tl;dr: A manga about the development of bonds between a couple and those around them and how they change the world.

This manga takes a lot of cues from Romeo and Juliet. It’s about a prestigious school where students from two countries that are on terrible terms attend which results in the two groups of students seeing each other as enemies, but the hero, Romio Inizuka, and the heroine, Juliet Persia, fall in love anyway. Thus, as expected, a lot of people seem to compare them to the point of considering this a modern adaptation. However, this is fundamentally incorrect because they’re incredibly different works. The obvious difference from the beginning is that this isn’t a tragedy, it’s a rom-com with a decent amount of drama, so everything about it from the way it flows to the story itself are completely different and take nothing from the original. The other difference, of which there are hints of from the but that doesn’t really become clear until a good way through the manga, is that in the original the story was merely about two lovers that wanted to be together but couldn’t, this is the story about two lovers that wanted to be together and changed the world to accept their love. While romance is still a core aspect of the story, ultimately there’s a lot more to it than just that, and thus it is a very different kind of story.

Stories about change are generally pretty good with character and relationship development and this is no exception. The main couple both have good character and relationship development as they both strive to improve themselves for the purposes of their relationship and goals. The romantic development between the two for most of the story is just decent and is mainly carried by a few especially strong moments. However, these few moments are strong enough to hold their overall relationship arc very well, and thus it’s easy to get invested in them and their fate.

But just as importantly, or maybe even more importantly, is the bonds that they develop with the rest of the cast. There is a large cast of side characters with all sorts of different personalities and connections to the main couple. A lot of them are fleshed out quite well with their own backgrounds, motivations, and even character arcs, with many of them being incredibly likable and easy to get invested in. Over the course of the manga, the main couple develop close bonds with them through a variety of stories, and ultimately these bonds pay off in what feels like a really well built up to climax that was incredibly satisfying. I thought the manga would end there, but it keeps going quite a bit after that and more directly tackles the themes of hate between people and how to overcome that. It’s an incredibly simplistic and optimistic view, but I found it heartwarming nevertheless. And all that builds up to a finale that’s similarly too easy and happy, but still incredibly satisfying and perfect way to end things.

The main weakness of the manga I would have to say is its comedy. As this is a rom-com, the comedy is a core aspect, but in general the comedy in this isn’t all that great, just decent. It’s fine when the comedy is intermixed with storylines that have more substance as it works well to help with the pacing. But there are also portions that are focused solely on comedy that don’t contribute really at all to anything in the grand scheme of things which just felt like they were dragging on.

The art design is overall pretty great. The two factions have very clear visual codings which makes things easier to follow, and though it also limited what could be done with said characters, overall I still think the manga has really good character designs. The style also works pretty well for the story it’s telling, being somewhat shoujo-esque but with shounen like framing most of the time. The art quality too is overall solid.