We Never Learn

I love romcoms, which is a nice way of saying: "I really love ecchi harems". Now, I don't need the ecchi, but I do like good ecchi. And I could go on and on about what, in my opinion, makes a good ecchi; and I will later.
90s and 00s ecchi harems are a big part of the reason why I am a manga reader. A lot of my first reads were part of that genre, Love Hina was one of my very first manga and since then I tried to consume the most I could of it. That's why I came across Nisekoi and I loved it, so I'm going to talk a little bit about it.
"Oh, but this is a We Never Learn review!" I hear you say, look don't downvote this, I swear I will talk about We Never Learn soon, I promise I'll write more than the minimum character count about it. Okay?
Okay, Nisekoi. I loved it, the characters, the comedy, the way that Naoshi Komi does visual comedy is just perfect. And Raku and Onodera, man, it hits me in the heart. And sure, the pacing is the most outrageous thing to ever exist, so I understand if you don't like Nisekoi, but rest does save it for me. Now if you do like Nisekoi there is another manga from mangaka Taishi Tsutsui that I recommend reading, it's... No, it's not We Never Learn. Look, we'll get into that soon, but first! Magical Patissier Kosaki-chan! A Nisekoi spin-off about Onodera being a Mahou Shoujo. It's a good read, but curiously, Nisekoi doesn't have any ecchi in it, but Tsutsui looked at it and said "No, we need boobs", so we get to see everyone naked in Kosaki-Chan. That's not why I'm rec'ing it, I just think it's pretty funny, but if you read Nisekoi and wanted nudity... well, there IS a solution. However, it's funny that Tsutsui wanted to write Nisekoi with ecchi, because as soon as he got a serialization in Jump, that's very much what he wrote. Yes, I'm talking about...
WE NEVER LEARN.
So let's get on it.

Some of you may argue that Quintessential Quintuplets is a more apt comparison, since We Never Learn tells us the story of Nariyuki, a very poor boy who is given a chance to enter a big university, all he needs is to tutor two beautiful girls, with others joining later on. And yes, it's very similar in plot to Quintuplets, who was released just a couple months after We Never Learn started, but both are handled completely differently.
We Never Learn is more of an episodic manga, with each chapter having Nariyuki with one, or more, of the girls in funny situations or misunderstanding, with a lot of visual/reactionary comedy, very similar to Nisekoi. Of course, a lot of that comedy comes from ecchi situations this time around, except it's more the girls that end realizing just how riské the situation is, and it's our main character that ends up being oblivious to a lot of what's happening. This helps give We Never Learn a more wholesome and innocent feel than most ecchi manga. Which, yeah, is exactly the ecchi I like.
Rather than just have girls be naked due to situations just because you want to show them naked, We Never Learn's ecchi is made for the comedic effect and more often than not, ends up advancing the plot of that particular chapter. Although it does have ecchi in pretty much every chapter, I also would argue that it never exaggerates, contrary to... Magical Patissier Kosaki-chan! And I guess that makes sense, as this is a full on Weekly Shounen Jump series.. but then Ayakashi Triangle also exists.

The strongest point of the manga, however, is the characters. As tends to be the case in both manga that I like, and good romcoms. Ecchi harems generally work only if they have a good cast of female characters, and while WNL does include the ever annoying little sister who wants to marry her brother, she is just a minor part of the cast, and the real female leads are great. At first we have only Fumino and Ogata, who perfectly balances each other in terms of personality, strong points and breast size, Fumino being the best student in liberal arts, but horrible at math, and Ogata, which is a genius at math and horrible at liberal arts, which wouldn't be a problem if both didn't want to follow courses in their respective weaknesses. That's the gist of the first couple chapters, but soon Nariyuki's childhood friend, Uruka, appears, which is a sports freak, but needs better grades all around, and finally Asumi, a part-timer worker who is in the same cram school class as Nariyuki. Finally, the last main female character doesn't really study, in fact Kirisu is the teacher. Each chapter generally follows Nariyuki and of these five as we learn more about them through funny shenanigans. Each of them has their own personalities which fits greatly with their goals and respective strong and weak points, and their character designs.
I do think that the artstyle of the characters in general is good from chapter 1, but to me it does only get better and better, because it slowly morphs into a rounder, cuter, nicer version of the original designs, so much so that I kinda don't like looking at early WNL now. The biggest difference is probably seen in Nariyuki. I do think the later artstyle fit the manga style more, as it does help with that innocence feel that I mentioned earlier. Also the mangaka took notes from Nisekoi's Naoshi Komi, because the visual comedy and the character reaction are fantastic. I especially love Rizu's Grump face.

But while harem manga may give you the feeling that it's all about the girls, a good main character can do wonders for the manga, and that's where Nariyuki comes in. At first glance Nariyuki may not look that different from the normal main harem characters, and I'd even argue that he is NOT that different, but he's one of the more well executed.
Nariyuki is tasked to help these characters and that's what he does. Pretty much everything he does he does it for the female characters, constantly helping them in daily activities and in fighting for their dreams, and it feels genuine. One of the hardest things in harems is to make a believable reason for every single female character to like a guy who, generally speaking, tends to be a massive loser. It helps a lot that Nariyuki isn't a loser, and his obliviousness, to a point, for anything perverted helps as well. I have no problems in understanding how every single one of the girls ended up liking him or admiring him. Because I did too. By virtue of being the main character he has the slowest character development of the cast, but he still has it in the end, which makes me have no problem in declaring him one of the best main characters in the genre.

However, probably the biggest problem in the manga is the early middle part. The manga very rarely develops past the slice-of-life comedy situations with ecchi flavour. I wouldn't say that this manga has pacing problems, I think the story evolves at a nice pace, but it can get tiresome for some, specially for people who have a low tolerance for ecchiness. But if you manage to keep up till the second half I would say that you'd be rewarded. Not to say that the manga evolves and changes much, it very much stays true to its genre, but it does start to explore more the goals of the main cast, and that's when this manga turned from "fun ecchi harem" to "one of the best in the genre". By this point we are already familiar with what each female character wants, but we start to explore more about why they want it and how far they are willing to go for it.
It helps a lot at developing the female characters and making them even better. Because they are not just generic personalities like yandere, tsundere, and they are not just there to be ecchi victims and have the audience declare who is the better "waifu". No, they are deep and have reasons and goals and more things to them than just romance and sex appeal. I think that is a good example of a shounen manga handling female characters right, and from an ecchi manga nonetheless. And it doesn't take much, all it does is give them something they are working for for themselves and not just for the boy.
The core message of the manga is to study, if you couldn't tell from the title. To work hard for our dreams, and sure, the message is present in a lot of battle shounens, but personally I relate more to a girl who's struggling with math, but really needs it for the degree she wants, than a pirate using his rubber powers to punch marines in order to reach an hidden island. And I tell you "needing to study for your goals" is a good lesson to have. It's not too different from what your parents and teachers may tell you, the difference is that We Never Learn never feels preachy about it. It just has people doing their best and it makes us want to do it too.

Finally I wanted to talk a little bit about the ending, I will try to not spoil anything major, but if you rather go in blind, then you can skip this part.

I have one problem with the ending, and it's the fact that it has multiple ones. The truth is that over the course of the manga, while the romance between the girls to Nariyuki was well developed, the feelings of Nariyuki for the girls kinda wasn't. You reach the final part without really any idea of who the final girl may be, or if there will be one.
Of course, then the mangaka pulls multiple routes and has Nariyuki end up with all of them, each on their own little arc.
The first route isn't too bad, it connects with the main story perfectly. And I'd say that actually, for most of the routes, it did a good job at developing Nariyuki's romance between the characters in 9 chapters. The third route does it better because I think it was the one with more roots on the main story, and the fourth route is my overall favourite as I think tells the better story. The second one... is bad. It really doesn't develop the romance at all and just spends 9 chapters following what feels like a side story.

But what I enjoy the most out of the routes is their variety. It would be easier to just pull an Endless 8 style arc and just have every route being slight variations of the others, but each route takes place in a different time, different location, developing different characters and different things that had been left unsolved in the main story. It makes each story feel interesting even if it's not your favourite girl's route. The final chapter actually does a good job at connecting everything, which I wouldn't think possible, but it's great to be proven wrong. Yet, it still feels a bit of a cop-out, while I don't hate the ending as is, I'd very much appreciate a real decision from Tsutsui's part.

But alas, We Never Learn has a few moments in it's run that could use some perfecting, but I do think it's overall pretty great. It's called very often a Nisekoi spiritual successor and the influence is very visible, but I do think Tsutsui took notes of some of Nisekoi's flaws and didn't make the same mistakes.
The result is a great romcom, and a great harem ecchi. I think it's one that can be enjoyed by people who aren't fans of the genre, and specially if someone wants to read an harem with good female characters there is nothing wrong in going with We Never Learn.