pidgeonreads's manga / #mutually idiots(73)

They’re bro, they’re annoying and they’re shallow. But also they’re sweet? This is going down in my list of books I expected to hate but actually enjoyed. Don’t get me wrong, it’s far from a 5 star read. But it gets credit where credit it due. Shion living as a woman clearly opens his eyes and develops his character, something much needed considering how he behaves. And the choice to have Rui admit to being in love with him long before he drank the potion helped the story immensely in my eyes. And in my opinion it defeats everyone in the comments saying that this story is clickbait hentai trying to lure in yaoi readers. Rui’s diagnosed down bad for his friend and in its own weird way it’s cute. There’s definitely some scenes that lean away from enjoyable though and I feel that the latter half of the story is MUCH improved from the first chapters. If it weren’t for the scene where Shion is in the bar and later it gets treated as just a turn on for Rui, I would have actually given this 4 stars.

Absolutely none of the popular tags on this prepared me for the absolute emotional roller coaster of a read this was. Though I give it three stars, most of my faults lie with the way you can tell the artist was running out of steam entirely at the end. The art began to slack off as well as the story pacing. And on top of that this is even a story where I wished the main couple didn’t end up together. So it’s a little insane that I still found myself with so much to say about it. This is a story with deeply faulted characters. Absolutely none of the main or side cast is free of series character defects. And reading their story often filled me with rage. I got mad at the stupid choices they made and how awfully they treated each other. Even now I’m pissed that the main couple stayed together after everything. But I feel like that was, in a way, the point. You’re supposed to get mad. You’re supposed to hate the actions of CW and TS. You’re supposed to want to scream at the breakdown of the friendship between the lead and his bestfriend. This was a story about how painful and messy and hurtful loving someone can be. TS was so afraid of becoming like his father yet he woke up one day and realized that’s exact what he was. CW spent the better part of his life suffering only to find out that he could be just bad as TS. Worse, even. The protag of the story is supposed to be this crowd pleaser who no one can dislike yet he spends almost the entire story setting himself up to get hurt and then wallowing in exactly what he knew would happen while dealing with the one person who really doesn’t like him. It’s very human. I would still say that it’s solidly a 3 star read. There’s a ton of problems. Like I don’t really see a need for the bully to have so much time dedicated to him. He didn’t even seem to serve as any sort of parallel, just an easy way out of setting up scenes. And though I felt that the slow deterioration of the protag was executed very well, I found CW’s arc to be the opposite. His actions felt extremely out of character and basically reversed his personality for the beginning half of the story. Like for someone who’s supposed to be so in love with and obsessed to TS he literally just dropped the dude and then basically he ceased to exist for him until he was needed again in the story. Not great.

I don’t know what to say. It was porn what plot but also somehow not really porn? Cat boys man.