Tag: shipping

A Shipping Battle Royale for the Ages – The Quintessential Quintuplets Full Series Review

by macksamson, posted in Full Reviews, Manga

I don’t get romance. At all. That’s not a surprise if you’ve read any of my posts in the past. But manga usually convinces me to like something I normally wouldn’t. One of the most popular romance manga in recent years is Quintessential Quintuplets, published in English by Kodansha Comics. Did it win my heart? Find out!

In Quintessential Quintuplets, the five Nakano sisters are seriously failing at school. Fortunately, their filthy rich dad hires a tutor for them: the smart-talking Futaro Uesugi. One guy, one house, five cute girls. What could possibly go wrong?

While I don’t understand romance, it’s easy to understand why Quintuplets is popular. Chapter one concludes with a teaser of the series’ ending: Futaro marries one of the five sisters. This single decision is undoubtedly why Quintuplets is so big (or was so big- I’ll elaborate on that in a bit). The author knows exactly how fandoms work; with a canon ship built, it’s up to the fans to argue and banter over whom Futaro plans to set sail with.

It just boggles me that people can become so invested in these ships. Social media networks and subreddits of all kinds get ripped asunder, all over a fictional boy’s relationship with a fictional girl. They act like the entire world depends on him picking the right person. But is Quintuplets still enjoyable for those who don’t spend their free time fretting over ships?

The story is actually darn entertaining… for the most part. Quintuplets operates like a sitcom; when it’s just the main characters goofing around, it’s a pretty heartwarming good time. But once the drama kicks in, it’s an annoying, eye-roll-inducing slog. It’s tough to bring drama into something like this without making it a cringefest. Since it’s fictional, we know that everything that happens is entirely decided by the author; it’s really hard to make this kind of stuff seem natural, so I’m not too salty about it.

Unfortunately, it goes up in smoke at the end. The author does one of those stupid things where the story goes through several “what if” scenarios, none of which end up being canon, even in the case of the girl who actually wins. And when Futaro makes his decision, it feels arbitrary; all five girls more-or-less equally inspire him, and thus it feels like a roll of the dice. I’ve read discussions, and it seems that people really got into the nitty-gritty on the logic (or illogic) leading up the final decision, and as someone who has a hard time understanding relationships (let alone relationships between five siblings), I can’t vouch for ANY of those statements.

So how about the characters? Futaro is incredibly generic and unremarkable, but that’s okay, since the manga is called Quintessential Quintuplets and not One Essential Onetuplet (i.e. we only care about the Nakano sisters). I am baffled that people are meant to pick one of them and love them unconditionally, and that’s because they’re all kind of equal. I didn’t really like or dislike any of them. One standout thing about all five girls is that they’re female characters in a harem manga that actually get character development. And since character development is arbitrarily one of the absolute objectively good things in literature, I can definitely understand the girls’ appeal. But like I said before about human relationships, I never understood the logic behind any of the girls’ actions, which added to my not caring about them as characters.

The art is marketable and inherently appealing. Cute girls with blush cheek, check. Clip Studio backgrounds, check. The girls stand out thanks to their hair, and they take advantage of that to disguise themselves as each other (except they actually have varied hair colors in the color art. OOPS). It’s what you’d expect of a light and fluffy manga like this.

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Final Verdict: 6.5/10

As far as romcoms go, Quintessential Quintuplets is a decent com, but a viscerally terrible rom. Also, and I’m sorry for this, but I’m docking points for this manga encouraging one of the most toxic mindsets on the Internet in the form of a shipping war. If you want Quintessential Quintuplets, then go for it, but as far as I’m concerned, there’s many better manga out there.

Watari-kun’s ****** is About to Collapse, First Impressions (Volumes 1-4)

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Manga

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.