Maddies Manga

Arata proves himself to be a better male lead than Sanari, but can he convince Ichika? Ichika is still hung up on Sanari, and Sanari proves himself to still be a playboy.

You can check out volume three of this series for yourself below!

My thoughts on this volume (Spoilers!)

Oh how I wish Ichika would give up on Sanari and give Arata a chance… I know she can’t help that she likes who she likes, and she can’t force feelings. Just, Arata is clearly the better of the two boys. There’s a whole scene with him proving himself to be the bigger man, with him giving Ichika objective love advice—he wants her to be happy more than anything, and he conveys that to her! Even if she were to chose Sanari at the end of the day, if Sanari proved himself to be able to make Ichika happy, I’m sure Arata would be happy for her. Unlike Sanari, who seems to be happy keeping Ichika unhappy, with a carrot dangled in front of her nose.

This volume continues the emotional rollercoaster that this series has become notorious for. The highs are incredibly high, but drama is always quick to follow. We get to see Arata really toss his hat into the ring, with him taking every opportunity to spend quality time with Ichika. Even when he learns first hand about Sanari’s playboy tendencies, he opts not to tell Ichika—he understands it would only hurt her in the end. Time and time again, he proves himself to be someone who puts Ichika’s feelings above all else.

Sanari also continues his bad habit of dangling a carrot in front of Ichika’s nose. Although he clearly understands he isn’t ready for a relationship, he continues to give half-hearted promises to her. While he thinks he likes her, he needs a little more time to really understand his own feelings, he says. When she shows even the slightest semblance of losing interest in him, he then proceeds to guilt her! As though he hasn’t been stringing her along the whole time!

While I found fault with Ichika towards the beginning of the series—she pushes her feelings onto Sanari quite strongly, even after he tells her he isn’t looking for a girlfriend—I can now really only find fault in Sanari. When she starts to clearly have fun with Arata, that should have been Sanari’s signal to back off. Does he? No! He does the absolute worst possible thing he could do, because he’s jealous! He wants to eat his cake and keep it too. Really, he doesn’t deserve a girlfriend of any kind at this point. He needs to get some therapy to understand why he’s so averse to “annoying things”, in my opinion.