I tend to have a soft spot for manga that would profusely offend the average folk. So naturally, I’d be curious about a manga that has to have part of its title censored! Let’s check out the bizarro romance manga, Watari-kun’s ****** is About to Collapse, published in English by Kodansha Comics.
Okay, so this manga’s premise is way more complicated to describe than actually experiencing it for yourself. Basically, a young lad named Naoto Watari lives with his aunt and dotes on his little sister, Suzushiro Watari. His life is pretty good, until a girl named Satsuki Tachibana appears. Six years ago, she destroyed his family’s garden (for some reason), and now, she comes on to him. And apparently, this destroys his life.
My best guess as to what was about to collapse is “sanity”, because that’s what was about to collapse for me as I was reading this. The plot of Watari-kun’s is off the wall… sort of. Basically, it’s a typical romance that tries to be a twisted, tragic love story (I think?). The idea of it is that Naoto forms these relationships with Satsuki, as well as Yukari Ishihara, one of his classmates, and his sister is super-psycho against it. He wants to dote on his sister for all eternity, and before long, it becomes evident that Suzu is pretending to be an utter ditz just to perpetuate that doting.
But despite his whole sister thing being in the product description, the real plot is… a shipping war. The main combatants are Satsuki and Yukari, and it’s about as entertaining as it sounds. A lot of times, I feel like that Watari-kun’s is trying to be a dark, psychological tragic romance… but it fails miserably. The main reason is because it’s a pretty typical romance, with only a couple of blips of grittiness.
And the grittiness is only relative. I was expecting it to be super-controversial, given the censored title. But as far as I got, the most controversial thing was this one scumbag guy who tried to overly assert his “male dominance” on one of the girls. Other than that, there’s nothing that special about this manga.
Speaking of not special, the characters match that description as well. It absolutely astonishes me that every single character can have a genuine psychological issue, and yet still be as boring as cardboard. The only even remotely interesting character is Satsuki, who is kind of a yandere I guess? I dunno… I didn’t like ANYBODY.
The art is also painfully average. While there are some shots that seem to go for the psychological atmosphere, Watari-kun’s looks typical even then. The characters look like they came from a How to Draw Manga book, and the backgrounds scream Clip Studio assets.
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Current Verdict: 4/10
Watari-kun’s ****** is About to Collapse collapses in on itself mere minutes after starting it. I’m doubly disappointed in it because I at least thought it would profusely offend me. But no… it couldn’t even do that. I’m sorry, but this is probably one of the worst manga I’ve ever read. I don’t recommend it to anyone, even to people to enjoy shipping wars.
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