Haruka Mitsui

 Recommended: eh
For a small start to a series

Thoughts:
The art was tough to follow sometimes as the way people were depicted from one panel to the next could change completely. Since it's inked, the shading and coloring of ink matters a lot for me to identify characters, and someone would go from having a full head of black hair to completely uncolored in the next panel or scene. I would struggle to figure out if it was the same person or someone new coming in or what. That said, it did have a lot of detail.

It occasionally mentions "a pandemic" or "a virus" and events being cancelled because of it, but otherwise the impact of what's apparently meant to be COVID-19 isn't really there. It -certainly- is nothing to the degree I experienced with actual COVID where school was virtual, people didn't see ANYONE outside their household, and everyone was basically just locked in their house. So if this is some alternate generic "global virus" or something then ok, but it's certainly not COVID-19 as the blurb seems to say. This was kind of confusing to me, and ended up feeling like it wasn't really a key part of the story besides a useful way to shoehorn in events to make people feel sad. Maybe this impacts more later in the series.

I'm curious about the characters, but feel like I don't know them very well yet. This might just be since it's early in the series so I'm not feeling impatient about it, but I do want to meet more of them who currently just seem like decoration in the story. As it is, I don't feel very strongly about any of them so it's tough to get invested in any relationships (friendly, romantic, or otherwise).

To be honest, I'm not really sure where this is heading. Sure, the title makes it feel pretty obvious that there will be a romance in here somewhere, but so far things seem pretty one-sided and the "romantic" moments were... uh, well, not romantic. Just kind of abrupt and weird. 

Overall, I don't feel super hooked by this first volume. I'll keep an eye out and possibly keep on with this series, but I probably won't be going out of my way to find it either. It's a mediocre start that was just good enough that I might read more, but not so good that I'm desperate for it. 
 Thank you to NetGalley and Kodansha Comics for a free advanced copy. This is my honest review!… (plus d'informations)

This is quite possibly the most average shojo manga I’ve ever read. It hit every plot detail and story beat you’d expect to see in a series. Two popular boys fall in love with a clumsy, innocent girl? Check. Secondary Boy™️ assures the Male Lead that “he won’t lose” in winning the girl’s affections? Check. A minor female character ends up being the Plan B romance for Secondary Boy™️ when he inevitably gets turned down? Check, check, check. It’s also part of the “girl manages a boys’ sports team and romance ensues” subgenre that’s been showing up these days, so we get some tropey plot stuff about some big sports match and the power of teamwork thrown in there as well. Unfortunately Waiting for Spring has already done a similar type of store, and that author did it first and more skillfully.

I can’t give this a bad score, because even thought it was a snooze to read it really is totally basic and average for a shojo story. But dang… I can’t believe this thing went on for 8 volumes.… (plus d'informations)