Strawberry Fields Once Again

Story: 5 To get it out of the way, this story has time travel and timeline shenanigans which is already a red flag because it is a concept that is hard to form into a coherent plot element, and it is certainly very outlandish for a romance story. Pure introduces herself to Akira as her future lover from 6 or 7 years in the future and this is fine and all because at first, it just seems like this is how Pure is trying to flirt with Akira. However, things start to change because we are introduced to the element of timelines and time travel asan actual concept in the story. Akira’s brother, Ruri, seemingly appears out of thin air, despite having not been since for about the first half of the story, with the goal of trying to interfere with Pure and Akira’s relationship while also trying to fix another timeline for his own goals with a literal time machine that he built. With Ruri interfering with the timelines to have things go his way, it creates multiple points in the story where the setting/scene shifts to a completely new one. There are so many timelines that appear in front of your face in the story that you quite literally have to go back and reread slowly to understand what is going on. If we look beyond the timeline elements in the plot, the romance isn’t really that great either. Pure and Akira are an unlikely couple from an outside perspective, and while it would be very cute to see Akira warm up to Pure, that is all cut short because of the timeline shenanigans that occur, which is unfortunate. The timeline stuff is like the boogie man in the storyーnot only is it very confusing, but it is also a massive hindrance to the romantic developments that have occurred. Characters: 6 The characters aren’t that great. The only characters that we mainly focus on are Akira and Pure, of course, but the rest of the characters that have any assemblance of plot relevance are very haphazardly thrown into the story without any prior story elements leading up to their appearance. There isn’t any real character development that really occurs outside of a “change of heart.” I mean, you could argue that Akira falling in love with Pure after having claimed that she will not get involved with 3D romance is character development, but that really went nowhere because of the whole implementation of the timeline stuff in the plot. The changes in the timelines pretty much reset any character development that had already occurred. This results in Akira and Pure pretty much being close to total strangers (for the most part) to each other until the climax of the story. The other plot relevant characters like Ruri do affect the plot, but their characters just aren’t explored well enough. We see very little presence from the other plot relevant characters outside of Pure and Akira, so you really don’t know much about them until they actually come back into the scene. Art: 7 The Art is fine. Don’t have anything against it, and I don’t really have much to compliment about it either. Overall: 6 This manga is absolutely all over the place. Characters are pretty much being randomly added into the story and the whole idea of time travel and timelines really messes up comprehension of the plot as well as messing up characters themselves and their development. Is it something that I would reread? No. I feel like it is a stretch to really say that this is good. I believe that this manga is alright, leaning towards the lower end of the spectrum. It is an absolute headache trying to understand what is going on, and even once you understand what is going on, you aren’t greeted with a well written and well executed story either.