This seemed to be a very innocent story at first with a silly beginning. It was familiar, too… you know how it is in shoujo. If a guy and a girl get together in a fake relationship for some motive, they’ll “accidentally” end up liking each other while they’re pretending to like each other. Then they reach some complications along the way that prevent them from really being together even though they were kind of already together before.

Even if that kind of story is typical for those who know it, I’m always still interested in knowing how it is they end up liking each other. It’s funny to see them act the part and suddenly blush, and one of the pair usually has a tsundere personality that comes out.

While it was a cute story at first, I was dismayed to find out that the main conflict in the story arose from a love square. There was some history in between the other main characters that were introduced and feelings suddenly arose out of nowhere. They were explained later in some oneshots between the chapters of the main plot, thank goodness, but without those the story would have been more frustrating to read. At times I thought to myself, why does he like her? Why does she like him? I disliked some of the characters when I couldn’t understand their feelings and selfish motives. When things came tumbling down I wasn’t sure whether I shipped the main ship any more.

Feelings were all over the place and there was so much crying. It reminded me of a Korean drama the way they shed so many tears. While I could comprehend the reasons for their grief and pain sometimes, it became a little much seeing the amount of drama there was because of love. I wanted to tear my hair out a few moments because of the way things were going. Nevertheless, this manga showed me the way the human heart works. Love can be fickle at times and so long-lasting at others. You can’t stop liking someone if you do. Sometimes you need to let go.

Ao is probably the most noble shoujo heroine I’ve seen in a while. She has a cute personality and knows she’s not the prettiest, but she does a lot for her friends. Even if making a decision hurts her, she’ll do it for her friend’s sake. She’s so selfless that that’s probably her biggest flaw. Regardless of that, I liked her a lot. She’s the kind of person I’d like to have for a friend.

I’ll leave the other characters out of this blog, but they had their own quirks as well. I didn’t like a few of them, either, so there’s that.

While the manga isn’t that old, I found the artwork looking a little bit aged. You could definitely tell who the more attractive characters were, but sometimes I found a few limbs to be a bit too long. Sometimes expressions looked dazed and dull, but maybe that was the mangaka’s intention. The artwork worked out for the story, I suppose, but I wasn’t too impressed with it.

Despite my irritation with how the romance was going during the manga, I have to say I still enjoyed reading it. I wanted to see how the story turned out and if the main ship was finally going to set sail. I could sympathize with the Ao and the other characters sometimes. I laughed a bit at some scenes in the manga. It was a light read sometimes and heavy at others. It’s a little different from other shoujo manga, so I was glad to have found it. The ending was a little rough, but I still think it was a fine read.