Domestic Girlfriend

Domestic Girlfriend (DG for short) is a series that I picked up one day on a whim after seeing a trailer for it on YouTube. I went into it without looking up a synopsis, and had no idea what I was getting myself into. And boy, was it one hell of a ride. I've had my ups and downs with this series, mostly relating to shitty waifu wars that, with time, I grew out of, and came to love this for it's story and presentation instead of just a batch of characters. This series is controversial, both for it's initial premisce and ending (we'll get ontothat later). We have alot to talk about, so let's get going! (WARNING: Spoilers for the ending in it's own section at the end of the review, review ends at "Enjoyment" section) // Story : 9/10 From the get-go, DG has a very interesting story that got me (and alot of others) instantly hooked. Natsuo finds himself with 2 new sisters, his teacher Hina, whom he has a crush on, and Rui, the girl he lost his virginity to. This may seem very unrealistic, and it is, i'll give you that, but the situations they end up in tend to teeter on the edge of realistic and unrealistic most of the time. The drama feels real though, and you start to feel for the characters. They are faced with important and life changing decisions that lead to pretty great character development. I do have to adress the fact that there are stronger arcs than others. Some arcs can feel forced and "too unrealistic", especially towards the last few stages of the story, more on that in the "spoiler" part of the review. I would've given the story a 10/10 if not for these dips in quality, there are alot of side-character arcs that, in my opinion, are just not all that captivating. I came to see the main trio and how they develop, not to see side-characters that I can't get attached to. That doesn't mean that all the side character arcs are bad, don't get me wrong, some are genuinely brilliant, some just feel unnecessary or forced. // Art : 9/10 If there is one aspect where Kei Sasuga stands out in compared to any other mangaka in the romance/drama section today, it has to be in the art department. DG starts off with average looking art. It isn't anything spectacular, but still pretty decent. However, with time, Sasuga's art gets more refined, and by the end of the story, it is absolutely amazing to look at. If I had to compare it to another series with great art, I think it's on par with the art in the currently releasing Bakemonogatari manga adaptation, it's genuinely amazing, and some scenes from the newer chapters left me stunned. I didn't give this section a 10/10 either, as the art isn't always this amazing. As I said, it takes a bit to get amazing, which is why I genuinely hope that Sasuga has another project after DG, seeing something start off with that art style would be insane. Overall, a very clean and polished art style that gets better as the years went on. // Characters : 10/10 This section is where the community for DG is split. There is an insane amount of characters in this series, so i'll stick to the ones I think are relevant, meaning the main trio of Hina, Natsuo and Rui. I would've done a part for side-characters, but that would spoil certain arcs and take too much time, as I don't necessarily remember all of them and their progression throughout the story. Let's talk about our main trio of Hina, Natsuo and Rui. It's hard for me to do this section without spoilers, as if I want to detail their growth, there's gonna be spoilers, which is why i'll say things, but without mentionning who i'm talking about, to try to keep this as spoiler-free as I can. This first character goes from a shy, anti-social person to someone who is able to do whatever they can to realise their dream. Not my favorite character by far, but their progression is very respectable. They go from wanting what another has out of pure selfishness, to being able to give up this feeling of jealousy. This second character is harder to develop on, in my opinion. They go from a typical character for this archetype, who doesn't want to give in to their real feelings to a character who is willing to accept sacrifice and gives in, a beautiful progression, in my opinion. This third and last character for the trio goes from your average, run of the mill person, to someone who can live from their dream, who didn't give up despite what they could've been through. Be warned that this character can be considered a "wimp", my least favorite of this trio. // Enjoyment : 10/10 This section is going to be entirely about what I think of the series, meaning it's going to feature my opinion, so please take what i'll say with a pinch of salt. I've had my ups and downs with this series. When I first started reading it around mid-late March 2019, I was fully into the "waifu wars", i'd go onto discords and rage-debate who was better while defending my favorite waifu from this series, and I eventually ended up "hating" this series due to the "poor treatment" of my waifu. In retrospect, that was so stupid, not because of the ending, but just because I think that I took this way too seriously, and alot of people still do. At the end of the day, this is a manga meant for entertainment, to distract us from the real world and to get us immersed in a different one, and this one managed to do that for me. I sort of "dropped" this series around mid-July, reading some spoilers and sometimes some of the chapters, but in January 2020, I did some thinking and thought that there had to be a reason behind why I got into it this much, so I went back and re-watched the anime, and purchased all of the available physical copies of the manga in my country, and fell in love with it all over again, this time not for the waifu wars or just the characters, but for the narrative and presentation. This manga really has changed my life, it's the first time i've followed a series for this long, and it ending left a void in me, but a warm, fuzzy void, a feeling that it wasn't necessarily over, that i'd still be tied to this story and that I wouldn't forget about it anytime soon. For that, I want to thank Kei Sasuga for writing such an amazing story. // SPOILER SECTION // So, a few words about the ending. Yes, as some of you may have guessed by now, i'm a Hina fan. I'm going to be completely honest in what I say here: I'm fine with this ending, and no, it's not because my waifu "won". I can't even call this a "victory", I don't like Natsuo, but clearly she does, so i'll ship them, plus they look nice together. However, I do wish that it had happened some other way instead of having her put into a coma and Marie telling Natsuo about her feelings. If she had confessed herself before the Okunugi arc and Natsuo made up his mind during the coma, it would've been much better that way already. I won't dwell on this too much as this is more of something for debate in a discussion, but oh well, Thanks for reading if you made it here!

I tried to avoid spoilers, plot summary, and other things, but still, something can be considered as such, so read all of the following at your own risk. The success of a work often depends on its finale. After all, an unsuccessful ending can easily disappoint readers, leave an unpleasant "aftertaste". I didn't want to write a review of this manga right after I finished reading it. I thought that after some time after the final chapters my opinion of the manga would improve and I would give a higher score. And so it happened. I initially rated this as a 3. But anyway, I just can'tscore it higher than 4 and still think that the author of "Domestic Girlfriend" failed the ending. And I'm not the only one who thinks so. The scores drop from 7.71 before the final arc to 7.32 at the time of writing this review say a lot. And it doesn't matter which girl you were rooting for. Just a warning. Whatever you do, if you haven't read the manga yet, I recommend do not read it. But if you are going to start reading it anyway, don't get attached to any of the manga girls. I'm really used to love reading this story till the last arc. But since chapter 265, the story has fallen off the cliff in the most contrived nonsensical way imaginable. This, two cheap timeskips, discarded development of all the characters, the inability of the MC stand by his choice, denial of fatherhood, family values, and even love, the replacement of all the above with the word "Fate" make DomeKano one of the worst manga I ever read. The author came up with too good a love triangle, but not how to solve it and instead of a well-thought-out drama, insight into the characters, conflict resolution and choice of sides, in the end we are getting an unnatural, artificial plot twist so moldy and formulaic that the nuclear compartment of the teams of both ships just explode (well, unless their goal was just to see their girl won no matter how it was done). It does leave the feeling that the manga was completed in a hurry, and it's really strange, with such number of chapters and a pile of fillers. May be the author wanted to please everyone, but it didn't work out. Readers have already compared the ending of this manga to the ending of "Game of Thrones". It's really just as bad, if not worse. From the manga positive points I can note artwork. The art is quite good and detailed for weekly manga, although not awesome one and exaggerated happy faces with wide open mouths do not look very good. P.S. Out of all the gals who had to deal with Natsuo, Momo the most fortunate than anybody in the manga. For some reason I doubt the possibility of the second season of the anime.

It’s like a unicorn —at first, it seems amazing. You’re like, ‘Wow, this is great!’ The unicorn’s got sparkles rainbows, and magic, you’re convinced everything’s going to be perfect. But then, halfway through, you realise it’s actually just eating all the food, gave you covid, and that our lord and most gracious Bukayo Saka (the goat) gets injured. I hate this manga so much. I love this manga so much. Truly the greatest piece of fiction of all time, Shakespeare could never. Story is completely unpredictable at times, completely predictable at others. This is done beautifully sometimes. terribly other times. I love this art style. Many ofthe side characters were basic, and lacked depth, a few stood out, however. I hate all the main characters. The main characters all had great development and depth at times. I love all the main characters. Characters reacted to situations in a completely stupid manner sometimes. Characters reacted to situations in a completely amazing, unpredictable, beautiful manner other times. I think everyone will either love this series, hate this series, or a bit of both. It's difficult to believe that people won't have any strong opinion on this manga whatsoever. It is something of a rollercoaster Nothing I can say will portray this manga properly. You will understand after reading this. This is peak fiction, truly the goat of all romance mangas, my personal favourite, I would recommend this to everyone. Truly a 100/10

This is absolutely the definition of “What are you doing step bro, this is so wrong”. Well in a way, I guess. Reading through all the chapters all the way to the end was a train wreck full of countless counts of facepalming, cringing, or the absolute face of disgust that makes you want to strangle someone. You ever get that feeling that you want to strangle someone just because of their shitty decision? Well that’s that feeling reading through all of this. Don’t even get me started with the shitty plo-- you know what let’s all calm it down for a second and start from scratch.A little backstory on my end here before starting this review, when I’ve read this manga, I already finished the anime adaptation of it and oh boy was it just as shitty as this one. Well one being the difference that the anime adaptation had a less time in developing the characters and including only the small part of the plot. And if you’ve watched the anime of this show and thought “Man, was that a shitty show” then you’re in for a shittier ride continuing onto the manga. Alright, let’s start with the plot. I’m sure you’ve read at least the synopsis of it so there’s no actual point in me telling you the synopsis. I also don’t want this to be any longer as I’ll probably just rant about how the MC is crap and so does the entire story, but we’ll get to that. The plot is nothing unique or anything new in any particular, in short it’s about a guy loving someone and apparently that “someone” is his teacher and apparently that “teacher” is his on to become new step sister after his father remarrying to their mother and apparently that “teacher” has a sister and that sister was apparently the one that was in the first story that f** the guy. And NOW they are living in the same roof. Yeah, what are you doing ste— All jokes aside, this plot itself is a mess, even reading the synopsis will make you go wut… A good plot needs to have, not only a good story but it also has to have a decent character development, flow, and overall, the way the story should be portrayed. Not rushed not too slow. For me the characters are important and that is usually the main drive that keeps me and the reader from – reading. Eventually at some point of the story the MC did grow for short amount of time, deciding which one is best and which are is not. But then again, ultimately leading to a bad route EVERY time he gets to choose one. Which then leads to frustration in our part. As the story progresses further, we get to see the MC picking side whether he’ll pick over step sister 1 or step sister 2, and again, always the wrong choice. It literary went back to back whenever he chooses one. It goes something like this: “Ok, I’ll pick step sister 1 because I love her most,” conflict* “Ok, I’ll pick step sister 2 then because she’s always there for me” another conflict* “Ok, apparently I love step sister 1 because I was too fucking blind to see the things she went through” and honestly we can keep going on and on and on. Its like the author gave up on his idea and let the readers pick which is the best girl so he’ll make the MC go for the most voted girl in a few chapters. Like a battle of the best onii-chan for the MC, absolute disaster fuck. Overall, I think that basically explains the plot. The plot had little to know any kind of decent development and it if it had, it usually tries to ruin it back with a few chapters. the timeline felt a bit rushed at some parts and I feel like some characters could have been a bit more exposed (my opinion), and overall, frustrating at its best. The art is alright it’s decent though. 7/10 So, the question is: is this manga recommendable? No. read something else. Overall, 4/10 Cheers.