Coming from the anime, I already had an idea of what I was getting into. My blurb for the review I gave for the anime on Anilist was “While being one of the most average anime that I’ve ever watched, it still was enjoyable”. On that front, the manga held up. While it did take me almost a month to get to where the anime adaptation ended, I still read about one chapter a night, not fully immersing into the story, but at the same time not disinterested enough to drop it. I could have skipped to where the anime ended to save myself the slog of reliving the adapted parts of the manga, but I felt like I would be cheating myself by doing that. Once I arrived in Paris (in the manga), my reading pace picked up. This was uncharted territory, and as such was entertaining to read, even if the quality of the story was the same.

If you’re a fish out of water and haven’t watched the anime before deciding to read the manga, I’ll briefly summarize the plot for you: Masamune Makabe, our main character, after eight years of rigorous training deep in rural Japan, has returned as the ‘perfect young man’ (handsome, good grades, athletic, etc.) While Makabe wants to give off the air of ‘The Dreamy Transfer Student’, no one else knows that this is all the culmination of his eight-year-long training. Why did he train? It’s because of Aki Adagaki, the ‘Most Popular Girl At School’, and Masamune’s one-time childhood friend. Masamune ran away to his grandfather’s home to start his training after being rejected and being called ‘Pig’s Foot’ by a then-young Aki. Along with that, Makabe was constantly tormented for being a fat rich child. If he was in America, he would have definitely been nicknamed ‘Porky Pig’. That aside, those events, especially Aki rejecting him, was traumatizing to the point of Makabe spending half of his life in a remote part of Japan. His plan now is to get ‘revenge’ on her by swooning her into going out with him, and then humiliating her by dumping her. I’m writing this review from the point of view of someone who’s attempting to compare and contrast the manga from the anime, so if you haven’t watched the anime left, or have no interest in it and only want to know if the manga is worth reading, then this review might not be the best for you.

One great quality, probably the best quality of them all, about Masamune-kun is that the manga has great pacing. I’m not exactly the most experienced manga reader, but my experience in reading other rom-com manga has been damaged by pacing issues. Whether it is due to the manga seemingly ending all in a sudden, like The Quintessential Quintuplets, or are perpetually stuck in motion, like Rent-A-Girlfriend at the time of writing this. The mangaka makes a comment on ‘love comedy manga’ in Chapter 32, having Makabe say “A love comedy, you see, is 80% finished, once the love becomes mutual”. To their credit, the mangaka does stick to what Makabe said. A romantic comedy has to teeter the fine line of ‘teasing’ without it becoming pedantic, but must not also have its conclusion come too soon, since then it might become boring, which in some cases can be worse than being bad. Of course, this rule isn’t etched in stone, or is even necessary in some cases, but it works well with Masamune-kun. If I wanted to be negative here, I could further push my narrative that this reinforces that Masamune-kun is one of the most average anime/manga series that I’ve ever read, but that would be unfair. The general pacing of Masamune-kun keeps it interesting enough to not make it a slog to read. Its relative shortness (with the caveat of longer chapters) makes it easier to digest. It’s also a finished product, so you know you’re not getting into something that might waste your time for the next few years and have you wondering why you started reading it in the first place.

With that being said, the real question here is: Is the story better than in the anime? Like I said in the review of the anime, the story was one of the most average that I’ve ever witnessed--does the manga manage to become better? Well, on a technical level, yes, it does. The anime ended with “See you in Paris!”, alluding to the next arc. The anime cuts off here, and the god-awful OVA is pure fanservice for the diehards, leaving “See you in Paris!” to mean “Read the damn manga if you want to know what happens next!” The anime adapts the first 60% of the manga, and the manga has been officially translated in its entirety, so there’s no reason why you SHOULDN’T be able to read it (if you live in America at least). So, does the story reaching its conclusion change it from being ‘average’ to ‘good’ or ‘great’? Unfortunately for Masamune-kun, I can’t go that far.

It’s really tragic--Masamune-kun does everything correctly on a technical level: it keeps tension going throughout the series (to keep readers interested); it has its climax at the ‘right’ part, not too soon or too late; it doesn’t overstay its welcome, when it’s done telling its story it curtsies and leaves your home; and it doesn’t become so wild that it loses focus of the story at hand (the Masamune-kun wiki oversold how ‘wild’ the manga would get). It manages to get all of that ‘correct’, but fails to have a compelling story. One that will have you thinking about it for years to come. Masamune-kun doesn’t have this ‘staying factor’ that other, more memorable anime/manga series, have. While it’s not boring in any sense, Masamune-kun seems to be too focused on doing it ‘the right way’ and forgets that the series that are most remembered and highly rated are often the ones that break ‘the rules’ and forge their own. In playing it safe, Masamune-kun has avoided being ‘bad’ or becoming ‘boring’, but has become ‘forgettable’. I would also say that it has fallen into ‘anime purgatory’, but it being within the Top 200 Most Popular Anime on AniList (the manga being very close to being within the Top 100 Most Popular), that would be a lie. I don’t see anyone talk about Masamune-kun on social media, but that’s only anecdotal evidence and due to who I follow on Twitter.

The ending really reinforces the ‘paint-by-numbers’ nature of the series. It almost broke free and became something that would be worth remembering, but at the last moment reverted back to the default and called it a day. It’s fatalistic, which would be nothing new from a Japanese rom-com series, but still is disappointing to read. While it isn’t bad, I have to say that the ending is quite weak, and I would imagine have left more devoted readers on a sour note (depending on if they had a ‘favorite girl’, and who it was). One could call it an ‘ass-pull’, depending on how you took it. The ending is also very sudden, not like a cliffhanger, but you would expect that there would be a chapter or two after that. Technically, there is a whole volume after it, but it’s called a ‘sequel’, which focuses on wrapping up the loose-ends of seven of the characters. The flip-side of the ‘paint-by-numbers’ ending is that it isn’t rushed or prolonged. Even if it ends suddenly, it doesn’t end too soon.

A huge part of my review of the anime was focused on complaints--mostly trivial ones about the lack of research into ‘working out’ in relation to Makabe’s character. I’m glad to say that the series got better with this as time went on. Even to the point where Makabe talks about protein supplements! While the knowledge of ‘working out’ by the mangaka still seems pedestrian, it’s much better than the ‘Buy Low, Sell High’-tier of knowledge that was in the anime. For a series that was careful with how its plot was laid out, it still had some weird plot points that in hindsight never needed to be in there in the first place. The one that comes to mind is Makabe’s rashes that he occasionally got--while diving into why he got them in the first place would be too big of a spoiler, it’s disappointing that it got dropped as soon as it came in. There're also some characters that disappear completely as soon as their arc is over. I know that they were really never meant to be important characters, with the purpose of them being to force a progression of the story, but it still is odd how they disappear and never make a return.

Is Masamune-kun worth reading? If you’re here from the anime and want to see if the manga is worth reading, I’d say go ahead, give it a shot. The manga is relatively short and could be no-lifed within a day. It would give you closure, even if you hate the ending. If you haven’t watched the anime, then I would suggest that you watch it first, but either way is up to you. The manga, like the anime, is painfully average, only saved by the fact that it never goes off the rails or gets boring. There are better romance manga that you could read, but Masamune-kun is at least worth a shot. You should also read the ‘after stories’ after finishing the manga, since it will give you better closure and leave you more satisfied with the ending.