Sougou Tovarisch

All you need to read is a few chapters and you can distinctly tell that this is an Iri Arata story because Arata sure loves their side characters. Tovarisch is Russian for comrade, friend, companion and so on and so forth; adding “Comprehensive” in front of that certainly makes for an interesting title. The series is pretty comprehensive when it comes to the different types of characters that are around but the relationships themselves are also quite comprehensive. To sum that up, the pairings are 100% legitimate. Yuu Hazaoka and Kanna Kirigami are the stars of the series and with good reason, they’re interesting, lovableand steal the show whenever they’re the focus. Unfortunately, the series suffers precisely from lacking that focus. Don’t get me wrong, I can see why Arata wanted to flesh out the rest of their cast of characters but the main issue is the fact that the series has only 13 listed chapters. The other characters receive the focus in the short chapters called “Break Time” and there’s 10 total of those (not including the 4-koma one), so while they technically don’t take away screentime from Yuu and Kanna, they make up just as much of the series as the main story. The characters themselves are colorful and it’s quite easy to see why they’d be polarizing; I could live with the “four stooges” that got most of the “Break Time” spotlight but I didn’t care for most of the student council that was introduced later. So if you find the other characters annoying or unlikable then it’s understandable why this series wouldn’t be very appealing to you. Full credit to Arata though, this series is most definitely not yuri bait. It feels like the bare minimum to praise something like this but those who’ve been hurt before know the pain of a good pairing that finishes with subtext (at most). The pacing towards an actual defined Yuu x Kanna relationship might not have been as great as it could’ve been but the fact that it gets there is definitely satisfying - and the extras after chapter 13 that feature them directly contribute to that. Not to mention that the other characters get their own cute moments with their respective partners. Overall, these relationships are the main draw of the story. This is a series I wanted to love because Yuu and Kanna are seriously such a nice pairing but every time I revisit it I can only come to the conclusion that I liked it. It is truly a shame that the end of Tsubomi, the magazine in which this series was serialized in, caused the series to also end as I do think it had the potential to be a very enjoyable story. The artstyle is cute, I’m partial to Yuu as a whole, and I like Kanna’s energy so I ended up giving this a 7.5/10. I’ve completed 2 rereads of this and I’m sure I’ll come back to it again even though I don’t think it’s anything too special.