This manga gives me such a mixed bag of emotions that it's honestly hard to describe. It's like it tried to take a handful of taboos, threw it together to make some sort of cohesive love story... and it worked.

It's pretty difficult to talk about a story that consists of lowkey (maybe highkey) child porn, sexual harassment, incest, massive age gap relationships, child grooming and probably a lot more. That being said though, it's such a competent narrative that it's hard not to give credit where it is due.

This manga at its core is just a story about understanding what it means to love and the repercussions of not feeling loved. What do you do when the only person that has ever loved you dies? How do you deal with the reality that your parents never loved you the way you feel they should have? How do you cope with a love that you understand will never blossom? How do you give love to someone who needs it when you are not in the position to give it? What does familial, romantic and platonic love look like? All these questions are posed by the manga and are answered to varying degrees of success. It's all explored through the relationship and interactions between three young girls and their four teachers (and one cousin).

The plot is actually fairly traditional in its approach if you think of it as a 'girl teases guy because she likes him' romance mixed with a 'older man cares for younger girl' storyline... kinda like a cross of Don't Bully Me Nagatoro and House of the Sun only with better pacing. Things happen at a reasonable pace throughout most of the manga, and that drives the story along faster than a typical love story. Most of the major story points seem believable given the situation the characters are put in, which is always a plus in storytelling.

Now the characters are what makes the story what it is, but I can't decide how to feel about them. Kokonoe, the main girl, and her cousin are very fleshed out characters that you are able to understand and actually care about. Everyone else is... alright I guess. The majority have their own backstories and motivations that make sense, but they just aren't the most interesting. Aoki, the main character, is the driving impetus of change, but he is fairly generic when you look at MC's in these types of manga: strong sense of justice, unrefined, tries his hardest, etc. The teachers that surround him are good foils or supports for him, similarly to how Kokonoe's two friends are to her.

The art is fine.

There are quite a few gripes I have with the story overall. Besides all the taboo things I listed above, the main character's irresponsibility really made it difficult to read this manga. It's understandable to see why the author chose to write him like this (gives more room for the main relationship to grow) but there were many clearly avoidable situations for most people to make that the MC fails to do, which is frustrating. The side character stories also paled in comparison to the main one to the point where I honestly just wanted to skip all the chapters having to do with all the side characters. Of course that would take away from the overall message of the manga, but that just goes to show how good the main story was.

Overall this manga is one that I ended up enjoying a lot, if you take away all the gratuitous naked loli scenes. It's a competent story that knows what it wants to tell and how to do it. It deals with heavy topics while never being overly serious, and it balances the two surprisingly well. The characters range from forgettable to downright endearing, but each has a very believable, albeit sometimes twisted, personality and world view.

Would I ever recommend this to anyone? Probably not. The amount of unneeded loli nudity really takes away from it being a recommendable series by a longshot, even if it does the actual storytelling really well.