Maddies Manga

A girl who has difficulties making new friends and a delinquent boy bond during one unexpected lunch. One lunch turns into two, and two turn into daily standing appointments. Will they be able to overcome their differences and make a lasting relationship?

Author

This series is written by Azu. X

Genre & Tropes

High school romance, slice of life, yankee romance, comedy.

Info about this series (ongoing)

This is a new digital series, with 1 volume newly released.

TL;DR rating

I love this series! I almost want to wait to see if a physical release will come out before buying the complete digital. The art and story are both unique and fun!

What’s this series about? (Spoilers)

Yui is a 15 year old girl who has been having difficulties making friends at school. By the time lunch hits, she finds herself eating all by herself—very much not by choice. Just as she’s starting to wish that she tried a little bit harder to at least greet at least one of her new classmates earlier in the day, a delinquent-looking boy comes in.

He introduces himself as Nishihara and offers to eat lunch with Yui, as he also has found himself without any company. While she is a little bit scared of him, she accepts his offer—she wants to make at least one friend. Worse case scenario, it’ll give her some practice talking to other people her age.

As the two of them begin talking, Yui slowly starts to realize that Nishihara really may not be as scary as he first appeared. He may even be more-than-friend potential!

My thoughts on this volume (Spoilers!)

I really, really enjoyed this story! I’m typically a big fan of delinquent romance stories, and this one is no different. While it’s incredibly different from popular delinquent series like Love, That’s an Understatement and Glasses With a Chance of Delinquent, I think it has potential to become an equally popular title.

While Yui spends the majority of the time being at least somewhat scared of Nishihara, it’s really nice watching her try to give him the benefit of the doubt. She’s clearly a rather strong character, putting her goals above her fears. She also is clearly doing her best to not judge a book by its cover, which I really respect! Even though sometimes she really can’t help but be scared to the point that she runs away, she is able to apologize when she takes things a little too far.

When Nishihara realizes that she’s scared of him, he goes out of his way to try and be less intimidating. He went as far as buying cat ears to wear just for her! I really think they would make such a sweet couple! Honestly I think the poor boy is just a little misunderstood—there’s really nothing scary about him.

While I already really liked Nishihara’s character, learning about his past helped me appreciate him even more. I do feel a little bit bad for the things that transpired that caused him to turn to the yankee life, but at least it brought him to Yui! Hopefully going through that experience will teach those girls to treat boys like normal humans from now on…

You can check out this series for yourself below! (JP)