I have been reading a lot of manga the past couple months, and since I’ve finally finished the Rust article the other day, I felt like writing about the experience as well as various ramblings connected to that. Wow, gotta love going back to my introductions I wrote under the assumption I will not take two months to finish the article. Moving on.
I’ll start with a bit of history and how I got into manga etc. and continue with various observations I made along the way. At the end, I’ll mention a couple memorable manga, whether they were really good, had a unique premise, or anything else that made them stand out. I’m expecting this to turn into quite the long article, so I should probably split it up into multiple.
Hah! Not gonna happen.
How it started
I only vaguely remember how it all began. At some point I just started reading Giji Harem (擬似ハーレム / Pseudo Harem). By the way, I’ll try to link all the manga I mention, but as I read almost all of them in Japanese, there’s a couple that are pretty much unknown here in the west. Consequently, websites like MAL don’t even have a bunch of them yet.
I don’t know how long ago that was, but MAL tells me I finished the manga roughly one year ago, so I guess I started reading it maybe 1.5 to 2 years ago. I think some random in some Youtube comment section recommended it or something like that. Anyway, despite what you may think of the title, it was a pretty good, wholesome and cute manga that I can recommend. It has finished publishing with 157 chapters, which actually isn’t that much as each chapter only has four pages as far as I remember.
I started reading it on some manga reader website of questionable legality where people uploaded translations. But as the manga was still publishing back then, I eventually caught up. So, what do? At some point I realized that the author just puts the new weekly chapter on Twitter. And then I thought…
Hey, I can read Japanese… sort of!
I then followed the author and just read the new chapters whenever he published them on Twitter. But the author wasn’t some isolated mangaka in the wide and open sea of Twitter. No, in fact he would regularly retweet manga by other mangaka who published theirs on Twitter as well. I started following some of them, and in return I got introduced to even more mangaka via retweets. Among all the other stuff they retweeted (random thoughts from random people, some rakugaki, people announcing the sale of their manga, etc.) I noticed that some of them only published a sort of preview of their newest manga chapters, maybe the first four pages of a chapter that was obviously longer. And when they did so, they would either link to some external vendor website where you could buy their manga, or… the website for some manga reader app. After all, Twitter isn’t exactly the best platform for publishing manga. Who would’ve thought.
Initially, I wasn’t interested in either. I didn’t plan to buy manga at that point and I still don’t do that too often. Manga are, for the most part, just too short for the price if you ask me. Paying 5€ for a manga I’d finish in an hour just doesn’t feel right. I’d still buy manga though if one really caught my interest.
But anyway, the other option were manga reader apps. At some point one of these preview tweets piqued my interest enough that I decided to install that app. But I just couldn’t find it on the Playstore. So I tried clicking the link from the twitter app, and it actually brought me to the Playstore page of the app I wanted to install… and as the Japanese do, that app turned out to be region-locked.
oof
But I’m not studying computer science for nothing!
*proceeds to not really use his computer science knowledge anyway*
So, as you may know you can install most apps despite their region lock if you can just find a download for their .apk online. This is a bit of a pain to manage, because whenever the app updates, it’ll shut you out and you’ll have to find an up-to-date .apk again. This is where I can recommend QooApp (or alternatives): it’s basically another Playstore, though with a lot of gimmicks. But the point is, if someone maintains the package on QooApp, then you can just update via a click on the “update” button. Do note that QooApp can’t be found on the Playstore either so you have to download an .apk again. But at least it’s smart enough to update itself without needing a re-download.
How it’s going
To get back to manga readers, you could say that this is where it really started. As I saw more previews on Twitter of different manga I got interested in, multiple manga reader apps found their way onto my phone. I currently have seven installed. Out of these I check four daily, one maybe once a week and the other two are really just collecting dust. There were also a couple more readers I wanted after seeing them on Twitter, but they weren’t on QooApp and I was too lazy to update them manually all the time. Besides, I had enough readers already and going even further started to seem like a bad idea.
Most readers have this really nasty feature where they just spam you with recommendations about new manga that just started publishing, their best picks or whatever. Being the gullible sheep I am, I would often click those and maybe add another manga to my “favorites” list. And so, I started reading more and more manga. At the time of writing, there are 33 manga which I am “actively reading”. That means either reading at least one chapter a week, or staying up to date in the case of manga I’m already caught up with. This might seem like a lot, but it doesn’t feel that way most of the time. Most manga only publish a new chapter once every two weeks, some update every week and few update only once a month or even less. If we assume them to update on average every two weeks and that I’m typically reading three chapters every evening, that means I can keep up with 42 manga concurrently… so that means I’m actually kinda close to cap already. Huh.
Yea maybe I should filter more stuff. But more on that later.
The problem here isn’t just the recommendations. While I add a lot of manga to my favorites list that way, that doesn’t mean I’ll actually read them. The favorites are practically a mixed “reading” and “plan to read” list, at least for me. I just dive in there whenever I feel like starting something new. This actually happens sort of regularly. You get into this cycle where you’re kinda excited about one manga you’ve recently started. You read your free chapter(s) every day, and… eventually you catch up. The familiar story that used to (partially) fill your evenings is reduced to just one new chapter every week or less. You’re left with this gap, which isn’t that different from the feeling you get after finishing a really good anime. And so, I find myself back on the favorites list again, scouring the manga collected there for something that piques my interest. Thus, the cycle starts anew.
This is pretty much how I ended up with this many manga that I’m actively following. With the vast majority I’m just waiting for new chapters, but there’s typically one or two that I’m excited enough about to catch up, getting closer by a chapter or two with every passing day.
One thing I noticed is that I get quite a bit more exposure to the “hot stuff” in the anime and manga community nowadays. Like when I do crawl out of my hole and manage to somehow see the lineup for the next season, there’s often familiar names now. Not like I’ve really read the manga, but I often recognize the title, characters on the cover etc. and maybe I’ve even read the first chapter or something like that. One day a manga I’ve read will be adapated and then I can finally ascend to peak manga reader level. Time to bitch about the adaption all day.
I’m still following about ten mangaka on Twitter by the way, but at this point there isn’t much that I’m actually reading anymore. As mentioned before, Twitter also isn’t optimized for the way manga are published. When you first get exposed to a manga that way, you’re probably looking at the newest chapter 50-something, and that random pick would have to pique your interest for you to start actively following the manga. This is bad, due to
a) spoiler potential
b) at least in my opinion, starting to read a manga because “chapter 50 looks good” doesn’t feel like a good reason. I’m not even completely sure why, but it just feels bad. I refuse to elaborate.
Besides, imagine you now wanted to start reading that manga from the beginning. In the best case, the author was kind enough to always link chapter x-1 under his tweet publishing chapter x. That way you can just go down the chain to the first chapter, but that still takes a while for longer manga. And since you probably aren’t going to catch up within a single session, you’ll also have to save or bookmark your current chapter somehow. Furthermore, while the previous chapter is often linked, the authors don’t usually go back to link the new chapter under the previous publication as well, so if you don’t have your browser history anymore from the time where you went from new to old chapters, there’s no easy way to go back up again to newer chapters etc. As most mangaka are also pretty active with retweets while only publishig a new chapter once a week or less, just going through their Twitter timeline is also a slog.
TLDR; trying to catch up on a manga via Twitter is pain.
Manga Readers
I wanted to go into a bit more detail about the manga readers I’m using and how you interact with them, as that affects how you consume manga.
First of all, the four I’m currently checking every day are
- Jump Plus
- Niconico Manga
- Gangan
- Magapoke
These all differ slightly in their monetization schemes and policies etc., but are generally quite similar. There is however a strict necessity to have multiple readers if you want to read specific manga, as each one is typically only published in one place. The readers are all generous enough to let you read most manga completely for free, just the number of chapters you can read in a given day is limited. At least per manga. These are typically presented as “rentals” where you can rent a chapter and then get 24h to 72h until it’s automatically “returned”.
Jump Plus could perhaps be considered the most generous: you can read as many chapters as you want in a day, but only the first time. If you want to re-read a chapter after it’s been returned, or perhaps weren’t able to finish it the first time around, you’ll have to pay.
Niconico Manga is weird. Most manga only let you read the latest couple chapters at all. As far as I know you cannot even pay to read them once their time is over. It’ll just show you something like
Chapter 1 (free)
Chapter 2 (free)
Chapter 3 (free)
— 34 chapters have finished publishing —
Chapter 38 (free)
Chapter 39 (free)
This model confuses me. You can typically read all chapters for free here… if they are available. There are a few manga you can read in their entirety, but for all the others, you’d have to be there from the start if you want to read all chapters. It would be a different story if you could read the chapters that “finished publishing” for money, but as it stands this model just seems dumb. Well, whatever.
Gangan gives you a ticket a day for every manga, which lets you rent a chapter. This scheme obviously favors reading a lot of manga concurrently, as the number of chapters you can read for free in a given day is equal to the number of different manga.
Magapoke (supposedly short for Manga Pocket) works similar to Gangan, except you also get another ticket on login every day. That means you can read a second chapter every day for one manga of your choosing. Furthermore, you can watch a short ad to get another free chapter. This also works once a day per manga.
All of these readers have manga that you cannot read for free at all, you’d have to pay for every chapter except the first few. Some of these readers also allow you to “read ahead” by a chapter or two for money, meaning you get to read them before the f2p crowd. You can always read the first and the last couple chapters completely for free.
My favorite is probably Magapoke. It doesn’t have the weird system Niconico uses, you can read a little more every day than Gangan allows and it has better manga than Jump Plus imo.
One thing they all do, which I’m really not a fan of, is that they tend to split single chapters into multiple parts. So when you rent a chapter for a ticket, you’re actually not renting an entire chapter of the manga, but maybe only one of two or three parts that they split the chapter into. This is a classic capitalist ploy of course and not entirely unexpected, since more chapters -> more ca$h. That in itself doesn’t really bother me, but new chapters are also published that way and they sometimes end up way too short. Waiting for a month for a new chapter, only for it to end up as a ten pages long half-chapter in which nothing of significance happens is frustrating.
Moreover, they don’t seem to have much regard for how they actually split the chapter, which sometimes places the cuts in the worst possible places. This may create unintentional cliff hangers, or maybe it just cuts in half a regular, everyday conversation between two characters. Overall, it often ends up being really bad for the flow. In fact, the entire concept of “one chapter a day” (at best) prevents any sort of healthy reading flow. Even seasonal anime watchers get an entire new >20min episode a week. Manga readers often only get an average of 20 new pages every two weeks.
From Trash to Fast Food
First of all, I gotta make a confession: I read a lot of trash. I’ll go a little into what and why later.
But other than that, I decided I’ll be calling “trash” manga and anime “fast food” from now on.
Okay, okay, I know this may sound a little weird now, but hear me out. The main reason is that calling something trash just doesn’t feel right to me anymore. I mean, there is actual trash out there, stuff that everyone watching should probably be ashamed of. But that is the minority. Most anime fans I know tend to watch “trash” sometimes. They haven’t just been lured in by some form of bait, but they watch it to the end and probably got a decent amount of enjoyment out of it. I am no different. In fact, I consider the majority of manga I’m currently reading to be fast food. I wouldn’t recommend them and I don’t think I will still be reading them in a couple months from now. But for now, I am reading and enjoying them.
Calling them trash doesn’t feel right anymore. It is both disrespectful to the author and disingenuous towards my own feelings. I’m not usually reading something I don’t enjoy (ignore the part where I read the bible voluntarily). While fast food manga are typically unoriginal, very formulaic and have no other redeeming qualities, they are still doing something right. And sometimes that something is just what I want.
I think that the worst stories are typically those that make you feel nothing. Maybe they’re boring, maybe you can’t connect to them in any way. Most fast food manga are different. Even the fiftieth story about the underdog rising to the top and taking revenge on everyone who hurt them in the past still manages to make me feel something, as long as it hits most of the checkboxes and is decently well executed. To be honest, I’m not even completely sure I could write a story like that myself.
With that out of the way: Why fast food?
I believe it’s the perfect metaphor for this. Everyone knows it’s not exactly good or even healthy for you. But you consume it anyway and something keeps you coming back. It captures the essence of how I feel about these stories very well. It is still a somewhat derogatory term, but I think it matches the audacity of copying the same plot, setting and tropes for the umpteenth time very well.
One last thing I want to mention here: good execution is already enough for a very enjoyable story. You don’t need a unique premise or anything like that. Half the time in manga, the premise feels like it’s just there to draw in readers at the start, and has very little relevance to the story. So just because these stories are often unoriginal, that doesn’t make them bad.
50 Shades of Trash Fast food
So, as I mentioned, I read mostly fast food manga. I wanted to talk about the observations I made along the way here. One of the most notable features about these are that they tend to copy certain plots or setups. I would call them genres, but they are so narrowly defined that the term genre doesn’t really fit. I’ll just mention the main categories I identified, their features, what makes them bad and why I read them anyway.
RPG Systems and Generic Fantasy Worlds
This isn’t one of the categories yet, but it’s a collection of elements that various different categories share.
Our story might take place in a fantasy world, but it might also just be an alternate version of today’s reality, and what I see with astonishing frequency are all these concepts taken straight out of RPGs. Often times, the characters can just open their “stat page”, they learn “skills” and “level up” - but all of this is happening in the real world! Or at least that’s how it’s presented to us. It would be something different if it turns out it was just a simulation all along, but that’s typically not the case. We’re not even given a reason at all in stories where this happens. I can’t help but wonder why authors copy these bland RPG systems into a world where they can only feel out of place. It’s a question I could not find a definitive answer to yet. As such, it feels like the authors were just lazy. They take an easy to understand system that’s so shallow they can modify it however they see fit and avoid seriously thinking of a sensible and cohesive power/magic/whatever system. Those systems also go very well with power fantasies, as e.g. “being overlevelled” is a very convincing explanation for why someone is overpowered.
This often, but not always, goes hand in hand with a similarly bland and uninspired fantasy world. There’s dragons, goblins, etc. and no one even bothers to explain their characteristics as you’ve seen them a hundred times already. There’s no need to waste time on telling the reader that dragons breathe fire and slimes are the weakest monsters out there. We typically also get people registered as adventurers with the guild, who team up in parties and tackle dungeons and quests together. The latter might actually fit more with the RPG systems than the fantasy world parts, but it really goes best and most commonly together. This again just seems like laziness on the part of the author. We’re introduced to a world that is “different” enough that the author can just put whatever their story needs out there. At the same time it’s very familiar, and we can spare ourselves most of the explanations as readers have probably seen all of it a hundred times already.
Both of these are disappointing. The first one often feels out of place, and the second one is huge amounts of wasted potential. A good fantasy world isn’t there to be the playground of the author and an excuse for everything. No, it should define it’s own rules and allow us to slowly and surely unravel its mysteries. It allows us to be curiuos and excited about what there is to see. It lets us engage in the world’s logic and understand why things are happening, instead of just accepting them because the author will’s it. As a big fantasy fan, seeing the fantasy worlds in fast food manga makes me feel sad and depressed.
With that out of the way, let’s get to the most common fast food categories I’ve seen.
Discarded and Left to Die
This feels like the most common setup and I have yet to see a single execution of the concept that is actually good. The main character is in a party of “adventurers” who typically clear dungeons together. They’re considered to be among the strongest, if not the strongest, party in the world. Yet, our protagonist is looked down upon by his party members as useless and they eventually decide to ditch him. If they are nice, they’ll only bully him and then tell him to leave. Worst case, they very literally backstab him to collect his “adventurer insurance” or just because they’re really bad people. In any case, the protagonist suddenly finds himself alone and perhaps on the verge of dying. This is the moment he realizes he’s actually pretty damn overpowered. The mean monster that was about to bite his head off is quickly dispatched through a mere wave of his hand, and off he is on his journey, to rise from the ashes and perhaps enact revenge upon those who backstabbed him.
Interestingly, the “revenge” story here is typically very indirect. The protagonist rarely gets to fight his former allies. Often times, just kicking him out of their party is already enough to bring about their downfall. The protagonist usually has some insane buff skills and his party is actually useless without him. His own strength then most commonly comes from the fact that he realizes he can just direct all the buff skills he previously split up between his allies onto himself. The revenge story practically writes itself. The protagonist’s former allies just take loss after loss and quickly fall from grace, because they’re too dumb to realize they’re not what they used to be, and thus take on challenges far too dangerous for them.
This is perhaps the most clearly, narrowly defined of the categories I’m going to list here. At the same time, it’s astonishing just how many of these manga are out there. I read a lot of these manga, and my enjoyment comes from the fact that it’s just satisfying to see our abused protagonist get back on his feet and start his new life, while his backstabbers suffer. That’s about it.
The problem with these manga is, first of all, obviously just how much of a copy-paste setting they have. This is easily the least original category I’m going to list here. Furthermore, the beginning is typically the best part, the entire premise. After the initial chapters, we get a bit of powerfantasy show-off moments, and that’s about it. It usually feels like the authors have no idea where to go from here. Their hero is already stupidly overpowered and they don’t know what to do with him. There’s no plot after this. It’s your classical underdog-rises-to-topdog story, except they’re skipping the underdog phase and just jump straight to the punchline. The story is over at that point. I’m wondering if I’ll ever see one that takes this a bit farther.
This category always employs the RPG systems and generic fantasy worlds I mentioned earlier.
The Useless Unique
In stories of this category, every character (or at least every “adventurer”) is given a skill. Our protagonist is one of the few chosen ones that receive a “unique skill”, a rare skill that only they and no one else possess. At first they are overjoyed, but then they quickly realize that their skill is actually useless, and so they stay behind as their former party members or maybe their cute childhood-friend-love-interest-hybrid charge ahead boldly. This category also typically employs RPG systems and particularly the guilds, parties, adventurers etc. society. In any case, our protagonist later realizes that his skill is actually insanely overpowered. He just needed to play around with his skill a little to realize its true potential, or maybe it just needed to reach level 5 to get to the good part. It’s another underdog story where the protagonist is actually really overpowered, but takes a while to catch up.
This has pretty much the same positives and negatives as the previous category, but there’s a bit more variety, and since the protagonist isn’t at the very top practically from the start, there’s also a bit more meat to the story, allowing it to stay fresh for a little longer. They also often play around with the mechanics of the world and/or the skill in semi-interesting ways.
The variety of overpowered skills the authors come up with can also be interesting. I remember one manga taking place in the real world, but with dungeons spawning everyhwere, and adventurers could enter dungeons to farm some fresh loot and XP. A barrier at the entrance of every dungeon would prevent anyone from entering more than one per day. The protagonist had subpar stats and his skill only allowed him super short distance teleportation, like a meter or something. He then used that to teleport through the dungeon’s entrance barriers, clear more and thus outlevel everyone around him. That’s a really good example of world mechanics being used well. That said, the setup isn’t particularly intersting and there’s nothing more going on here. He’ll just slowly catch up on the top guys by outlevelling them.
There’s also another one that I’m reading, which might take the crown for dumbest skill: automode. Does exactly what it says on the packaging. Probably even worse than you’re imagining. See a huge dragon that should be absolutely undefeatable with his level and equipment? Protagonist just activates automode, his body starts moving on his own and he fights like a god, slaying that dragon in a couple minutes. During that time he simply watches a timer count down behind his closed eyes while waiting for the fight to be over.
Due to the “protagonist is (actually) overpowered” plot point, we might get some progression but typically only in terms of levels/stats for the protagonist. There is rarely real struggle involved and very little development that goes deeper than stats and reaches down to the personal level.
Naturally, this category always uses the RPG systems I mentioned earlier. Generic fantasy worlds are also rather prevalent.
There’s another variant of this category which replaces “skills” with some sort of equipment. That’s really just a less interesting version of this category to me. Uses the same “it seems weak at first but turns out to be overpowered” trope, but usually doesn’t have the more interesting and creative aspects around the skill’s mechanics.
The Banished class
This category is also very similar to the previous one. People in the world of these stories are typically assigned a “class” or “job” (cue other RPG systems of course) when they turn a certain age. The protagonist is assigned a class that is scorned and looked down upon for some reason, typically just as being useless. It then turns out it’s actually overpowered. There’s not much else to say here. It’s just really weird how the protagonist still ends up overpowered, but no one ever talks about the fact that no one else with this class is overpowered. Typically the protagonist is the only one with this class ever introduced in the manga. That’s just strange.
Rise of the Underdog
This should probably just be considered a super-category for the previous ones. Perhaps I shouldn’t even call it a category but rather a trope. That said, I don’t just mean any underdog-type story by this. There’s real good ones out there, but the ones I am referring to aren’t. Really, it’s just a common element of the previous categories. Seeing the guy who was abused at the start get back on his feet and perhaps enact some sweet revenge is always satisfying. But beyond that, these stories are often bland. They tend to give the protagonist some sort of overpowered abilities, equipment or whatever, and his “progress” is really just level and stats going up.
I’m saying “him” for a reason here by the way, since I have yet to see a single female protagonist in one of these stories. Though sometimes we have the protagonist reincarnated/playing as a girl, because why not. And since we’re talking females: there is typically at least one poster girl that the protagonist picks up along the way, and often multiple. Not even love interests (at least from the protagonist’s side), but simply eye candy I guess?
Isekai
There’s of course a lot of Isekai out there and the majority of it is fast food. Everyone probably knows that already and I don’t have much to add here I guess. There’s a lot of overlap with the previously mentioned categories as well. In particular, I’ve seen people being transported into games they’ve played more and more often recently, perhaps more than the non-game-related ones.
All I really wanted to say here is: why do people use the Isekai trope? I really don’t get it. The best reason that I can come up with to employ it would be if you wanted to tell some sort of redemption story for someone who had a shitty life and now gets another chance by being reincarnated into the world of their dreams (or nightmares). But that is very, very rarely the case. The only Isekai I can think of that has ever seriously dealt with the protagonist’s past in any way was Mushoku Tensei. While other Isekai protagonist’s do tend to have a sad previous life (typically being shut-in gamers/otakus) this rarely comes up again as more than a side note after the first couple chapters. That makes me wonder, is this just supposed to make the protagonist more relatable? That seems like a rather weak reason.
The other two “uses” of the Isekai trope that I’ve seen so far are either just for knowledge from the previous life, or to make all sorts of references. In the former case, the protagonist’s “overpowered knowledge” is explained away by them being someone from our world. That happens particularly often with game-related Isekais. If this knowledge is what your story needs, sure, go ahead, but at least outside of games there’s a million other ways to explain it. These aren’t necessarily better than making it an Isekai, but would surely feel at least a little fresh.
In the latter case, the origin of the protagonist is used to allow them to make all sorts of (often comedic) commentary on the workings of this other world. There’s also nothing wrong with this, but it feels more like an afterthought to me than something that would make you go “it needs to be an Isekai!”
Anyway, that was my two cents on Isekai here.
Here’s another Flavor of <Girl>
This category goes a completely different way than the previous ones, which were mostly different takes on power fantasy.
Anyway, stories in this category often revolve heavily around a female character with some sort of quirk. The protagonist is male and usually enters into some kind of romantical relationship with the girl. This often happens in high school, and of course the girl is often the most beautiful human being in a 10 kilometer radius.
If that’s the case, then her quirk tends to be some kind of secret. The dude somehow finds out about it but he still accepts her as what she is, which is actually not too bad of a start for a meaningful character background.
I still think it’s strange how usually “her beauty” is emphasized. She’s the prettiest of the pretty, an angel walking the earth. But it doesn’t stop there of course, she’s also really smart, having top grades, and excels at *all* types of sports as well. It’s almost funny how often the main girl is at first described as being literally perfect in every way.
Sometimes that’s used for a bit of comedy when her quirk is something that shatters this image of perfection, maybe by being a bit childish or plain weird. That might be entertaining if it wasn’t so predictable literally spoiled by the manga’s title. I guess it’s also intended to make that angel a bit more human, but sometimes she just ends up as this weird and uncanny caricature of a person, where someone took perfection and threw some sort of flaw into the mix. It feels a little like video game bosses that are completely invulnerable on their entire body, except for that large glowing red weakspot on their ass. It feels engineered and artificial.
There’s a lot of, mostly superficial, variation when it comes to the main girl.
Maybe she’s a vampire or she’s a succubus. Or she’s the legendary slit-mouthed woman. Perhaps she’s an assasssin and maybe he’s even her target.
Or maybe she’s a little kid at heart or a very gloomy person. Maybe she’s a Hokkaido gyaru, or she’s just really cool in general. Maybe she’s a capable office lady who always gets drunk after work, or the girlfriend of the guy stealing your girlfriend. Maybe she’s a gamer girl or even a pro-gamer girl. Maybe she has multiple personalities, or just a doppelgänger. Maybe she’s the best friend’s little sister. Or the little sister’s best friend. Or the little sister… well fuck.
The male protagonists in this category tend to be incredibly weak characters, both figuratively and literally. They’re just a copy and paste Mr. nice-guy that you’ve seen a hundred times already, and they don’t go any deeper than that. No character, no background story, no anything beyond that. They’re a hollow container, just there because you need something to have “romantic” moments with the girl. They’re almost always an outsider and of course also dense as a white dwarf and/or too scared/anxious to make a move. They also tend to behave in… offputting… ways in the more accidental “romance” moments. Walk in on a girl in the bathroom, or trip and accidentally grab her boobs? None of these guys are up for the task of handling such a situation like a decent human being. It always ends more or less the same way. Dude’s brain short-circuits and he just stands there watching her for several seconds until she punches him in the face or something. I’d love to see a manga where the dude actually reacts like any average person would… except no good manga even has situations like these, because they’re weird and unrealistic.
Not all of these manga are bad by the way. There’s a couple really good manga that would sort of fit this category. The bad ones typically identify themselves by how they prefer superficial, trope-y “romance” moments over actual romance. They like to spam you with moments like “she trips and now she’s on top of him”, or an indirect kiss, or he protects her from people hitting on her, or they have to hide in a really tight closet together, and so on. Most of these are completely meaningless in general, or at least rendered meaningless by how they’re presented. Typically, these moments just end with one or both characters being embarassed and that’s about it.
It actually goes so far that some of these manga have no romance at all, but only these tropey moments. They also tend to have little to no progression, in most of these stories they never even become a couple. As I’ve already mentioned in the Horimiya article, another indicator of how good a romance story is, is how much time they spend in the pre-relationship phase, aka before they are a couple. Most fastfood manga never even reach the point where they’re actually a couple. On the other hand, some of them even have the audacity to just end the story at the point where they become a couple. Like, do Japanese mangaka simply not know that that’s where it “really” starts? Or maybe they just don’t think that’s what people are interested in. I don’t know.
I should probably write an article at some point about how I feel about romance manga in general.
Aside from the superficiality of the romance here, there’s also something to say about the setup. It is typically very focused on the female character. She’s the poster girl (literally) and the main draw of the manga. They try to appeal through character design and her “quirk”. This honestly makes me feel very weird sometimes… There are hundreds of fictional girls, and perhaps one for each specific combination of preferences a reader might have. They are practically engineered to be waifu material. There’s a reason why I called this section the way I did. Sometimes it really feels like you’re picking a flavor of ice-cream or something.
So you may wonder, why do I read these manga? So do I.
Seriously though, these are like a quick injection of sugar straight into my veins, which can be nice sometimes. That’s about it. The term “fast food manga” really fits perfectly here. The absence of any meaningful development and the all-to-familiar routine of the manga in this category typically make me drop them rather quickly.
The Evil Ojou-sama
This one has become surprisingly common recently, I’m guessing people just saw the success of Bakarina and decided to copy that. You probably know the setup: girl gets reincarnated into the world of an Otome game she once played, but as the evil Ojou-sama who probably ends up dead on each of the game’s routes.
This is another weirdly specific category, but here I fail to see what the setup is good for. In the most classic examples, the Otome setting is an excuse to have a reverse harem and the “Evil” part is supposed to add some suspense I guess. That’s good enough, but there’s still more than enough examples in this category where the reverse harem element is missing. And I have yet to see a single example of the “Evil” part being used for suspense effectively. If you’ve seen Bakarina, they all play out the same way in that regard: she just keeps stressing about getting killed if she makes a mistake, while it’s completely clear to us that she’s prevented such an ending long ago already, just by… not being a shitty person.
In any case, there’s not too much I have to say about this category. It’s just another weird copycat with little thought put into it in most cases. They are actually not even that similar, since, while the setup may seem very specific, whatever happens after that is still rather open. It is typically some sort of slice of life story, but there’s still some variation among them. Some also like to play with the setup a little, e.g. by making the main character her butler, instead of Ojou-sama herself.
So, why is this a fastfood category? Well, whenever a setup this specific is just copied again and again, that already makes for a good contender in my opinion. Other than that, the problems here are less specific, but pretty much what you would expect from people who just copy setups like this. These stories mostly play out as slice of life stories, except the authors seem to have no idea what they really want to do so they just do nothing, really. I can’t even remember the contents of the last couple fast food manga I read from this category, they were just too forgettable.
In any case, those are about all the categories I came up with. There’s probably more, as there’s more than enough genres I’m just dodging for no good reason aside from “not feeling like it”.
Finally, one thing that is true for almost all fast food manga, is the fact that they don’t actually end. The author either just keeps doing the same things forever until I eventually stop reading, or they stop publishing. I don’t believe every story has to have a clear ending, but it’s honestly so bad that just seeing that a manga is finished is already a big positive for me.
My Picks
In this section I’ll present some of the manga I’ve read. I will recommend the (few) that were really good, mention a couple disappointments and some that just have interesting or funny premises. All of that in no particular order, for the confusion variety.
Giji Harem
As I mentioned at the start, Giji Harem (擬似ハーレム / Pseudo Harem) is the manga where it all began for me. It is relatively short with 157 chapters of only about 4 pages each. As such, it’s not particularly deep, but it still presents a decently well executed, cute and wholesome romance story. The premise is simple: main girl Rin and her senpai Eiji are in their school’s drama club together. When Eiji mentions that he used to dream of having a harem, Rin starts acting out a harem of multiple personalities for him. What may sound weird at first was done pretty well, and the manga generally avoided most of the romance tropes that I’m so tired of. It also actually came to an end, which is another positive.
Rinkane
Rinkane (りんかね) gets a shoutout for just having a funny setup. The main character and his two bros were Samurai in the middle ages, travelling the land to fight demons. After their final battle they all died happily together. But the main character gets reincarnated into modern day Japan, and in Highschool he actually meets his two Samurai bros again. Turns out they also reincarnated. As cute girls. Aaaand they’re both horny for him. Alright.
Bokutachi wa Hanshoku wo yameta
Bokutachi wa Hanshoku wo yameta (僕たちは繁殖をやめた / We’ve stopped reproducing) is a funny one. It starts out as a wholesome romance between a guy and a girl who met in university. Seven chapters in, they’re already a couple, and after they had sex he finds out… she’s actually his little sister.
Well, the story still treats the subject seriously. The two siblings grew up apart from each other, they don’t see each other as siblings and at the point where they find out, they’re already in love with each other. This could be an interesting story about incest in our modern world, but unfortunately it sort of just stops there. They resolve to stay together, but the story doesn’t really go any deeper into the topic. Instead of actually discussing the problems and challenges here, it embraces all sorts of drama that make the guy and girl alternately go “maybe we should break up after all”. The manga actually finished publishing at 53 chapters and I’m wondering if they’ll find a good ending, but so far I’m a bit disappointed.
Tomodachi no Imouto ga Ore ni dake Uzai
Tomodachi no Imouto ga Ore ni dake Uzai (友達の妹が俺にだけウザい / My Friend’s little Sister is only annoying to Me) is about another little sister! Not the main character’s, fortunately. This one took a large serving of tropes and made them work somehow. It is a romcom about Akiteru, a highschool student who is producing his own game with the 5-man company he built up himself, and how he and the members of the company navigate their daily lifes and work challenges. It is a slice of life so there isn’t really anything more detailed to say about the plot.
As you may have guessed, the (best friend’s) little sister is in love with him, and at least two more love interests are added into the mix over the course of the story. What’s refreshing to see is that our main character isn’t your generic dense protagonist, but he is actually a very smart and capable person. He isn’t oblivious to the girls' advances either, though he’s sworn to focus completely on building his game development company, so he doesn’t have any time for “love” and “relationships”. It is also nice to see how proactive the various girls are, as even “the shy one” does her best to convey her feelings.
That said, the setup as of now obviously doesn’t allow for much development in the romance direction, so I’m wondering where they’ll go with this. But overall, this turned out surprisingly enjoyable so far, in contrast to what I initially expected.
Yonshimai wa Yoru wo Omachikane
Yonshimai wa Yoru wo Omachikane (四姉妹は夜をおまちかね / The four sisters are waiting impatiently for the night) made its place onto this list by throwing my expectations overboard. It starts of with the main character walking the streets of his home town in the middle of the night. He’s a Leprechaun, and he cannot sleep until he satisfies his primal urges by playing tricks on unsuspecting people. When he sees a girl sleeping at her desk through an open window, he cannot resist. So he goes into her room through the window… and finishes the homework she fell asleep doing. Then he leaves.
This was so wholesome, I was looking forward to how this would continue. Next thing that happens, he gets called out by an elf-woman who watched him and recognized he’s a Leprechaun. She takes him home, introduces him to her four daughters, and tells him to play pranks on them (= be horny) to “awaken their elven blood”. That’s it.
Yea I’m out of here.
Ijimeru Aitsu ga Warui no ka, Ijimerareta Boku ga Warui no ka?
Ijimeru Aitsu ga Warui no ka, Ijimerareta Boku ga Warui no ka? (いじめるアイツが悪いのか、いじめられた僕が悪いのか？ / Is he, who bullies me, wrong, or am I, who’s getting bullied, wrong?) may seem to have a dumb title at first, but it starts making some sort of sense once you’re a couple chapters in. It tells the story of Aizawa, who has been violently bullied in middleschool. 20 years later, he works as a teacher, and as chance would have it, he teaches Shiori, the daughter of the “ringleader” of the people who bullied him long ago.
I don’t want to go into much more detail about the story since I don’t want to spoil it. It’s a suspense with a couple twists, and 18 chapters in I’m still not completely sure what Aizawa’s deal really is. In any case, I’m really enjoying it so far, if you can actually call it that since some chapters are rather heavy and make me feel more like I’m getting depression. The author seems to be on a quest to show us all the worst sides of humanity here, and at this point it seems like no character will get out of this without some sort of trauma.
Chikansaresou ni natteiru S-kyuu Bishoujo wo tasuketara tonari no Seki no Osananajimi datta
Chikansaresou ni natteiru S-kyuu Bishoujo wo tasuketara tonari no Seki no Osananajimi datta (痴漢されそうになっているＳ級美少女を助けたら隣の席の幼馴染だった / The S-class beauty I saved from a molester turned out to be my childhood friend sitting next to me), just another case of light novel titles go brrrrrr. This is probably the manga I think of when it comes to the “Here’s another Flavor of <Girl>” category mentioned above. It doesn’t even tick all the boxes for that one, but it embraces shallow romance tropes over actual development like no other.
There’s actually two love-interests in this one, and I thought this would go on forever as this sort of unspoken rivalry because they’re both obviously interested in the protagonist, but he’s too dumb to notice and they’re too shy to make it clear. In chapter 25, it turned out I was wrong, as both of them confessed to the main character, and he made a choice. Wait, is this fastfood manga actually giving me the development I never thought was possible?, I was thinking. Then that chapter ended, but on the very last page we got this:
How foolish I was. One girl is out, but a new challenger has entered the ring. Back to square one. What a genius the author is, I couldn’t stop laughing.
Keikenzumi na Kimi to Keiken zero na Ore ga otsukiai suru Hanashi
Keikenzumi na Kimi to Keiken zero na Ore ga otsukiai suru Hanashi (経験済みなキミと、経験ゼロなオレが、お付き合いする話。 / A tale of how experienced you and inexperienced me are going out.) looks like another member of that category at first. Classic outsider-protagonist confesses to his school’s top beauty, and she basically answers “sure, why not”. Turns out she has a history of sort-of abusive boyfriends that warped her sense of whats normal in a relationship, so the first thing she does after accepting his confession, is to invite him home and ask him if he wants to have sex with her, because “that’s just normal, right?”. And at that point I was like hoooold on, that’s kinda fucked up…. but I like where this is going. The protagonist actually acts like a decent human being for once and tells her he’d love to, but he’ll wait until she actually wants it too.
In any case, so far it has continued as a very cute and wholesome romance between them, but I’m still waiting for this underlying core of “fucked-up” to show up again. That could become very interesting if handled properly, or it could turn into this sort of weird sidenote that ends up being irrelevant to the story. That’s still an open question, so let’s see where this goes.
Meikyuu no Ou
Meikyuu no Ou (迷宮の王 / King of the Labyrinth) is perhaps one of the most unique ones I’m reading at the moment. The setting is a classical fantasy world with RPG systems etc. as I’ve described previously. Okay, I know this may sound like it contradicts what I just said. But the main character (?) in this case is a minotaur, who is a minor boss in one of that world’s dungeons.
It is a monster through and through, living just to fight and kill. Through a lucky coincidence, this minotaur receives the “blessing” of adventurers - allowing it to use healing potions, level up like them etc. The manga follows the minotaur as it gets stronger, in turn allowing it to slay stronger and stronger (groups of) adventurers. It doesn’t really go any deeper than that so far and it is also already killing the legendary heroes of its world, so not sure what else there is to come at this point. On the other hand, it’s been implied that the minotaur is starting to develop some kind of consciousness, so let’s see where this goes.
For now, it’s just a bit refreshing as it is very different to most other manga I read. I also really like the art style, which feels very “gritty”, quite fitting to the nature of the story.
Kaoru Hana wa Rin to Saku
Kaoru Hana wa Rin to Saku (薫る花は凛と咲く / The fragrant flower blooms with dignity) is the last one for this list, and easily the best manga I’ve discovered here, as well as probably the best romance story I’ve read in… perhaps ever? It starts out as a bit of a Romeo-and-Juliet: the male lead, Rintarou, goes to a school for dumb, rowdy boys. The female lead, Kaoruko, goes to the neighboring all-girls Ojou-sama school. Naturally, the two neighboring schools are on rather bad terms.
That doesn’t stop Rintarou and Kaoruko though, as they meet outside of school at first without knowing where the other comes from. Rintarou works at his mother’s cake shop, and Kaoruko loves eating cake, and from there their story slowly gets rolling.
To be honest, there is no deeper plot to be found here or anything else, but it still works really well as a romance for me. The manga takes the time for the two leads to develop and eventually realize their feelings for each other. The pace is slow, but steady. But it doesn’t focus exclusively on their romance, in fact I’d say it spends just as much time on the friendship between Rintarou and his three friends Yorita, Usami and Saku, as well as Kaoruko and her best friend Subaru. The manga is full of incredibly genuine and wholesome friendship moments.
At some point the manga, out of nowhere, just drops that story on us of how Rintarou, who was a loner as a kid, really wanted to dye his hair blonde and get piercings because he found them cool, but was too afraid that people would avoid him even more and make fun of him. So his mother just went and dyed her own hair, got piercings too, just to give her son the courage to do what he wanted to do. That was just there in one chapter and it almost made me cry. The manga has so much love put into its characters and their interactions, it’s truly a joy to read.
Lastly, it has some great art and I can’t put nearly all the images here that I’d want to.
Whew
That’s it, and I just set another new record for longest article on this blog. I’ve nothing to add here at the end, just if you wanted to know where the images in the thumbnail were taken from, here you go, from left to right:
Kiwameta hiiru ga subete wo iyasu/“My extreme heal cures everything” (no link because apparently no one in the west knows this manga)
Giji Harem
Kaoru hana wa rin to saku
Alright then, see you at the next article o7