Pochamani rant

I started rereading this manga once again even knowing I have so many things I was annoyed with, just because 1. This manga actually starts up pretty heartwarming, wholesome and actually doesn't have the main fat protagonist getting skinny (unsurprisingly uncommon in manga) 2. Has a nice second lead I liked reading.

And today's rant is about some reader's complaints about said second lead Hiyama.

He made such an impression on me that by the end of my reread (from a scanlation that stops at ch. 37 sadly) I actually had trouble remembering the name of the main male lead LMAO. (His name is Tagami.)

As expected, people were annoyed by the second lead's first appearance - which I found weird because he acted a lot better with Tsumugi than I found Tagami ridiculous sometimes. But the comments started to get positive further chapters, even people wishing her to end up with Hiyama instead. (Which I've been a part of ever since the first time I've read this for the first time when I was in high school LOL)

I went to look if the manga had ended and it did around 2017 - a shame that the scanlation never finished. I would have loved to help translate but my Japanese isn't at such a level where I am comfortable translating, but I might just take a look at Korean raws if I ever have time 👀

Anyway, what I want to say is that one of the reviews annoyed me on that website, and some more people also agreed on the "fact" that "Hiyama also wasn't completely at the right" because "he made advances towards Tsumugi knowing she has a boyfriend". Which is complete bullshit, and I will explain why.

None of the cute moments happened between them started out "intentional", their relationship always "advanced" because of Hiyama's honest personality, and his way of seeing Tsumugi - a person first, instead of how Tagami always mentioned that she had gotten his attention because of her appearance. No matter how later it is explained that Tagami started "to like" her because "she wasn't like those other chubby girls who hated their chubbiness". Now, to be fair, Tagami doesn't blame those girls either which gave me a surprise and I thank the mangaka for not making their ML do the bare minimum.

Besides their natural chemistry, Tsumugi never had to do anything for Hiyama, like how she always has to "provide her chubbiness" to Tagami. (Many instances happened where Tagami told her not to get skinny is also uncomfy a little, ngl.)

Another thing I need to mention is that most of the time Tagami gets so easily jealous that even her friend Mami and Tagami's sister, and his friend Seiji also complained about it. Even Tsumugi herself likened him to her little sister who IS IN KINDERGARTEN. Now why am I mentioning this? Because many also said that it was normal for a guy to get jealous about seeing "their girl" with another guy. Thing is, the guy in question never intentionally tried to spend time with her to have anything romantic with her, anyting that happened was for something Tsumugi was responsible of (like being a part of the committee, I mean like she had a reason to be around Hiyama). And even if we don't count that, nothing that "romantic" even happened between them, perhaps maybe carrying her princess style at his first apperance :P And hey, even then Hiyama didn't have any other thoughts doing that than helping her (carrying her to the infirmary because she hurt herself). So this complaint also doesn't really make sense.

To be honest, that same reviewer finished their review with saying "this is why Japanese people don't want westerners to read their manga" which is ridiculous and completely overrides anything of substance they might have claimed. How they made this average story about a fat girl and a handsome guy shojo romance, about difference in cultures between "the West" and Japan is beyond me.

I guess this is about it. I was drawing some Billy again and I just had to take a moment to rant somewhere because my thoughts were busying me.