Eromanga-sensei

This is the manga adaptation of a light novel series. There was also an anime adaptation, which mainly adapted the first three volumes with random tidbits lifted from later volumes thrown in. This manga more straightforwardly adapts the first five volumes, though in the final stretch it’s also a mish mash of content from later volumes leading to an original ending. Overall, I would have to say the anime is better than the manga. However, the manga goes further and has a more definitive ending so it’s probably worth reading the manga in the absence of a translation of the light novels. The plot is centeredaround light novel author Masamune who lives solely with his step-sister Sagiri. Their single parents got married, thus making Masamune and Sagiri step-siblings. But not long after that their parents passed away. This traumatizes Sagiri and she turns into a hikikomori. Masamune does his best to support her, while also going to school, and serving as the breadwinner of the family. This sounds pretty depressing, but this manga is actually really lighthearted. It mostly just glosses over the dark parts. Originally, it seems that Sagiri wants nothing to do with Masamune with her refusing to interact with him at all. However, this turns around when Masamune discovers that unbeknownst to either of them, Sagiri is actually the illustrator for his light novels. With that their relationship starts improving, Sagiri’s condition starts improving, and they resolve to do their best to create a work together that gets an anime adaptation. In the process they also make a bunch of interesting friends, mainly other members of the light novel industry. Overall, the story centered around Masamune and Sagiri is decent enough. Masamune isn’t all that special, but he’s a good guy and within the context of the story that’s enough to make him a decent protagonist. Sagiri is much more unique, being a mish mash of a lot of different personality traits that come out in different circumstances, but that’s what makes her fun. The writing doesn’t really flesh out her out all that well but watching her slowly improve her mental state is still pretty satisfying. Her relationship with Masamune beyond that is pretty generic step-sibling romance, but the execution is solid. The ending was pretty rushed, but did a pretty good job at wrapping this up and I was satisfied with it. There’s a harem that forms around Masamune with mainly two other girls also falling in love with him, Elf and Muramasa. Both are larger than life characters, but they’re pretty much complete opposites in terms of personalities, so the resulting dynamic is really amusing. What makes this dynamic somewhat unique is that for the most part it’s much more open. In most harem dynamics, either the characters are trying to keep their feelings hidden or are just so dense that they don’t get across. Here, that isn’t the case at all except for one character. The rest very quickly and openly admit to being in love with Masamune and he rejects them, but they continue to pursue him anyway. This results in a lot of amusing romantic fluff. Beyond that the manga does have a good amount of comedy, but largely I didn’t find it all that great. There’s not enough of it, and what little there is felt somewhat repetitive. The manga also does go into what goes on in the light novel industry and related areas like manga and anime adaptations. It was really superficial about things though, and there are enough other anime/manga/LNs that handle it better that what’s in this manga isn’t enough to be a selling point. The special art, such as the color art or the art that was used for in universe illustrations was really good. It was good quality with a good sense of style used very well. However, the regular art was generally pretty weak, being pretty rough in style and not all that nice to look at, though there certainly were exceptions. tl;dr: A good but not particularly remarkable harem rom-com.