@Badland Chapters from Vol 5-9 were removed to avoid copyright strike from viz, you can read those chapters from an aggregate site like mangafreak or manganelo.
I've got a question, I thought about starting to read this but after I looked at the description this story seemed generic af. The beautiful misunderstood school queen just wants friends and gets helped by boy a who develops into a love interest. I've read boku wa tomodachi, Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come wa... and the boy who cried wolf.
Right now I'm reading hitoribochi and hitroi seems like a far more compelling character because she's not a beautiful girl trying to make friends, what should be fairly easy because with good looks mostly comes self confidence.
What I'm asking is essentially is there something that makes this story stand out because I'm not about to start a story this long if it's not in someway special or is it just a brand safe vanilla love story.
I read the oneshot and it did not get me excited for more but this series is so well received I thought I might as well ask.
@Trexxe
First, ignore the oneshot. The MCs in the official series have a very different upbringing (at least for komi) so the oneshot doesn't relate with the official series in any way.
I actually chuckled a little when you said komi should have an easy time due to her looks, it's actually the same misperception people in the manga had towards the MC. Yes she is beautiful and popular from the get go but that's as far as it gets, people will just assume that she doesn't need to be bothered and putting her on pedestal for no reason whatsoever, and MC herself judging herself too harshly on why people are avoiding her. As the story goes on you will see that she suffered from selective mutism thus
her use of notepad instead of speaking
, her constant anxiety, harmful delusional thinking, constant self-judging, social awkwardness, panic attack and others. Starting from that point, you can picture how difficult it is for her to communicate normally let alone making friends.
As the series goes on you will be introduced with how she was put into situation that forced her out of the bubble and understand more about her goofier, more playful side instead of being this cool beauty. Later on as she became more accustomed with her friends and communication in general, she took on more active role in her own initiative such as helping them solve their problem in her own way or becoming a safe place for them like male MC did for her in early chapters. So if we are speaking in terms of progression, it's a topic worth a new thread itself.
For me what makes the manga special is the emphasis author put on character movement and MC's detailed expression on many occasions, the simplicity of its drawing that sometimes dedicate an entire page just for a sequence really brings out the life and personality of the character in question. Knowing that this manga is 4koma it impacts to the bigger timeframe where it became slower in a sense compared to other manga, which I'm fine to begin with. Another reason is of course on how wholesome and heartwarming the story is, which is why I read this manga sometimes as mood-booster whenever I had a bad day.
The romance is there, but it's only the secondary focus of the manga
In late chapters there will be a shift from SoL to romance, and it is nearing conclusion according to the author in twitter
. The story itself still revolved around its SoL and comedic elements so if you are reading it for the romance you probably won't get much compared to, say, kaguya-sama. Unless you can relate with problems she faced or her personality in general, I doubt you can enjoy the manga, otherwise you are in for a ride!