Kimi no Iru Machi

To begin with, I usually never read manga. Only when an anime has stopped and I want to know the further story.

I got this manga recommended by a friend so I started to read it without any expectations. But after the first few pages I started to get in the story and I couldn't stop reading.

It's because the manga starts rapidly at a good pace so you'll continue to read. You'll get questions and hope to get the answers while you read and at the same time, you'll enjoy it to the fullest.

The characters are good drawn which makes it extra fun to read.

There'll happen many things you don't expect and that's why it's very exciting till the very last chapter.

The manga is still airing, and I hope they'll continue to make the manga even better.

Kimi no iru machi is a manga that will pass to history not because of its beauty, but cause of the original yet weird ideas from its mangaka. First one third of the manga was really enjoyable, quite a nice story between the two main characters developing a relationship while struggling with some typical high school problems and family issues. Romance on this part of the manga was really good, quite a cute story. After that is when the story took a very twisted turn. Perhaps as an attempt to make it more dramatic and interesting, the mangaka came up with a very interesting and original new love triangle. This might be the very first manga where the main character, Haruto a guy, gets stolen by his love rival; yeah, you heard me right, he, not his girlfriend, gets stolen by the other guy. I guess love lost against friendship on this part of the manga. If you have ever heard the phrase "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer," well, this manga took that phrase to a new level. Later on, after those events, the manga became a slice of life centered on what Haruto wanted to do in the future. I do enjoy slice of life mangas, but the problem with KNIM was that it was only in the perspective of Haruto, who was never such an interesting character to follow, and not to mention that the romance part was barely present and lost its quality. Haruto struggles for about half of the manga about what to do for a living, even did weird things that went completely against his character, like breaking up with his girlfriend for a random job he got, only to end up becoming, what was really clear since the very beginning of the manga, a chef.

Art was really good, perhaps the only talent and strength of its mangaka, but even the art also lost a bit of quality towards the end. Towards the end, the heads of the characters had a weird shape at the top, they look a bit like the Coneheads but with hair.
Charaters of KMIN, what can I said about them, they lack development. They fail to show any maturity at the end of the manga. I would even venture to say they were more mature at the beginning than at the end. Sure the mangaka came up with the really great idea to just make other characters say "yeah, you have grown" as prove of their development, but their actions still showed otherwise. Something very funny is how most people did not like the main characters at the end of the manga. The choices taken by the main characters were never that popular nor understood by the readers.

Anyway, If somebody decides to venture and read Kimi no Iru Machi, I would suggest read just the first one third of the manga, when they become an official couple, and then drop it and just read the final chapter. And if you do that just ignore the helmet at the end.

There's probably one question that you'll continue to ask yourself in this series. How is this guy so popular with the ladies?

Story

This is a manga about the relationship between our central characters Haruto, a country bumpkin from hiroshima, and Yuzuki, a city girl from tokyo. Basically the story is about how Yuzuki comes into Haruto's life and causes a bunch of problems for him. Say for example, Haruto has a crush on a girl, she will clumsily get in the way of that in a rather silly fashion. However despite the interference, Haruto can't help but not leave her alone.

Overall the first part of the story is relatively decent I must say in terms of shounen romance plots. Nothing is terribly original, but it's paced well and the setting helps keep the story a little fresh. However this only occurs for the first part.

Without spoiling anything the story is branched into 4 seperate arcs. While the first is relatively strong, the remaining 3 are where the series heads down hill. The second arc for example introduces some very illogical drama. Now to be fair, the characters are young and inexperienced so this kind of behavior can be expected. However the problem is, none of the characters ever explain their actions, and none of them ever seem to grow from them. It makes the characters lack layers and makes it difficult to sympathize with them.

The following 2 arcs are mainly filler as the core story is done after the second arc. Mostly filled with fanservice and plot threads that seem like they might build up to something good, but never really go anywhere. This part of the manga is obviously for people who really like to see a couple be together. As fanservice, it is passable at times. But it's dragged out far too long, making the series become rather static and boring. I wouldn't mind it being a straight slice of life if it had been that way since the beginning. The final arc even proceeds to have a very cop out ending which I am very much against in story telling. So all in all, it started out decent and then tinkered off and became rather lifeless.

Characters

The characters are fairly decent at first. Not that they are terribly interesting, but still semi-believable. The main problem is how their growth is handled. It's never apparent to the audience that the main characters are growing up in any fashion, but other characters might have to point it out for you. This is against the "show but don't tell" aspect of storytelling and it makes it seem like the manga is trying too hard to prove that it actually developed it's characters. It will also use time skips liberally to tell you that characters have developed off screen, which would be ok as long as we got to see some of the development.

The biggest problem is of course the handling of the side characters. Not only are most pointless, but there are far too many, and little respect is given to them. Keep in mind that everything in this manga takes place from Haruto's perspective. So we never get to see any of the characters outside of their time interacting with him. This can be done well, if you limit the amount of characters and focus the time well on the main lead. But here it just feels like an excuse not to develop any of them properly. Funny enough, most of them develop far more than our main leads technically. However it's all done offscreen and we never get to see any of it. Also some characters just blatantly get written out of the story, which shows that the author hardly even cares about most of them.

Most of the women are introduced as just harem fodder unfortunately. It seems that no matter what, whenever Haruto goes to something new in his life (new college group, job hunting, part time job, etc) a new girl will be waiting. Unfortunately with the combination of the first person perspective and the fact that they are given very limited chapters, it just begs the question on why they are introduced at all. Especially when Haruto is already in a relationship at these points so introducing further women to be distractions is all but pointless (as you can bet, every single one of them falls in love with Haruto). Now it's a common trait in harem manga to have a lot of girls. But that's most effective "before" the relationship starts, rather than after.

Enjoyment

Like said before. At first it was enjoyable, but then it just got downright boring for me. Though I can understand some people like couple chapters, but I still think it was done in supreme excess. Also not a big fan of cop out endings like said before, so the drama eventually just felt forced and pointless with no real meaning attached to it. Which would be ok if it was entertaining, but I can't really say I feel that way about KNIM.

Honesly there are better romance/ecchi manga's to waste your time on then this if you ask me.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

Pure utter crap.
So you know, I've re-read the 1st 16 volumes of KNIM (for short) while taking notes. So this is not a review made out of memory, and personal feelings. This is more of a chapter per chapter analysis. That means that no matter how much you KNIM fans loved this manga, no matter how much you disagree with my scoring, it does not change the fact that all that I'm about to write is REALITY!
I've divided all that I've read into 2 parts. The countryside arc that regroups v01 to v09, and the big city arc which regroups v10 to where I decided to drop it, v16.

First off, what is a cliffhanger ending? It's those types of ending where you just have to read the next chapter right away or you won't be able to sleep at ease that night. There are many ways to have such an ending. Such as a new character steps in to test the main couple (could be some playboy, horny girl or grouchy family member). Or that very brief sentence that can imply soooo much more. Or a major decision has been made, and now the storyline can go in various different directions.
So the countryside arc is made of 84 chapters, and I counted around 45 cliffhanger endings. I say around because some people may not consider some of those cliffs that high. But it's basically still a cliff (the real number that I've officially counted is 52). There is a limit to how dramatic and chaotic someone's life can be, ok? More than 3/4 of those endings has a panel with a close-up on the main guy's face or eyes, while he's going "huh?" or "wha...?" or "!". Do you know how annoying it is, to end every chapter with the same face going the same "uh?" every time?
KNIM is not a slice-of-life. Life is not that troublesome. KNIM is soap-opera-manga I tell you.
Now maybe some appreciate those constant cliff endings, and that's why they score KNIM so highly, but to others, it's annoying. When I start romance, I want romance. Not problems after problems. And yes there are alot more problems than dates in this manga.

Now I'll regroup the story and character review together. How? Simple. The story is basically a presentation of how the characters make horrible decisions, or right decisions but with horrible executions.
Guy likes Girl A, girl B knows it but flirts with guy noneless (slut). Then guy got closer to girl A, but stood up her a couple of time to help girl B (idiot). Girl C arrives! She's the nosy type who doesn't really care about guy, but has a passion to start shit between couples (bitch). Guy leans more and more towards girl B, despite liking girl A (still an idiot). Girl A has enough and dumps guy. Girl D arrives, and gets won over thanks to some incredibly meaningless compliment, then misunderstands everything else, and then we don't see her anymore after a few chapters (o...k). Guy finally goes for girl B, and then she moves away (perfect timing). So long distant relationship starts, guy now alone, so of course we got to have... girl E! Who gets won over by some other meaningless compliment (and then they say the guy is careless -_-), and also disappears after a few chapters (poor attempt to add some tension). Then school trip to big city, guy expects to see girl B for the 1st time in a long while, and of course... girl A who did the dumping starts regretting and making moves (typical), and naturally girl B sees it all. But it gets sorted out rather quickly (more useless tension). After a while, girl B dumps guy without giving any reason. Guy makes major life decision to move to the city to get her back (stalker alert). Then, as a goodbye present, childhood female friend (who was there since the beginning of the manga) decides to kiss guy and turn herself into girl F, and then nothing more from her (then why the kiss damnit?!). And finally, to close up the countryside arc, as soon as he arrives and tries to get settled into the big city, enters girl G.
Fascinating wasn't it?

As I've been ranting for a long time now, i'll cover the big city arc in a short paragraph and shut up.
At first, it seems that KNIM finally gets interesting. 2 new characters appear, and they must have been the most interesting and sane people in the entire cast. Plus there is a new plot twist that is definitely worth something. I even started liking it! But, after a volume or two, KNIM goes back to being catastrophic. All that thanks to the disappearance of one of those very interesting characters (stop adding characters just for one volume come on!), and the second very interesting character basically gets spit on the face, tripped, and kicked while being down. And of course, we welcome girl H, I and J (2 of them are the useless to plot and misunderstanding types btw). And girl B is back and keeps on falling and un-falling for guy (pattern), and the usual cliffhangers after cliffhangers and zoom on face while going "huh?".

If you like non-stop drama, read it. If you consider romance slice of life flicks to be an exaggerated struggle for love, read it.
If you see things like i do, flee!