“Romantic relationships can end so easily… but family is forever” – a high schooler who has found himself the new step-brother of his beloved ex-girlfriend.
Before we start the review…
What’s the Japanese level?
I rate this as an intermediate series. To see my reasonings for my rankings, please click here!
Who wrote this manga?
This was written by Yuko Kasumi. You can check out their X here!
Info about the series
- This is a rather new series, there is currently only one volume out in Japanese.
- There is currently no English version.
You can check out this series for yourself below.
What happens in chapter one?
After being broken up with by her middle schools boyfriend Ao, Takamura works her hardest to get over him. Eventually she is able to more or less forget about him, and moves onto high school.
Takamura was raised in a single mother household, and she and her mother are very close. so, when her mother announces that she is going to get remarried, Tamamura is fully supportive. That is, until she realizes that her new step-father just so happens to be the father of her ex-boyfriend, Ao. When they’re first re-introduced as step-siblings, Ao doesn’t let on the fact that they used to have a romantic relationship. In fact, he acts as though they never really knew each other.
After Takamura and her mother move in with him, she tries to come to terms with the fact that maybe it’s for the best that he’s acting like this—after all, they’re step-siblings now.
She enters his room not too long after getting settled in to deliver him dinner, and gently begins snooping around his room. She quickly comes across something a little bit weird—the wrapper of a candy that she had gifted him when they were dating, two whole years ago. He walks in as she’s making her discovery, and instantly drops the cool facade. It turns out that he was madly in love with her when they were dating, and that he’s just as madly in love with her now.
He explains that the reason he broke up with her in the first place was because he was so scared of his strong feelings, he just didn’t know what to do with himself. Now that they’re step-siblings, he is content to stand by her side to protect her, forever.
My thoughts on this chapter
This was an interesting start to a seres, to say the least. While I typically hate anything step-sibling related, I can forgive it in this context. They used to date, then their parents got together (not knowing about their children’s relationship), and now they’ve found themselves living together. For this, I see no faults in anyone.
I enjoyed Ao’s character a lot in this introduction—he tries to come off as cool and collected, but often times he is forced to drop the facade rather quickly. He doesn’t realize that a lot of what he does is actually rather creepy, and just really wants to be near Takamura. It’s clear he’s still figuring out the new sibling relationship, but I hope their relationship will stay “normal” as long as their parents are together.
I found Takamura to be a just okay character, if I’m being honest. I’m not all that excited to follow her story, but I am committed to at least finishing this volume to see if she grows on me at all. She spends a good majority of the chapter insisting Ao tell her why he broke up with her (it really doesn’t matter, IMO), and when he finally does tell her, she begins getting a little flirty with him.
She spent the beginning of the chapter going on about how she just really wants her mom to be happy… then goes and tries to muddy her new step-sibling relationship right away? I’m not sure how I feel about that. While she’s not entirely at fault, she is the only one out of the two who consciously goes out of her way to fluster him. He’s clearly trying to keep his own emotions in check in order to stay around her. I hope she calms down a little bit, or at the very least, I hope they begin to match each other’s energy soon.
I really enjoyed the pacing and the artstyle of this series. So much so that I grew to be very attached to the story in just one chapter. I will be absolutely continuing on with this one!
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