This is genuinely one of the most bizarre things I've ever read.

It may seem strange that this is the case as, for the most part, this manga is just another inoffensive romcom. In fact, I actually believe a large majority of this manga is respectable. It has a unique cast of lovable characters and is supported by its wonderful art. The series does take an obvious decline starting at around the halfway point with constant introductions of pointless, uninteresting characters and overused formulas/storylines, but most of it was bearable. Problems like this exist in most long-running romance comedies, and I am definitely no stranger to this.

What really makes this manga bizarre is the absolutely psychotic ending.

There are plenty of acclaimed manga with heavily criticized endings. Prison School and I Am a Hero first come to mind, but at least those series have endings that are somewhat consistent with logic and have reasons. Prison School's ending is a pretty obviously trolly one and makes sense given the author's attitude at the time, and I Am a Hero's ending is a realistic conclusion to the story (one that I believe is almost genius in how little it cared for standard storytelling rules in terms of structure and completeness). On the other hand, I cannot even begin to fathom the ending to Yankee-kun to Megane-chan.

--sorta spoilers ahead for the last 20 or so chapters (specifics intentionally kept very vague)--

In the final arc, a very, *very* important character is completely removed from the story, and no explanation is given. What's strange is that all of the other characters do nothing about it, and hardly even react to it - not even the missing character's primary love interest! Up until this point in the story, every character had relatively consistent characterizations and they all cared heavily about each other, and so a reader would normally expect the cast to tear up the world if this were to happen. However, the cast only initially reacts with shock and forgets about it pretty much immediately. A rushed theory on what happened is given but is contradicted literally a couple of panels later. In the epilogue of the manga, there is a time skip and every character's future is detailed, with hardly a mention of the missing character, until the very last 5 pages in the most nonsensical, mind-boggling stupid way possible. It is not even an explanation of what happened, it is just a brief cameo of the character.

--vague spoilers end here--

Upon reading the ending, I assumed that this was the result of the series being axed in the middle of an arc or something. However, this is not the case - the series was relatively popular, and the author just intentionally chose to end it like this. There is no greater mystery in the world than why she decided to end it like this. Disappointing is nowhere near enough to describe it - any reader could see that there are gigantic, glaringly obvious plotholes everywhere surrounding it. There is no section of the fanbase that could possibly be appeased with this. It is not just written unbelievably poorly, it also doesn't even accomplish anything. Entire 40+ chapter storylines are rendered completely pointless because of this plot direction. If the author wanted to end the series quickly, there were very simple, safe, and obvious ways to do it. She very easily could have ended the series in a way that would appease her fans, but she went out of her way to add this insane and inexplicable plot direction. And so I genuinely thought that the author must have absolutely detested the series at that point and wanted to end the series in an intentionally disappointing and trolly way.

However, the series received another epilogue 6 entire years after the original ending. This made me start to reconsider. Was the author going to fix everything? Was she going to retcon the original ending, or perhaps give a better explanation for the events of the original? Was she finally going to relieve the fans' from their years of frustration and disappointment?

Nope. Instead, the epilogue pretty much just rehashes everything we knew from the original ending, except with a very obviously different (and worse) art style.

...what

What could possibly be the explanation for this? If she really hated the series so much, why even bother releasing an epilogue for it? The only possibility is that the author wanted to give one last 'fuck you' to the fanbase by saying "Yeah, I wanted it to end like this". This is the only possibility in my head, but nothing online even remotely suggests that the author hated the series. Instead, evidence points to the contrary.

It doesn't make sense from a production point of view or an in-universe point of view. I have never been so confused after finishing a manga. It is genuinely impressive how inexplicable the ending is. What even.


Anyway, I find it pretty difficult to rate the series. I would give the first 10 or so volumes a strong 6 to a light 7, the later volumes around a 5 to a 4, and the ending an obvious 1/10. The ending severely dampers the entire series, and I don't think it is worth reading in its entirety because of it.

Overall, I would recommend reading up to the point where the cast graduates from their second year and pretend it ends there. Otherwise, stay away unless you really want to see a good series crash.