SUZUKA review

Emanharlem551
Apr 02, 2021
tl;dr: A romance manga with a good main couple but with drama that feels more annoying than interesting.

This is a manga focusing on young adult relationships, mostly romance. This one in particular is focused heavily on a single relationship between Yamato and Suzuka, and hence relies entirely on that to hold up the manga. The problem is that it really didn't feel like either of them or their relationship had developed at all really. The ending obviously has them much closer together than they were before, but it feels kind of forced, in that if the author hasn't decided to move it in that direction it felt like the author could continue squeezing tension, arguments, and melodrama out of their relationship forever. The main reason for this is that until the ending, nothing felt important or as actually having an impact. For example, the break up is supposed to be some major event that greatly changes their relationship or possibly even permanently ends it, but in the end they get back together pretty much as soon as possible and it felt like a minor blip. Sure, everyone knows that things will work out in the end, but the path to that can still give events like this weight, and it didn't feel like that was the case here.

In terms of the characters, while they do go well together,  I didn't like Suzuka's character at all, nor any of the other heroines all that much really. Yamato being someone that was really open and didn't try to deceive at all was interesting as it's usually the opposite in such manga, wherein trying to keep things hidden is the cause of drama. But at the same time, you still need to have drama for a manga like this, so the author seems to have given the heroines characters such that being truthful and open would end up causing drama, and I'm simply not much of a fan of that. In the moments when the main couple were actually together they had a lot of great chemistry and it was pretty great. But because they were pretty much the only thing that actually mattered in the manga whenever they felt off the whole manga felt off, and because that happened often it really felt like the entire manga was dragging on at times.  In regards to their character development, subjects would be focused on temporarily to show ways that the characters could grow and improve, such as dedication or honesty, but it would constantly flip around on them in such a way that it would end proceeding in the opposite direction of where it was pushing earlier, hence greatly minimizing the felt worth of the character development.

As for the other characters, the side characters were all fine as side characters, but the minor segments where it was suggested they could becoming more important felt really awkward and off, and it never ultimately ended up giving any value to any of them. In the end the main couple was the only thing that actually worked, and as mentioned that's not a bad thing, but it just left a really strong feeling of pointlessness to the attempts at having more stories.  As for the ending, it was strange. It was handled kind of well, in that in and of itself it was kind of good and had their relationship at its best, but at the same time it threw away a lot of what happened over the course of the manga causing a lot of problems. And at the same time, it was also resolved way too easily.  The art was pretty good, but not exceptional.
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SUZUKA
SUZUKA
Author Seo Kouji
Artist Seo Kouji