Hantsu x Trash

Art is quite good. The males are ugly, but that was intentional. All the girls are beautiful, but they tend to look similar. They all have the same eyes. They're all plump, not that it's bad. But variety is always best. I tended to mistake some characters because of their similarities. It's supposed to be about water polo, but it's not. This is not a sports manga at all. Just ecchi. You would even think that it would be great, considering that the MC has a special weapon (like in other sports manga). Nope not all. I do not like the MC at all. He is simplybad. His attitude is unacceptable. He deserved what happened to him. There are some side stories that are completely worthless, does not contribute to the story at all. I wished they were never included. Character development is quite bad as well. They just do not change as well as they should be. Ending is quite meh. Not the best one there is, but at least the MC deserved such an ending. Anyway, I warn you, as of this writing, the last chapters are not translated to English. I spent an hour translating them in Google. I hope we could have a proper translation for this.

tl;dr: A decent manga when it’s just dumb ecchi and half assed water polo, but unbearable when it tries to have a plot. This manga is about the protagonist Hamaji joining a water polo club. Water polo is focused on at times, especially towards the beginning of the manga, but overall it doesn’t matter that much. There aren’t really any rivalries or epic matches or even any ability growth. To be honest, even after reading the entire manga, I’m not entirely confidant that I actually understand how water polo is played. So I absolutely wouldn’t consider this a sports manga. The primary purpose of water poloin this manga is just to have an excuse for everyone to constantly be splashing around in a pool. Did I mention the water polo club was co-ed? So there’s quite a bit of ecchi and the art is fantastic at ecchi so that manages to work out quite well. Throw in a healthy dose of good comedy, mostly ecchi comedy, and the manga could certainly be enjoyable at times. The problem is that the writing is atrocious when it’s taking itself seriously. For the first half of the manga it doesn’t feel like it takes itself seriously very often, but during the second half there is quite a lot of drama. The majority of it revolving around a love triangle between Hamaji, Hagiwara, and Hayami. Hagiwara is his senpai in the club and someone that he develops admiration and a crush on. Hayami is a girl that joins the club later in the manga and falls in love with Hamaji. It’s not like I dislike love triangles, but this one was just awful. The way things progress makes no sense and is miserably infuriating. The way characters behave at critical moments makes absolutely no sense in the context of the sequence of events that led them there. It half feels like it’s trying to gaslight the reader or something. Pretty much everyone comes out looking like an unlikable idiot. I liked Hayami and really wanted to keep liking her, but I just couldn’t. The ending is ultimately completely unsatisfying. Also, the art has much less ecchi when it’s trying to take itself seriously, and the art isn’t all that great outside of ecchi, so that results in the art being worse as well. I will add as an addendum that according to the afterword, the mangaka had health issues during the second half and he too seemed unsatisfied with the series. So I don’t blame him. But as far as the manga goes, it is what it is.