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Yuu Tomonoga, a prodigy admitted to an American university at the tender age of 13, later progressed into its graduate program. However, his academic journey hit a snag when he lost funding for his research endeavors. Opting not to be deterred, Yuu chose to leave the university and pursue his studies independently. Returning to Japan in search of financial backing, he soon found himself short on funds for everyday expenses. Fortuitously, a call from an old acquaintance presented an opportunity to teach at an all-girls school, an offer he gladly accepted.
SOME MINOR SPOILER AHEAD
A great underrated manga but definitely not for the romance manga (especially shoujo ones) lovers.
Don't be fooled by the romance tag, the manga focuses on two characters and their struggles in the academic field: Yuu Tomonaga, a genius that has faced the hardships of the backstage of the research field for the first time and Aoi Hirose, an equally genius highschool girl trying to conciliate her complicated family conditions and the dream of pursuing an academic career.
I think that "Yasashii" does a great job on showing the reality in the academic field and this might be the best manga on doing so. Professors stealing their students thesis, fight for a titular professor chair, research fund cuts, etc. Although there are some details that give right away that the author herself is not a scientist (I mean, that two-piece blackboard on the prep room is a joke and so is the whole sequence on which Tomonaga HACKS into his brother's PC).
There is romance though, but it's very underdeveloped. The main couple in particular is not very convincing as they lose the spotlight to the secondary couple AND to the main plot.
The art is pretty but forgettable and the character design is bland.
The only character that felt off to me was Kusakabe, she can be seen as the main character of the manga too, I hated her guts. The fujoshi was fine, every manga needs a comic relief right? And I really loved the Aoi character, even more than Tomonaga, she had the best character development by far. Touko is great too, really likeable character.
If this manga had ~3 more volumes and had it ended slightly differently, I'd have here a possible 10/10 contender.
This was a weird manga. For the stuff that matters to me, and I don't really think there was anything else, it is oh so very realistic. Everything was down to earth, without a single thing that shaked the sync at which I was in with the story.
Out of all the characters, Tohno Touko etched herself the most in my mind, but I am happy to feel that by saying that I am doing somewhat of an injustice for Hirose and Kusakabe. Even Kayo, even all the rest. But yea, the two of them were wonderfull in different ways.
I could describe this manga satisfactory enough with a single word: "Gentle".
Everything that went on was, just girls, young ones, on the verge of adulthood, living their lives, growing up. I even grew to appreciate the male lead, Tomonaga, and very much so his techer-friend-colleague.
Some characters were somewhat minor in the story, but they had their role, and were not suddenly gone by the time it was over. Those characters too are realistic. Some people in life aren't there all the time, but they are sometimes and they are the people we know and are friends with, they are our family. That's what I mean. The minor characters are consistently existent, and were not single-use tools. Just like in real life.
Now, as regarding the thing that stuck with me intensively for days back when I had just read this, and that I can get in the mindset of back easily through a song;
Tohno Touko.
There's a music album that I'd been listening to as I was reading the story. Ended up as the music I think Tohno likes. In particular, that she walked outside alone while listening to this song (【東方ボーカル】 「モノクロ インザナイト (CYTOKINE remix)) , that she liked to listen to this song as she walked alone outside without a place to go to.
Just wandering alone like a hidden gem that can't shine..
The song was beautiful to me, but through Tohno's character the beauty of it developed into strong melancholy. Whenever I listen to the song now, images of Tohno wandering the streets, alone and doing her best to stay strong, flow through my mind.
Oh how it was seemingly happy, before I started hearing the notes of uncertainty and concern, even fear and tears, the interpretation of which was brought to me by Tohno.
Tohno Touko is amazing to me, I love her.
Kusakabe and Hirose are angels.
I have a special feeling about the both of them, both different from the other though. Hirose is gentle in one way, and Kusakabe is gentle in another way. It's a 10/10 manga for me, I love it because of how gentle and beautiful the story is, without being unrealastic. Like, such beauty, such gentle beauty (that the whole story is), I can beleive to be real. It's nice to have that feel. Helps me live by helping me believe I'll perhaps meet such people one day, but yea; It's undoubtedly far too late for me to find such bliss.
Also, I am not stuck on describing the story as gentle because of its title. I believe I'd have described it the same way had the title been something entirely different.
I like this manga was a pleasure read until the end, I hope someday that can be publish in USA to buy it. The end were a little confusing I don't know with which girl ending the sensei, I love Hirose, I would have liked to see more about her.
The excellence consists in the telling of a story about high school that is more about growing up than about various silly high school hi-jinx. As this manga was coming to an end I could feel my heart fluttering a bit. That was because the nice collection of interesting girl characters were facing the great uncertainty of how their entry into the first steps of adulthood would go, after a substantial period of living in a protected, experimental environment. That is one of the most difficult transitions life offers, I think, and they faced it bravely, like troopers.
The unusualness consists in the serious, thoughtful nature of all the characters, the tight friendship among the girl characters, the genius nature of the teacher, and above all the almost-undiscovered brilliance of one of the girls. This is NOT the regular stuff of manga!
PS: Somewhere down there in the other reviews I saw someone writing about "slut shaming". I'm at a loss to figure out where that was in this story. I guess some people, once locked into an ideology, see it reflected everywhere—even places to which it's entirely irrelevant.
This is a manga about growing up, which is a tough job that everyone has to do.
Author chose the easy way out for harem manga, dissapointing to be honest, but at least who the MC gets with is implied.
Was a wonderfully sweet story of growing up, and how loves serves as a connection between people, between lovers, friends, and family.
A solid 7.5/10, 9/10 art tho. And 8/10 characters
Can't help but smile after that epilogue. I really like the characters in this. Anyways, this is a good high school romance manga focusing on the forbidden love in that setting, student-teacher relationships. Credit to this story is that they don't actually date while they're students. The friendship between the four main girls feels real & heartfelt. The romance plotlines varies in quality. I thought Haruka's was best exactly because it was bittersweet (and possibly because she's my favorite of the four). I didn't care much for Touko's, she was a bit too persistent in her affection. Aoi didn't really have one, perhaps one implied at the end.
Though what I appreciate most about it is not the romance aspect but that it tried to go beyond it, the story wanted to emphasize more than that. Memories are precious, cherish your friends, time is short-lived.
If you come into this series with a proper expectation, is that this is a slice of life manga, light heart and flutter from one thing to another like a butterfly, then yeah, it's not very bad. Not at the level of great, but certainly good enough to keep reading.
The author shoot herself in the foot by set the false bar: genius level teacher? all girl class so lead to illusion of harem building? yeah, that wont fly. This is no Great Teacher Onizuka, and this is no Negima.
Set the bar as a 8/10 okay romance, then you wont disappoint~
I started the manga on a recommendation and didn?t bother to look up the demographic (as these can be pointless) or the originating magazine and was surprised to later find out that the series was published in Dengeki Daioh as it wasn´t moe or harem nonsense. The character and story featured a surprising amount if depth or at least promised such and the art was crisp and calm but none of that lasted for long and logic left the tale after about 2 volumes.
Intriguing drama was replaced with 2 really misguided subplots about sexually coercion that both lead to borderline "slut shaming" which is really bad. The sudden harem of 3 main contenders and other random cheerleader for the protagonist is also equally inacceptable. The calm art also de-evolved into endless pantsu service, communal showers for the girls and the unenviable lesbian harassment. Teacher X student relations can lastly work of course but glorifying such with zero commentary or even addressing the inherent dilemmas that would follow is frankly lazy and not a good romance on top. Both of these even have an out of control amount of victim self-blaming and most characters become pretty unsympathetic over time. That 100% isn´t what i signed up for The ending is a giant pile of noncommittal nothing so the series just collapsed on itself in the end and i was once again left with proof that the originating magazine usually dictate in what one can expect in terms of tone and content if they are proven to suck.
I am willing to pick up her next series as she a newbie but i will expect better and will drop it the moment it starts to break apart as dragging one of her corpses was enough for me.