A read of all time. Im really bad with names, i only remenber the one of the mc and the female lead, so to make this easier im just gonna refer to the characters by their role or a defining trait in the story.
I would like to point out im only gonna use what its on the manga, i dont know how the source material is, if its better or worse, im not interested in talking about that.
Disregarding the general lack of logic (while not the main focus i might bring up partially), the underwhelming ending, the lack of development for side characters and other minor stuff, i really dislike the way this manga handles forgiveness. Forgiveness its a really interesting and honestly hard topic, while its true that forgiving someone its hard, and its also something that its completely up to the person, the mc actitude feels out of place to me, specially towards the sister, SHE WAS A KID when she believed the rumour, and after that happened she tried being a nice sister to him. Taking such an actitude towards someone because an action they did as a kid seems very out of place to me, immature even.
Now like i said before, forgiving is hard, so this actitude makes sense towards the girl that did the prank confession, she had almost all the fault there and played with feelings in a very cruel way, but the rest? the girl that pretty much started it all with the school believing he made her fall its a hard sell for me, yeah she kept her mouth shut instead of directly saying the truth to clear up the rumous, but she was really young and i think that the social pressure and fear of being left out are not something you can just act like they do not exist, not saying she did the right thing but acting like the mistake was completely on her its absurd, the people that started the rumours and the ones that blindly believed in them are the ones that has the most blame here. The one of the library its really wack to me, because did people never stop for a second to think: "Oh, there was an earthquake and because of this, this he fell upon the girl", this is specially true for the girl, she interacted with him before, how did you not come to the obvious conclusion that he WAS NOT TRYING TO ASSAULT YOU, i will give it a pass because of the past rumours but its a really contrived situation if you asked me; this girl its a similar case to the prior one, she could have asked the mc about why and clear up the possible misunderstandings, but she did not, this one its a bit easier to sell i will say.
Now, besides what i said before, the point i want to make is that the manga seems to deny the idea of forgiving or even redemption in that matter (the only instance proving this wrong being when the mc calls her sister by her name), the mc states once than apologizing wont change the past or wont heal wounds, but neither forgiving or apologizing are about that. The past cant be undone, and maybe past wounds cant heal, but people change and learn to move on, the mc mindset seems really immature to me, stuck in the past and refusing to actually face the chance that the people in front of him changed or that they genuely regret what they did, a genuine apology its a really hard deed, some people cant even do a fake apology, so just disregarding apologies just because the past cant be change its foolish, its not about that, its about showing that you grew as a person and realized your mistakes, after that its up to the person to accept or not the apology, but my problem is that the mc never faced the apologies, he just denied them entirely.
Something to note, is that while i think the actitude of the mc its wrong, the manga nevers makes a good attempt at making the girls really interesting, they had that one scene where they decided to help the mc in the shadows but... that kind went nowhere and besides that they are barely characters, i did not make my point because i liked them, but rather because i disagree with how the manga portrays its topics.
Now, a big part of what im saying does fall flat, the girls never cleared up the misunderstanding in the manga, which its one of the things i was looking forward to, i was also looking forward to the mc having a proper conversation with them about what happened, a mature one where maybe he does not forgive them, but takes theirs apologies and properly moves on, instead of just using a wall of "the past cant change". But thats on the side of underwhelming ending. Something i do want to bring up here is the step mother, for she is the other character i can see a point on the actitude of the mc, a mother that does not believe in you and does not listen to you its a very painful thing, i could not even imagine if my mother acted like that.
In the end its a pity, i think the ideas in this manga could make something cool, someone obssesed with the past and that does not believe in apologies, that because of someone in their life, they eventually develops into someone that its not foolish enough to believe in all of them, but its mature enough to realize some people do mean what they say and can genuely regret what they did. But well, here ends my massive amount of text that no one its gonna read, overall a bad manga.
TL;DR: The manga refuses to tackle the actual weight behind apologies, and even if you agree with how the manga handles that topic, it has issues in its logic, its characters and the overall narrative.
