This series is a lot like Wolf Girl and Black Prince in that you need to get past the beginning to really understand the quality of this manga, but it's different in that the main guy of this is a thousand times more upstanding than the main guy of Wolf Girl. And I know that's not that high a standard, but he's honestly one of the best shoujo love interests I've encountered.

This is surprising if you read the start. Their beginning is VERY shoujo/josei smut typical, which, yeah, does mean sexual harassment, and I won't make any excuses for it, but he actually ends up very understanding in this regard later on - when they actually get together, and she tells him she wants to wait until her honeymoon to have sex, he tells her he understands and does not pressure into anything. And this is being a decent person - but something you need to understand is that decent people are very, very rare in shoujo manga. Also, be clear that he's not a rapist. He skirts the line - a lot of sexual harassment, groping at the start - but he's not a rapist.

And like, that absolutely sounds terrible. At the beginning it is. I actually started reading this like four months before now and I dropped it because I thought it was ridiculous, but I picked it up again because I thought it had to be popular for a reason. And it is. It's true at the beginning he's an asshole, and it's true she starts liking him despite it. What's also true is she calls him out for everything and doesn't act like she deserved his mistreatment. And that's when I started being okay with it.

Because he's a decent boyfriend. A REALLY decent boyfriend. Borderline unreal, dream boyfriend, but not in the boring way. See, this manga isn't orignal - it's standard shoujo all the way through - but every time it handles a cliche it does it in such an interesting and refreshing way that you don't mind it. When he sees her get jealous of someone, he talks to her about it and he stops talking to the person making her jealous. When she's acting weird because of her insecurities, he reassures her. He's a good fucking boyfriend. Like he does make mistakes - but when he makes them, he does what he can to rectify them. And that's what sets him apart.

This manga is pure and romantic and basically crack if you're a sucker for shoujo. You really won't get this from the beginning, but the main couple is literally so healthy, loving, and understanding that I got emotional like every chapter. Whenever it hit an arc where I was like "I don't think I like where this is going, this is my least favorite shoujo arc" it diverges from the norm and solves. The confession, the handling of Kyouta's family situation - all things I thought would make me cringe that completely impressed me. Overall, too, watching their relationship mature and them understand each other just that bit more with each chapter - it was worth it. The relationship development here is phenomenal.

Like, this series is 100 chapters long. I am a shoujo veteran, and I've read 30-chapter long series and thought "this series could've ended in five chapters," and that does not at all go for this one. Every arc is engaging and interesting - even if you're scared of what might happen next. Like, I don't think you know how rare it is for me to be on chapter 90 and UNHAPPY that it wasn't longer. That's how good this series is. Because it's also more than just healthy, it's an interesting dynamic and good plots and characters. Like, I've read boring manga with healthy relationships, and this isn't one of them.

tl;dr I implore you to read this. If you can swallow the shoujo cliches at the beginning (~15 chapters, and they're not outright terrible) and wait for the characters and relationships to come into themselves, you'll be rewarded with one of the sweetest, most organic, and healthiest relationships I've seen in shoujo manga in a long, long time.