Jun 19, 2024

*Rapid Review*

It's a low 8/10. This is the peak of wholesome romcom for middle-schoolers, providing a believable romance for such a tricky genre as they are too inexperienced due to being young yet old enough to realise it's love. Some manga with very young romance is either too mature or too childish, but this hits everything perfectly and believably. The art is great, the romance is butterfly-inducing, and the story progression is natural.

Though just don't expect much scenery changes, the majority of the manga happens in a single classroom, leading to a repetitive binge reading experience, but a solid one or two chapter per day...experience.

I'm NOT a contrarian, and if your opinion differs, be civil. Your opinion is as valid as mine. Don't rate this as "confusing" just because you disagree with my view, instead, criticise the actual writing of the review. That's what it's there for. Don't be a child. Thank you for reading my rapid review, have a nice day/night!

Reviewer’s Rating:8

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Aug 10, 2023

This story is whipped cream. Fluffy and sweet but it doesn't satiate.

Good:

The art is cute. The way the characters act is cute. The slice of life aspect is done well. The MMC is not dense about his feelings, and the FMC also is pretty good about this.

Bad:

On the other hand, we're told they are sixteen. These 70 chapters take place over the course of 6mo-12mo. However, they act and talk like they're twelve about 75% of the time, and they're also drawn like they're in middle school. I don't like this. If you want to write a story about highschoolers, make them look and act...like it. If you want them to look and act like how they're drawn here, it should be about middle schoolers. This may not be a big deal to you, but it caused me to feel like the entire story was off.

Weird:

The MMC takes home the FMC's glasses one weekend when she forgets them at school. He seriously considers this an indecent and perverted action on his part. This is not made into a joke in the story, its not a set up, its serious on the characters part and bothers him for a few chapters while he has them over the weekend. I'm not sure what the author was going for, i think hyper innocence on the MMC's behalf, but its just off putting and weird. Its a running theme, and I didn't like it.

I think if you like something like Komi you'd like this. Its the same style of slice of life; cute but unrealistic and not really satisfying to read about. I personally think there are way better romcom's out there that are just as cute but actually have a story and more than minor character development.

Reviewer’s Rating:6

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Mar 25, 2023

I don’t mind slow SoL romance manga. If anything, my all-time favourite one is one of the slowest ones out there. But you know what it is not? Boring. Beyond boring. So, so, so painfully boring I felt like chugging barrels of ale to find entertainment anywhere.

SukiMega might genuinely be one of the most boring romances I’ve ever had a chance to read–and I’ve read a lot. A lot a lot. It is one of those cutesy-vanilla romances that take their time, with which I’ve zero issues, but there always comes a point in those romances where I genuinely just give up and drop...the whole thing. To elaborate a bit further, I’ll be spoiling a bit so read on with caution.

I genuinely don’t care that I’ve read 81 chapters and that the pair had made virtually no progress. I’ve read 140 chapters of Takagi-san with even less progress so that’s not an issue for me. The issue is that SukiMega is just not fun. Whereas Takagi-san and many other slow-burn romances understand that they can’t front their love story and, as such, give readers something else to indulge in, SukiMega has nothing past its miserable love story and the cutesy heroine.

The story is beyond slow, and it facilitates all the romantic cliches known to man, but it isn’t even the worst thing about this manga. Once you’ve read enough romance stories in manga, you’ll come to realise that they’re literally all the same. They’re just a spitfire of repetitive cliches and tropes that marry into a semi-cohesive narrative that either ends rather abruptly or way overstays its welcome. What carries every single romance manga out there are its characters, and characters in SukiMega just plain suck.

I decided to drop the story at the end of one specific chapter where the main character regurgitates the self-loathing spiel for like the 11th time–and I was done. From like 40th chapter onwards, it became more and more obvious that if I continued to read this story, I would come to loathe the main guy, so I eventually dipped before my dislike turned into outright hatred.

I understand that the kid is like, what, 13-14 years old? And that I was hardly less awkward than him back then, but I simply don’t care anymore. His character had gone well beyond the realms of insecurities straight up into the realm of needing genuine professional help. What’s worse, I cannot for the life of me fathom where those insecurities come from. The kid was never bullied, and though he comes from a divorced household, his mother seems to love him and cherish him enough. He’s always had friends, and was never isolated. So, where in the ever-loving kiss of Jupiter do the insecurities the size of Mount Vesuvius sprawl from?

It is honestly beyond baffling watching this kid try to navigate any social interaction with the main girl. Nobody who’s read shounen romances is unfamiliar with the overtly shy main guy who blushes at the snort of the main girl, but this might yet be the worst one of the bunch. Virtually the only reason I even remotely endured for 80 chapters was the main girl, and it was not because she was cute or adorable (though she may be all those things), but because she was literally the only one of the two pushing their relationship. But enough’s enough. There is slow romance, there is mid-2000s shoujo slow romance, and I can read both of them, but I cannot read boring romances. Comedy is sparse, past like the 50th chapter the story starts taking itself way, way, way too seriously–like, really, it’s a story about a pair of 14 year old kids experiencing first love, and the author started treating it as some kind of coming of age, The Catcher in the Rye, biblical anthology of agonised youth.

If you like fluffy romances, you’ll likely enjoy this one too. If you’re allergic to lethargic main leads, you’ll likely grow to hate it as I did. While the main girl is a breath of fresh air in shounen romances, she was not good enough to carry the tepid, beyond boring, self-insert memory that is the main guy. Read like 30ish chapters to get the gist of it, and then imagine that the main guy was not a social inept alien experiencing human contact for the first time and the remaining 50 chapters become 2. Cheers.

Reviewer’s Rating:5

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