Dagashi Kashi

By all means, this is not a serious manga, and I can certainly expect some people to just scoff it off. However, this has honestly been one of my favorite mangas I've read recently. I was first hooked by the design of the female lead-Hotaru. In essence, she is a Yandere, only directed towards sweets and not anyone in particular. Smart, charming, enthusiastic, ditsy, funny, all packed in an infinitely sexy body, with a great closet of clothes that still manages to retain her signature look. Oh, did I mention the JoJo poses? I also found myself intrigued by the explanation of sweets each chapter. It's practicallyuseless, and I'll probably never eat 90% of the foods introduced, but it's fun dammit. Of course Hotaru's antics probably plays a large role in it being enjoyable as well. As time went on, I found myself rooting for romance development between our male protagonist Kokonotsu and Hotaru. Although honestly, the childhood friend Saya makes a very compelling case for support as well. Speaking of which, all the characters are lovable in their own way, and the side character story arcs are fun as well The little shakeup in the middle of the series was interesting to say the least..although personally I'm thankful for picking up this manga after it had already ended. Otherwise I would probably by extremely fustrated by the turn of events. As for cons....since the manga is done in bite-sized formats, each chapter is only half length of what you can normally expect. This means that the pace is very quick, and each "gag" comes and goes fast. Some people might like this kind of pace more, but I wish the story had a bit more multi-chapter arcs. The ending also feels just a tad rushed. At the end of the day, this is a manga that has 8~10 pages a chapter, that's focused on a very specific subset of sweets. Don't expect major development, or an epic story arc, as that's just not what this is. However, rating it for what it is, a casual comedy that teaches some knowledge, I think you can't get much better than this. Overall 9/10 P.S. The anime takes some generous liberties with the story, changing around the character interactions, and also condenses an already condensed format, leaving it even more rushed. I don't particualrly like the adaption, but I guess it is the only way to see my favorite characters in action.