Ah it's going to be a long comment

It took me so long to finish this. I used to take breaks all the time because I kept getting pissed off at the characters. I hated most of them. I understand how this was one of the mangas that you could say "it set the bar" or "paved the way", because I agree on that, every shoujo and romance manga that came after looked up to this one.
If something like this was published in 2020, it would receive so much backlash that I doubt it would have gotten to like half of the volumes it had, but I guess back then thats what they had, what they wanted and what was selling haha.
The good thing is that the art improved so but like so so so much from the earliest chapters that a couple of characters dont even look like what they were originally. Thankfully they also made Doumyouji's dreadlocks/croissant hair disappear, it made me so uncomfortable...

There's really so much to talk about... the unrealistic situations? The lack of authorities? The way the school was just a setting? The head-bites-tail plot? The weird romance? I will set aside how much the story was corny and unoriginal since of course I'm not the "main target" of audience and I'm in 2020 and I don't really know how much of these kind of story were going around back then. But the "poor nice girl that changes rich bad guy" is something that nowadays we are all sick and tired of haha.
At the beginning Doumyouji was just hella annoying, mostly because I'm not some 12 year old who thinks that boys being mean to me is cute, and most of the time the tsundere type really makes me sigh. Then his little crush for Makino bursted out and he started getting violent, insistent and just a straight up asshole, calling her a bitch and hitting her. Then suddenly he "lets her go". Then wants her back. Then gives her up. Then they're back together. It was honestly so tiring ahahah
The rest of the F4 were fine, bullying in the beginning aside, not good characters but they were not the worst. The parents were awful and irresponsible, even annoying when they were supposedly the comic relief and even more annoying was the group of her classmates who bullied her. Also that one girl who faked being her friend to get close to the F4 who got plastic surgery and made all that hell happened with Makino getting tied up and dragged on the street? That later autoclaimed herself her friend and kept roaming around her?? She made me sick everytime I saw her.

Though I will say that the one I liked the best was Hanazawa Rui. If I think back about my favorite moments in the entire manga I genuinely can only think about panels with him. Maybe that makes him the best character, although they were times I really hated him for his "not getting involved" and "whatever makes you happy" attitude. He should've fought for Makino, he was the best choice for her. It really made stand out, to me at least, how much Makino cared for him and how "beautiful" of a person he was in her eyes, so much that it got me too. His marble eyes, the way they could talk freely outside on the stairs, how warm yet cold he was, how dependable he ended up being. It really made me feel like I had a crush on him too, so I will give kudos to the mangaka for that. Even with modern romance manga it's hard for me to fall for a character and feel what the female lead feels for that character. It even sticked to me the way he called him, with his full name, even when all the others called him either by his name or his surname.