Meguro-san wa Hajimete ja Nai - Vol. 11 Ch. 77 - Takes a lot of courage

[BlazingKyogre]

Finished the last chapter, I feel sick:

Spoiler

After reading the last chapter, it's clear that this story was never about romance but rather a platform for the author’s cuckoldry fetish. There’s no significant character development, and the ending doesn’t redeem the prior chapters. If the last eight chapters hadn't existed, there might have been something salvageable, but those chapters completely ruined any previous build-up.

The female protagonist supposedly had over 100 partners before her "healthy" relationship with the main character, yet she can't bring herself to be intimate with him. Worse, there's no indication that this will change anytime soon. The professor who molested and psychologically damaged her makes a reappearance, but faces no consequences for his actions. This man utterly destroyed her mental state, and she still claims she will always love him and never forget what he taught her—an incredibly disturbing message.

The male protagonist never confronts this professor. In fact, he effectively pushes her back toward him. By the end, she still hasn’t made any decisions of her own volition—even to see her boyfriend, she needed others to push her—and the male lead remains spineless. Nothing changes. If anything, the characters’ situations get "worse".

The side characters didn’t get proper conclusions either, but at this point, who cares? This isn’t romance. It’s not cute. It’s not okay. If you enjoyed it, that’s your choice, but I urge you to reconsider what you just read. Does the story resolve any of the issues introduced at the beginning? Did the characters grow at all? Did any of their actions have meaningful consequences? I saw none of that.

1/10 for the story. 4/10 for the art (it was damaged by the story being so bad at the end). -100/10 for the author.

cuckoldry fetish? You mean the female author of this manga gets off the idea of dumping their own boyfriend, who might genuinely love them with a bastard that abused their innocence?

 

[babugue]

cuckoldry fetish? You mean the female author of this manga gets off the idea of dumping their own boyfried, who might genuinely love them with a bastard that abused their innocence?

Pretty much. She showed more emotions and feelings for her abuser in few last chapters than with her boyfriend the entire manga.

 

[Mangamoz]

Oh. My fucking God.

She actually thanked him. And he thanked her back. I hope that prick gets hit by a fucking bus.

I am kinda thankful for this last arc, though. I tend to reread manga I enjoyed once they finish. No fucking chance of that happening here. Thank you, author-san.

Probably for the best that it ended now before it got worse.

Author likely would have gone into a full cuck arc with our "MUH MORAL HIGH GROUND" protag raising Meguro and Groomer-kun's kid with a smile.

 

[spiffinn]

Thanks for the update, but as others have said, yikes this is a rough one.

 

[LannerBlackZero]

It's not that its simply dumb. It's actually pretty concerning. Harmful even. If these are the legit thoughts of a woman who is a mainstream writer and her entire editorial team and publisher didn't even bother to point this shit out,

god fucking damn.

My guess is that 9°C intended to do a long-running dramatic arc about Meguro realising how much she was damaged by the ‘sensei’, but since she was axed she gave up on the story and made up some dumb shit to close it with the few chapters left. I don't think the ‘NTR for women’ feel was intentional, but a side effect of her rushed, half-assed and half-hearted ending.

 

[samhiuy]

"Zaizen. Thank you for being a mass groomer for our sake."

"No, I don't want that! Zaizen finding another girl to groom? I want him to think about me and no one else for the rest of my life! Even after I die...I want to be at the front of his mind for a while! Ten years at least!!!"

The title of this manga should be "It's Not Zaizen-san's First Time" in grooming and sexually abusing minors. It's a story about how a pedophile got away with his crimes and continued doing it. Koga? Who is Koga? Never heard of him.

 

[fsadfsad]

Finished the last chapter, I feel sick:

Spoiler

After reading the last chapter, it's clear that this story was never about romance but rather a platform for the author’s cuckoldry fetish. There’s no significant character development, and the ending doesn’t redeem the prior chapters. If the last eight chapters hadn't existed, there might have been something salvageable, but those chapters completely ruined any previous build-up.

The female protagonist supposedly had over 100 partners before her "healthy" relationship with the main character, yet she can't bring herself to be intimate with him. Worse, there's no indication that this will change anytime soon. The professor who molested and psychologically damaged her makes a reappearance, but faces no consequences for his actions. This man utterly destroyed her mental state, and she still claims she will always love him and never forget what he taught her—an incredibly disturbing message.

The male protagonist never confronts this professor. In fact, he effectively pushes her back toward him. By the end, she still hasn’t made any decisions of her own volition—even to see her boyfriend, she needed others to push her—and the male lead remains spineless. Nothing changes. If anything, the characters’ situations get "worse".

The side characters didn’t get proper conclusions either, but at this point, who cares? This isn’t romance. It’s not cute. It’s not okay. If you enjoyed it, that’s your choice, but I urge you to reconsider what you just read. Does the story resolve any of the issues introduced at the beginning? Did the characters grow at all? Did any of their actions have meaningful consequences? I saw none of that.

1/10 for the story. 4/10 for the art (it was damaged by the story being so bad at the end). -100/10 for the author.

Arguably, the story featuring zero actual cucking makes it even more batshit insane, because it means that Meguro caused all of the final arc drama purely due to freaking about her exams. Cheating, as vile as it is, at least has a logic that can be understood, but dumping your boyfriend because you can't take stress of the exams and then almost forgetting to tell him what the fuck were you doing is just pure insanity, unshackled from any human reason.

The most horrific part isn't that she cheated her boyfriend. It's that she did it all without any intent of cheating and remained faithful to him. Being able to casually distance yourself from your partner like that for something as mundane as stressful exams is a behaviour that's several degrees of insanity higher than normal cheating. She really is unable to actually form a proper human bonds.

cuckoldry fetish? You mean the female author of this manga gets off the idea of dumping their own boyfriend, who might genuinely love them with a bastard that abused their innocence?

Pretty much. She showed more emotions and feelings for her abuser in few last chapters than with her boyfriend the entire manga.

As I have said, her doing all this bullshit without even a sliver of ill intent towards her boyfriend makes it much more insane than cheating would. Cheating makes you piece of shit. Putting your whole relationship on a backburner for over a month makes you a stone cold bitch.

My guess is that 9°C intended to do a long-running dramatic arc about Meguro realising how much she was damaged by the ‘sensei’, but since she was axed she gave up on the story and made up some dumb shit to close it with the few chapters left. I don't think the ‘NTR for women’ feel was intentional, but a side effect of her rushed, half-assed and half-hearted ending.

I agree with that, to be honest. I mean, no matter what people say it wasn't an NTR arc because Meguro spent whole arc not doing anything with other men. It's much weirder/abnormal than cheating. She literally put her relationship on backburner and then proceeded to live her life without even thinking about cheating until her friends told her to quit this crap.

 

[fflogschampion]

a lot of text

This is what happens when an author has a fixation on expressing an intangible concept that cannot be easily described and turns their characters into tools for that, at some point they stop being "humans" and become the representations of an ideal instead.

You can really tell the author was trying to sell the idea of detached love with the sensei, which might even be a valid perspective, but they choose the worst character to represent this because no matter how you try to spin Meguro's not actually being a slut because she never fully understood the implications of her actions for normal people when the root of behavior can be traced directly to this guy. And if not for the MC intervening with "fixing" Meguro her whole life would've been a series of shallow relationships and getting hurt.

I don't even know what Meguro asking for a temporary break is even supposed to represent.

 

[Rafalga]

Now i'm wondering what the local reaction to this shit show was? Since raw are finished for a while now. If its not outrage, it won't really help with some of the typcial prejudice against the JP readership

 

[Nosebleed]

Now i'm wondering what the local reaction to this shit show was? Since raw are finished for a while now. If its not outrage, it won't really help with some of the typcial prejudice against the JP readership

Sadly the palcy app where this is published has no comment section. So the discussion for this series is very diluted.

I did read the comments on magapoke when the last chapter came out but there are very few because that's not the main platform.

The comments were less aggressive than on here (likely because they'd get removed otherwise) but there were still mostly people questioning why the hell a criminal like Zaizen was treated like some saint, as well as complaining that Koga was turned into an unrealistically ideal boyfriend that lets Meguro get away with everything. Also no one understood why Meguro had to break up with Koga because of exams. The sentiment was mixed at best.

So overall JP readers were also perplexed with this last arc.

 

[fsadfsad]

This is what happens when an author has a fixation on expressing an intangible concept that cannot be easily described and turns their characters into tools for that, at some point they stop being "humans" and become the representations of an ideal instead.

You can really tell the author was trying to sell the idea of detached love with the sensei, which might even be a valid perspective, but they choose the worst character to represent this because no matter how you try to spin Meguro's not actually being a slut because she never fully understood the implications of her actions for normal people when the root of behavior can be traced directly to this guy. And if not for the MC intervening with "fixing" Meguro her whole life would've been a series of shallow relationships and getting hurt.

I don't even know what Meguro asking for a temporary break is even supposed to represent.

Yeah, that's the problem. Sensei is a guy who single-handedly sent her on a downward spiral. Still, the issue is that the story shows her literally caving under pressure the moment she's confronted with actually wanting two conflicting things. I feel like the temp break was just that, Meguro caving in under pressure of having to handle exams and relationship.

 

[mattserino]

Don't be the one to buy the village's bicycle, guys

 

[mattserino]

Reminds me of that shitty manga where the MC reincarnates as the NTR villain of the story and the main girl thanks him for fucking her mom.

At least that story is a comedy and the absurdity of those situations are treated as a joke. The author is not trying to be wholesome

 

[Nosebleed]

Thought you guys might be interested in the top review for volume 11 on amazon (1 star), so I translated it all. Just to show that no, Japanese readers did not take this sitting down.

Volume 11, the last volume.
As expected, it ends with an arc that's complicated for ordinary people to wrap their heads around.

Koga-kun is working part-time at a cram school.
On his way home from work, he comes across Zaizen-sensei, Meguro-san's first boyfriend from back when she was in middle school, and who she hasn't seen in 4 years.
(After every arc so far, we're shown Zaizen-sensei with Meguro-san when she was in her 3rd year of middle school, but during the first story, after Meguro-san and Zaizen-sensei develop a sexual relationship, we're shown Meguro-san being confessed to by several seniors in middle school, meaning Meguro-san's first sexual experience had to have been around when she was 13 years old in the second year of middle school (she was born in February) and then spent 4 years in the same back and forth)
After Meguro-san and Zaizen-sensei then part ways like it's nothing, Koga-kun becomes the first guy she fell in love with.
Koga-kun clearly has some NTR inclinations, given he's not at all shocked by Meguro-san having had multiple sexual partners since Zaizen-sensei and instead sees it as an important part of her.

When he notices Meguro-san is not doing well in her college exam prep, Koga-kun suggests she hire Zaizen-sensei as a private tutor again after 3 years, the man who took her virginity and casually dumped her after she graduated middle school.
I am absolutely disgusted and perplexed by Meguro-san, Zaizen-sensei, and Koga-kun.
Koga-kun, for suggesting his current girlfriend spend time in private lessons with the man who took her virginity. Zaizen-sensei, for taking advantage of Meguro-san's affection towards him in middle school and bringing her to his home and hotel rooms to teach her about sex. And Meguro-san, for accepting private lessons with Zaizen-sensei in her own home like it's no big deal.

And then the thing I didn't understand the most, Meguro-san telling Koga-kun she wants to temporarily break up with him while she's studying for exams because she feels like she's codependent on him and doesn't want to worry him.

The hell?

As for the end result of Meguro-san spending half a year receiving private lessons from Zaizen-sensei, her scores went up and, although she couldn't get into her first college of choice, she got into another one.
At the end she tells Zaizen-sensei that she loved him 4 years ago, and thanks him for having been the first person to teach her all sorts of new things, things she will never forget... All while blushing.
Disgusting.

(chapter 78 spoilers but it's honestly nothing special)

Yuriko-chan, the girl from Meguro-san's middle school, the twin juniors, her work colleague and her manager, as well as all the expected past characters make an appearance.
After about half a year, Meguro-san and Koga-kun reunite and Koga-kun confesses to her instead of the other way around. The two graduate high school and walk together holding hands, the end.

This was the least interesting arc in all of the volumes.
There is literally nothing special worth mentioning.

I'll be blunt, it was incredibly boring.
The worst volume out of the 11 by far.
The two last chapters simply wrapped everything up without a single obstacle standing in the way, and the very last scene was far less emotional than the one at the end of volume 7.
It felt so unfinished that, for someone like me who was reading chapters in advance on the magazine pocket app, I was legitimately waiting for a new chapter to come out and continue the story.

After 11 volumes and 78 chapters (+11 bonus chapters), Meguro-san ultimately never came to understand either herself or her partners. After receiving lessons from her first lover in middle school, Zaizen-sensei, without even questioning them, she was unable to turn down anyone who confessed to her, had sex with anyone who asked while never asking for something in return, and was always dumped by them in the end...
Even after dating Koga-kun, he simply became a convenient guy who fully accepted her past as a positive aspect of her. From start until finish she never once changed her opinion, and she was ultimately grateful that Zaizen-sensei strung her along, tutored her, and instilled his views of love and sex onto her.
Until the very end she was in love with the Zaizen-sensei who had no sense of morals or ethics and who showed no remorse over the countless people he dated in the past, and now she is in love with Koga-kun who accepts everything about her, including that aspect.
The premise of this series is very similar to the recently animated "Keikenzumi" (although "keikenzumi" came out afterwards), but at least in that anime both the girl and the boy show more human emotion and you can more easily sympathize with them.
The girl there regrets her past and is trying to improve her future while reflecting on it, while the boy is concerned by her past lovers. He also has a libido lol.
Compared to that, Meguro-san is like an isekai fantasy. They exist on different playing fields.

In the author's other works, there were many times where I couldn't bring myself to understand or sympathize with the characters. But in this work in particular, there were so many unpleasant and uncomfortable moments involving Meguro-san and Koga-kun, the protagonists themselves, that no matter what words or drawings the author put down on the paper, I as the reader could not feel immersed. All I felt was negativity. It was truly baffling how the more I read the more disgusted I felt.
Personally speaking, I still think this would have been better if it had ended with volume 7.
But this is the end instead.
Thank you to the author and to the readers who came this far.

 

[VINT64]

it still burns. Wow

You'd have a point if the guy she was with wasn't someone openly exploiting her feelings for sex and purposefully conditioning her to let men step all over her so he can have easy access to sex.

We know she wasn't like this in the past, too. This man is the one solely responsible for destroying her ability to have normal, functioning relationships.

This is not how one explores feelings/sexuality at a young age, this is simply being taken advantage of/grooming and it's repugnant.

Her view of those moments is completely tainted/biased because no one taught her what grooming/trauma is. She literally never got the chance to have a normal life because the teacher ruined it. Even if she herself doesn't see it that way, it's still horrible.

I'll give you this, victims of abuse irl do actually sometimes idolize their abuser and what they did as a coping mechanism (to basically separate themselves from victimhood), but that doesn't mean the abuse is any less bad.

However this manga just plays it straight and tells the reader the teacher did nothing wrong. It was just a different kind of love. That is appalling and is rightfully being lambasted in the comments.

destroying her ability? Not really. She's doing fine, obviously. Looks like you didn't read the whole thing. She now lives a normal life.
My point is, sensei is much better than real abusers, and he gave her very beautiful, in some sense even innocent, first love, and he can have her thankyou.

Just because what he did technically wasn't illegal (he was probably a minor too at the time) it affected Meguro negatively for years, he was still an asshole about the whole thing, his world views are still screwed up, and every character is trying to pass the whole thing as something positive that happened in her life.

I could fertilize a garden with the contents of these final chapters.

his world views are viable, especially in Japan. He did so much better than he could've

You shouldn't talk about things you don't understand. Like at all. Makes you seem like as fucked up as the groomer you just tried to side with.

You are a brainwashed westernian. Try to use your brain when reading manga. If you fail, I suppose you should never try to read any of it again.

 

[Rafalga]

Bunch of drivel

Seek help

 

[wallsg]

God this author turned into dogshit.

"I've always just been a student to you. A student you fucked at an extremely young age, while being in a position of power, literally getting paid by my parents as a tutor."

And of course cuck no spine mc comes running as soon as he's beckoned.

The parents wanted to hire a tutor but they ended up hiring a stud.

 

[SleepyDemon]

Didn't the sensei fuck her and then dump her? Is my memory failing me or is this chapter trying to gaslight me?

Yes.

But for the added cherry on top of the sundae he left her with words that basically amount to "if somebody wants you, say yes to make them happy" which led to her countless sexual encounters leading up to chapter 1 of the manga.

 

[KazutoKatsuragi]

At this point, I'm pretty sure the mangaka was also gaslit like Meguro as a minor and is too fucking stupid to realize that it's a bad thing.

 

[Tinker_OwO]

it still burns. Wow

destroying her ability? Not really. She's doing fine, obviously. Looks like you didn't read the whole thing. She now lives a normal life.
My point is, sensei is much better than real abusers, and he gave her very beautiful, in some sense even innocent, first love, and he can have her thankyou.

his world views are viable, especially in Japan. He did so much better than he could've

You are a brainwashed westernian. Try to use your brain when reading manga. If you fail, I suppose you should never try to read any of it again.

What the fuck is you saying