Hana Michi Otome

With amateur-ish art and incomprehensible worldbuilding, this short work is barely worth the time it takes to read it. It's very much a product of its time and doesn't stand out in any way. There really isn't much to the story; it's SoL with barely developed characters. Half of it is spent on introducing the girls and then half is just the characters messing around, but since the manga is so short there's no room for anyone to stand out. The penultimate chapter is just a swimsuit contest used as an excuse to draw tons of cute girls, like they were side characters the author wantedto introduce and didn't have time for, and every single one of them is described with a generic harem trope. The main characters' power, which is hyped up in the first chapter, is barely relevant and nebulously defined. Hazuki and Aozakura can talk to flowers... but this ability is only useful to Hazuki once and is only mentioned three or four times. They can both also summon flowers out of nowhere for some reason and there is no attempt whatsoever to develop this. There's another character who can see baking fairies when she makes sweets and this is never relevant and only in text for like four pages. Also there's an entire chapter about a ghost where nothing happens except her explaining her backstory to Aozakura and then fading away. The entire thing stinks of chuunibyou, but not even in a fun way. I'm not familiar with the artist, but if I had to guess I would say this is probably either their first or second work, because the quality of the art is poor. It's very generic for its time period and the panelling work at times feels like an amateur experimenting with an unfamiliar medium. The worst offense of all is the way they draw breasts. Now, I'm not in the habit of looking at high school girls' chests- reading a work like this in the first place is a little out of my wheelhouse, but the fanservice isn't gregarious enough to be uncomfortable, so I powered through it. But oh my God, the way the girls are drawn is so distracting. They're like stickbugs with water balloons stapled to their chests and broken backs. As an artist, I couldn't help but be actively offended by it. If you're going to try to draw sexy or cute women or whatever, make sure they actually look like women. It's ridiculous. It's like the artist has never seen a real tit in their entire life. I got very little enjoyment out of this manga. It definitely wasn't for me. It's probably best just observed as a stepping stone in this artist's career. Here's hoping the quality of their work has improved over the past decade.