- #1
I read the first volume and I liked it enough to start reading the 2nd volume. That being said, the idea of the main couple falling in love and surrendering to romance is not very believable. So, while the set-up seems good - two attractive girls thrown together in a contest of one trying to make the other fall for her, the progress as it unfolds requires a fairly big suspension of disbelief to see the main couple together.A Story About Buying My Classmate Once a Week has a somewhat similar premise and is done much better. At least in that story, the initial relationship is platonic and awkward and then progresses to deeper feelings, without any sort of contest element, only the payment aspect for spending time together. Here, in Arioto, the bought girl is basically treating herself as a prostitute from the get-go, so there isn't a sense of a gradual progression of the relationship as her feelings are awakened and boundaries extended. It's just, "Oh well, I signed up for this, so I guess you can go ahead and move your hand into my panties and have your way with me" right away. And then, after a while, "Oh, it looks like I've fallen in love with you!" Not very believable.The buying girl is not that sympathetic of a character either. She comes across as both a hardened s*xual pe*vert and then, in an epilogue retrospective POV chapter from her, an attempt is made to remediate her character a bit, revealing that it was ackshually a love at first sight situation for her.The erot*c events were written ok and I am still planning on continuing to read this series, but this will probably end up ranking low for me on a list series of this type. I have a low bar to meet for yuri/ecchi/non-harem/school-life romances, since there's only about a half-dozen of them when I use the filter, so I give this a 3-3.5/5 despite its shortcomings.