[NOV.2,2015] HELL YES. ALL THE YESSSSSS
I was hesitant to start this because it looked like one of those shounen manga with the typical idiotic-but-unnaturally-strong male lead. And usually, if there is romance involved in said typical shounen manga, there's a female lead with huge boobs who is always busting ML's balls.
But I was curious enough to search it on mangaupdates, and then I saw the tags.
Strong Female Lead, check. Strong Male Lead, check. Forced Marriage, whoa, cool, I'm so there. Rave reviews promising it was way better than expected, check.
So I started reading, keeping my expectations low still, because it didn't look anything special. The art is good, and the concept wasn't entirely over-used.
And then we meet the female lead, and everything went continuously uphill from there.
The fight scenes are exciting, and I can't get enough of the art.
The humour is surprisingly spot-on, more often than not. The characters themselves are what sold me, specifically the main leads. Rokuro (ML) seems like a brat at first impression, but his true character comes out, and is entirely heart-warming. Benio (FL, I sighed in relief when I found out she was a she, instead of another Male Lead) is impressively strong in her own right, and not once does she come off as b*tchy.
Before I started reading this, I was already expecting the female lead to completely let me down despite the Strong Female Lead tag, but, wow, was I glad I was wrong.
Although the pacing might be a bit off when certain events happen, Rokuro and Benio make me invested in their characters every step of the way. Neither is perfect, and they're both just kids really, facing insurmountable odds. They feel pain, sadness, and crippling fear, and they know their weaknesses.
I was afraid that their relationship development would be set aside in favour of the whole killing-monsters gig, but their relationship development is actually what nits all of this together.
Pacing, plot-wise, might be a bit clunky at the start, but the pacing of their relationship actually...developing is perfect and dare I say a hundred times better than countless shoujo romance mangas I've read.
I was surprised to see no discussion for this manga, and ended up writing up this monster, mostly because I hope this would help tip the balance for those on the fence on whether or not to read.
TL;DR----------- JUST READ THE MANGA DAMMIT. IT'S GOOD. SERIOUSLY.
EDIT (Feb.2,2019): ACTUALLY, I take it all back. While I still maintain fondness for the Female Lead, I've fallen out of love with this manga. Mostly because:
1. Repetitive and tiresome storyline
2. Annoying/Frustrating Side characters.
That second point is what made me drop this manga sometime 2017. I get that the author wanted to flesh out some people, but when that means sacrificing time we could spend with the lead pair for 'tragic' backstories of others, I ended up skimming a ton of chapters.
... Last updated on February 1st, 2019, 10:18am