I'm done. finally dropping this.
yeah I used to be a vanilla enjoyer, but then I enjoy some NTR stuff too on the side, at least if the stealer is a girl (FFM ratio) ; so this was fine for 50-ish chapters maybe.
but this manga is now NOT EVEN serving THAT as its focus anymore.
literally after timeskip, a lot of the recent chapters are just about
Kaori the former ex now working as production team for AVs or whatever. occasionally we see the MC and Yoshioka being close, I guess?
this literally could just be a second entirely new series titled differently but using the same characters; because what it now offers is a different thing that doesn't quite live up to its title or past chapters anymore. it may have merit and it's interesting to show how
AV production works and the struggles of Kaori learning to grow up and becoming a new person.., but why are we doing this? why was the past school life build up necessary for this, being put together under the same title, outside of the glaringly obvious
'she will use her being-cucked experience as inspiration' because now in the most recent chapters
she struggles to create an idea for the production team..
Literally if they just made a "Kanojo no Tomodachi - Kaori After" or something, that would be more sensible.
They literally could've just ended this one on the Ch 72 break up + a few more chapters, remove all the clusterfuck jumping-around-flashbacks that the TL-er explained to us on
Pg 2 Ch 98, do some extra chapters for wrapping up and resolution on sorting out their feelings as school teenagers, done.
but no. author had to decide to keep going, which, for better or worse, does make things more interesting in some lens, but that's not what readers were here for or came to expect

those who might have loved the AV work stuff may have dropped this due to early NTR and school life hijinks not knowing it'll be there later, but those who were here for the NTR story between teens couldn't care less about the AV work stuff (me).
not even knowing your audience anymore is a grave mistake, and author needs to learn about narrative cohesion.
I understand the curse of serialization and needing to keep going for money, but seriously. this is a separately new story at this point. this has no reason to continue under the same name.