Amano Megumi wa Sukidarake!

TL;DR: This manga is for those that are looking for a history who doesn't take itself seriously, an innocent love story, with a light-hearted tone and themes, where not much happens and the setting stays the same, packed with ecchi - in every single chapter - and with two charismatic protagonists, then this manga is for you. Summary: "Amano Megumi wa Sukidarake!" depicts the blossoming of love between two childhood friends, the naive first-year kendo athlete, Amano Megumi, and the level headed bookworm, Shindo Manabu. At first Manabu thinks that Megumi's presence in his life would interfere with his studies, since her attractive body breakshis concentration, but he soon realize that he actually has to protect her dignity from the dangers of her own innocence, given that her carefree and clumsy nature always gets her in embarrassing situations. At the beginning it seems they would be a bit of an odd couple - a kind of opposites attract -, but as the story unfolds they find what they have in common and that in a way they complete themselves. Review: The story is pretty straightforward and has all the common tropes that come with the genre, some are rather shoddily done, and some pretty important tropes only come at the later part of the history, which leaves a big gap in the middle of the story, hurting the pace as no new things happen for a long time. An almost still pace, with noteworthy advancements in the story being few and far between, the first few volumes are the worst offenders of this, with a dozen chapters always seeming the same. Then we have a pretty uninteresting supporting cast, this is where the story gets hurt the most, it barely takes the time to develop the side characters, the few exceptions coming in the final volumes, even though the manga is 280 chapters long, most characters are shallow and one dimensional, leaving all the stakes and emotions to Megumi and Manabu relationship, and since their love story develops at a slow pace, there are chapters excruciatingly dull where nothing happens. The final third of the narrative does the heavy lifting, with the introduction of new, and most importantly interesting, characters a sorely needed breath of fresh air is given to the plot and some advancement is made, the last 2 volumes have the dumbest use of a misunderstood confession that ruined some aspects of their relationship, and in the end left the feeling of only happening in this fashion only to stretch the plotline as much as possible, which leaves this huge feeling of lost potential of how much more this story could've been good, since most of the time the plot is dead-bang average, dragging the enjoyment down quite a bit. At its highest the manga is an 8, but most of the time is spent in the mediocrity(5) and at the lowest of the lows it's nearly unbearable(2).

tl;dr: An ecchi rom-com with a really solid final stretch but absurdly repetitive and slow moving before that. This manga is about a guy named Manabu that is working hard towards his goal of being accepted into Tokyo University. However, his childhood friend, Megumi, is constantly distracting him. Mainly due to how she is constantly inadvertently showing more skin than she should. The problem with this premise, is that it starts out with both of them in their first year of high school. College entrance exams aren’t until third year, however Manabu is solely focused on passing the Tokyo University entrance exam from the beginning ofthe manga. Thus, he doesn’t join any club or much any of the standard high school stuff. And him being so focused on studying so early on results in him not being able to make friends either. There’s somewhat of a plot thread involving him seeming to have a crush on a girl that goes to another school named Mikawa, but its completely and utterly pointless and ultimately goes nowhere. On the flip side, Megumi is the star rookie of the kendo club and over the course of the manga she starts taking kendo even more seriously, with the ultimate goal of trying to get into a good college through kendo. However, there too what matters most is her performance in her final year of high school, and thus the earlier tournaments don’t feel anywhere near as high stakes. Earlier on in the manga there is somewhat of a focus on actual kendo itself, but as a kendo manga it really just isn’t very good at all. Thus, as the manga progresses it shifts to skipping over the actual kendo and just focusing on the results. Megumi is much more social than Manabu so she has a pretty wide circle of friends, but none of them are all that interesting. There are lots of side characters that have a reoccurring presence, but none of them are fleshed out enough to really care about them. As a result of not much serious happening, the period of the manga that covers the first two years of high school is essentially just really slow slice of life. It’s basically just a series of comedic shorts, the vast majority of which are ecchi focused. The ecchi isn’t all that good though to be honest. It’s very dense, but it’s really basic. There’s nothing particularly unique or interesting. It’s basically just Megumi not being good at keeping her clothes in mind and thus constantly getting into positions that show her underwear or something like that. It’s really repetitive and not all that fun. There are some heartwarming moments or especially funny moments here and there, and there is some character and relationship development from time to time. But this phase of the manga lasts about twenty volumes, so the good parts feel like drops in an ocean. It’s enough to build investment in Manabu, Megumi, and their relationship, but overall it’s just way too tedious and dull. The manga goes through a major shift when they move into their third year. Manabu starts going to cram school and actually makes friends. Both of whom are well developed, interesting, and likable characters in their own right, especially Yukino. Megumi becomes the captain of the kendo club and starts taking kendo really seriously. Furthermore, one of her friends, Mio, takes much more a spotlight and turns out to be way more of a fun character than she had been before this. The stakes are high because this will be the year that decides their futures. But on top of that their relationship also comes to a head with a good amount of drama. The payoff is great and pretty thoughtfully written, and thus I would say I was pretty satisfied with the ending. I’m pretty conflicted over whether slogging through the entire manga was worth it however. The art is somewhat mediocre at first but gets significantly better over time. The later color art is downright fantastic, but a lot of it isn’t included in the scanlations so I recommend looking it up on a booru or something. The mangaka uses minimalist eyes on everyone which is pretty unique as far as manga goes and took some getting used to but ultimately I think it worked well enough. Design wise Megumi and Yukino have great designs. Mio is pretty solid as well. Beyond that everyone has a distinct enough design that they’re easy to identify but none of them are particularly memorable.

A very standard ecchi teen romance, with sadly, as often happens, too much focus on the fanservice and too little on the romance. It has potential to go somewhere, but gets lost in too repetitive fanservice jokes to really suggest this to any reader who doesn't come for the fanservice. So if you just want very thicc girls in various undressing and fanservicing situations, this is one for you to try. For everyone else, I suggest you look elsewhere. The rom and com in this manga are ab-so-lu-te-ly not in balance. For lovers of boobs and ass, this is a whole five course dinner toeat, because I think Amano's ass, hips, boobs, any curve of her probably holds 50% of this manga's panel worth. I'll give it to the mangaka, the female bodies are drawn deliciously every time. For everyone else, this manga's biggest problem lies in the fact that for the first, roughly said, 150ish chapters, nothing happens. It's just chapter after chapter of the MC being the nerdy studyboi and Amano interacting with him and, depending on the situation, various forms of tits or ass happen. And when I say repetitive, I mean REALLY repetitive. I think the first 60 chapters or so are literally the same fanservicy physical joke, just shifted in context. If you're not there to just watch boobs, it gets really tiring. Couple that with barely shifting character arcs and it's just...kind of a fanservicy mess. However, this wouldn't be a review if I wouldn't also point out the better points. Later on, sadly very later on, the mangaka shows that he actually is quite capable to let two people slowly try to understand their blooming feelings with all the cringy teenagy emotions that inevitably come with it. Unfortunately for the story and the reader, it is just so, so late in the road that is this quite chapter packed story that it feels like a push to put out the fire (of perhaps complaints/loss of interest from readers during release) than an actual natural progression. Had they cut off like, 100 chapters from the beginning, and give us another 100 after the ending, where the pace picked up and flowed way better, this could honestly been a very enjoyable ecchi romcom. Now,we are kind of left with a repeating joke that realizes it has potential too late and therefor works itself out into yes, an ending that is ok, but leaves the reader with a feeling that that is where the real romcom train of the story evolves and it finally gets some interesting evolutions. Right as you actually get somewhat invested and want more, you already find yourself at the epilogue and are left feeling robbed. Amano stays cute, though. Gotta love me some tomboys.