizons. Read some basics like Kimi Ni Todoke or Ao Haru Ride. This story has aspects that are praiseworthy other than the confession. Japan is a homogeneous country, and art is rarely ever that much different from each other. "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down." This would be a good excuse 30 years ago, not 10. Inuyasha, sword art online, fist of the north star, karakuri circus, even yu yu hakusho has a light romance. "Those aren't romance focused manga!" I hear you saying. Alright, fair. Then how about kaguya-sama, horimiya, solanin, honeymoon salad, and bonnoji. The whole "confession halfway through" thing has stopped being praiseworthy since the 90s. Praise the ones that do it, sure. It should be encouraged. Just don't call a manga a masterpiece because of that alone. This romance story isn't that great. Again, this is entirely ignoring the fact that it is a harem romance. I'm sure it's pretty evident that i don't like this manga. If you do, that's totally fine. I'm not gonna admonish you for enjoying something. I will ask you to look at this manga and ask yourself why you do enjoy it. If it's the characters, then why do you enjoy such blank slates? If it's the romance, then why do you enjoy a pairing with such little chemistry? If it's the story, then why do you enjoy a stop and go format? Even if it's solely for the comedy, why do you enjoy it? These are genuine questions i want you to ask yourself. In my reading, i felt nothing for this manga about halfway through on. Not happy, sad, angry, or even a modicum of fun. Every 5 volumes or so there would be one joke that'd make me laugh and I'd go back to straight facing through the rest. There are better manga out there. Better romance, better comedy, better story, better combination. Don't praise this as being the best because it does the bare minimum. You deserve more. I've given plenty of examples of other manga that do 1 or more aspects of what this manga does but better. Read those manga and prove me wrong.
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