Himitsu no Recipe

Himitsu no Recipe/The Secret Recipe has a lot of things other reviewers have had problems with. Its humour is farcical, some of the events are "ecchi" in a very light way. But mainly, one of the main characters is very problematic. This was towards the end of the 2000s, when morally ambivalent characters weren't very common at all, and especially in yuri manga. This came out two years before 𝘞𝘢𝘵𝘢𝘴𝘩𝘪 𝘨𝘢 𝘔𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘪 𝘯𝘰 𝘸𝘢 𝘋𝘰𝘶 𝘒𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘢𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘮𝘰 𝘖𝘮𝘢𝘦𝘳𝘢 𝘨𝘢 𝘞𝘢𝘳𝘶𝘪! and the problematic MC starts out as a popular girl like Watamote's Atsuka and ends up being nearly as cringeworthy as Kuroki Tomoko. I'd hate to give spoilers. It'sover-the-top humour, somewhat slapstick in the manzai fashion, with the other main character, the tiny and young looking but actually high school senior president of the cooking club thwacking the other MC with a ladle instead of a fan. The club president is mostly straightforward, you actually see more of her thoughts than the freshman who bedevils her. She needs the girl for head count, and in hopes her popularity will rub off on the club, which she's worried about failing under her leadership, but the girl, Wakatsuki, is the bane of her daily existence. Yet, that freshman girl is very much not what she appears to be (except for being quite unwise). She's way more manipulative and planned out than anyone guesses. She also suffers in silence behind a perfect facade. Entirely due to the power of love, Wakatsuki is completely wrecked, and seeing her hit bottom and give up on life is quite a touching spectacle. But it's only after that that the series becomes light-hearted and fuzzy again. When Watamote came out, Tomoko reminded me a lot of Wakatsuki. As a self-destruction and rebirth story, it also vaguely reminds me of Welcome to the NHK, only a much lighter more humorous story.