Jul 13, 2023
Okay, time for the big comment.
I'll start with the few positives. This is a pretty interesting and relatively novel approach to the trope of popular student x nerd, which seems to borrow pretty heavily from some popular rom-com without becoming a carbon-copy/pastiche of them all. I can see some inspiration taken from Nisekoi, with the whole relationship of convenience stuff and I think the blackmail thing is from another lesser known rom-com harem, the name of which eludes me (I remember it had a white-haired girl that did the blackmailing).
Simultaneously, I think that there is something interesting going on in this chapter regarding Ichika's character. You definitely put a lot of thought into establishing her character's motivation and, as a whole, she feels far better fleshed out than Naruse in her little 1.2k words or however many this thing is, especially being given a motivation, if not a goal.
Now, time for the demerits.
I think the style is very generic and suffers from a lot of issues. A lot of the time I find myself just jumping lines without the need to look back because there is nothing really interesting being put down or, more often than not, we simply have the same ideas as before rehashed and rephrased. This happens particularly often in the first couple of chapters where we *really* learn that otakus are bad and everyone hates them. As Vaas famously said 'one time funny, two times getting annoying, no?'
But see, this would be fine if the inner voice of the characters were strong or innovative. Unfortunately, a lot of Naruse's inner monologue centers around some sort of gotcha, like every single sentence he says ends in a silent 'otakus, am I right, fellas?' It screams that over and over again to the point where I just tune out and when I tune back in, I'm met with these grocery list descriptions of features that don't really do anything. They're all portraits too, which is particularly damning, since you should aim to *show* the characters' vibes through descriptions as opposed to telling me, 'yeah this guy is hot af bro, trust me'. Also, you don't really establish any environments, so most of the time I imagine the action happening in this formless void that resembles *a* school or *a* manga store or *a* house, as opposed to *the* things. Which is fine, sure, not everything needs to be more than a thing, but it helps when there are some elements one can put down and pencil in. When a reader has to fill in the stencil all by himself, it gets tiring.
Okay, now onto the characters. Ichika is fine. If anything, I think you've overplayed your hand a little by explicitly signalling and signposting her entire array of flaws in one fell swoop, but I'm willing to forgive that. However, Naruse is just not a good protagonist. For one, he seems to be perfect or, more specifically, flawless. Apart from him having to hide his like for manga, which seems to be justified since everyone dogpiles otakus here for some reason, he is pretty flat. Doesn't want for nothing, doesn't have a goal beyond the literal story element. And when a character lives *for* the story as opposed to living *in* the story, then they just don't feel human – they feel like a prop. Naruse embodies one thing and that is an otaku's cursed love for manga, and nothing else. Juxtapose this with Ichika who suffers the same affliction, but her existence is predicated on other lines as well – lines you could argue Naruse also shares (i.e. the want to be accepted by his peers), but that are nowhere near as clearly delineated as Ichika, nor do they seem to have as believable a stake.
As for the plot, don't really have any comment. The story beats are fine, if not a bit poorly paced but that's more a function of the wasteful prose more than anything structural so, shikata nai.
Anyway, that's it.
Bubbles, out.
