After the first chapter i immediately wanted to stop reading but kept because it had good reviews then finished it out of spite hoping it would improve. There is the common troop of the man with a scary face and a cute girl, this acts like it the opposite but it’s not and is just dripping in colorism sexism and racism. The first chapter her skin tone is way darker than all the rest when they start making her cuter. Her skin tone changes in every scene and not in a way of shadowing but I’m a way of every time she is meant to be ugly, or scary, her skin tone is 3x darker. When she is cute and actually smile in an “ attractive” way her skin is not toned at all. Her friend is pretty racist as well and is never actually nice to her as she is only constantly making her make ugly faces and then drawing attention to her flaws. The girl has low self esteem because she has been made to thing she is ugly just by existing and truly the ml does not help at all. He did in fact originally make fun of her then didn’t actually apologize. He is clearly just an m which is fine on its own but he doesn’t actually bring anything of value to her and only gives her something to idolize and then make herself feel worse about. He also then insult her for not having a good self esteem and doesn’t try to help her but just punished her with his attitude and literally never defend her in any meaningful way. If u enjoyed it cool, but for me this just re enforced colorism in Asia while also portraying her as a stereotypical “strong scary dark skinned person” that many Asian countries view western black people as.
Seishun Otome Banchou!