You know, I remember being younger. I was never anywhere remotely near as awful as Gotou when I was his age. I had actual values and commitments that I would not throw aside or compromise on. And no, him being committed to Agawa has nothing to do with him banging her, he was in love with her before that was ever on the table. Believe it or not, it is also possible to turn down a girl or to exercise any level of self-control as a teenager to preserve that committment to her. Even if you think she doesn't deserve it, that's something he decided on for himself, knowing full well what he was getting himself into. He's just a piece of shit.
I’m very glad to hear that you were a perfect snowflake growing up and totally never did anything that wasn’t above board ever, totally 🙄. In anycase, so what? Does that all mean you’re incapable of emphasizing or sympathizing, simply comprehending a character who isn’t as morally and intellectually superior as you apparently are? Particularly a character that has anywhere from half to a quarter your age and life experience?
You don't need to be a saint to maintain some personal values. The author could've just, I don't know, written a series that's "grounded" about someone who isn't wholly unlikable, who has some consistent values that actually makes them a halfway decent person whom you'd want good things to happen for. It doesn't take a "garystu MC from an isekai" to remain devoted to the one girl you've committed yourself to and not put your dick in any and all that you can. It's not even like he's hard up for sex.
If the author wrote yet another boring goddamn cookie cutter generic romcom MC who has no personal failings beyond being a shy dork, his work would’ve been piss in an ocean of romcoms with the exact same main character. In that case, his work likely wouldn’t have elicited enough interest to get a fan translation, and you wouldn’t be here to bitch about it in the first place. It’s really that simple.
If you want to talk Gary Stu-esq traits though, this series absolutely has that. Agawa's interest in Gotou makes no sense at all. What makes him any different than any other guy she's banged? He's just magically a special person to her, even after proving that he isn't really devoted to her in any unique way. He is exactly like all the other guys that would cheat on her and bang any hole he can in a heartbeat. He'll act on his whims, disregarding the fact that he knows it's likely to end up hurting someone.
While I’ll definitely give you that there’s a degree of wish fulfillment at play here in this exaggerated and comedic series, the caveat is that the main girl in this manga isn’t the usual reincarnation of the Virgin Mary that somehow falls for a boy with the personal charisma of a mushroom.
Agawa is expressly a proud skank that bangs guys far below even Gotou, and the fact that she favors a boy who (A. Is particularly good at fucking her and (B. Still treats her far better than any of her sex buddies that we’ve seen despite her proclivities is well within reason.
There’s nothing “magic” about it.
Not to mention Akito's entire existence. How convient that he just happened to have this childhood friend that's been holding a candle for him and only him! That altered her entire appearance to the world just for him. Because she's just so totally madly in love with him because he's, uh... Autistic. Because he gets overwhelmed, stressed out, and angry when facing challenges. Yeah. That's grounded and real. Bitches love autists.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say that she’s “madly in love” with him, but besides that, are you deliberately trying to be obtuse?
A tad generic yes, but a girl having a crush on her childhood friend is hardly the biggest contrivance you could find in fiction. As for why she’d like him, well he was her friend and teammate, treated her like an equal (accidentally since he thought she was a guy), and persevered as an athlete despite his outward displays of frustration in a way that clearly endeared him to her. Also, are you seriously not catching on that Akito is herself a little autistic? Why exactly would it turn her off for Gotou to be a little weird like she is? “Birds of a feather-“ doesn’t ring any bells?
His flaws are irrelevant because they're ultimately either ignored by or further endear him to the girls. He can make any mistake he wants and in the end it'll all work out in his favor. He even resolved the conflict between Agawa and her sister through the magic of his penis! (And gets to faultlessly smash her sister in the process, how fortuitous!)
Really now? You were shitting on the MC as being unlikable a few paragraphs ago because you predicted the obvious that Akito is going to be emotionally worse off as a consequence of Gotou choosing to indulge her and his own desires instead of rejecting her flatly, and it gave you a conniption fit, but now you’re going to turn around and pretend his actions don’t have consequences. Hell the whole thing about the threesome still comes up as a stain on his conscious even in this very chapter.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I believe this is the next Shakespeare, but what the honest fuck was your expectation for this series when you read the premise? I’m not getting it. Did you actually expect that the MC was going to be a genius boyscout that next to always does the emotionally, morally, and logically correct thing no matter what?
Like holy fuck, an author puts an interesting spin on a currently popular genre that’s become massively stale and overdone, by making his characters at least more or less resemble actual flawed human beings warts and all, not extremely idealized facsimiles of human beings just shy of basically being angels; and midwits can’t help but come out of the woodwork with bafflingly shallow and idiotic nitpicks.
Maddening, see you all next chapter by the way. Hopefully the characters (Gotou especially) start shitting rainbows and attending extensive religious/secular guidance counseling + extracurricular education, because that’s apparently what’s going to make the manga better considering the criticism it gets.
