Douse, Koishite Shimaunda.
Anyway, I'm Falling in Love with You.

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This manga is a reverse haram with serious undertones showing us glimpses in the future and past of our FL.
First of all it opens on a time skip in the year 2030 and we see the FL alone reminiscing on her past in high school with her group of male childhood friends in high school. This is where the main story plays out starting in the summer of 2020. Like our 2020 there is a pandemic going on school events being cancelled and the group of friends and trying to peruse the glory days of their youth while in it. Because of the covid ... factor the typical high school shojo tropes / activities are not taking place which makes this stand apart while also leaving the reader sad for the group.

The writing is really good at making every one in the friend group loveable and the FL is sweet. You can feel the love everyone has for each other both romantically (even in the early stages) but also platonically. This time skip is a bit stress educing because as a reader you want to know who she ends up with if anyone?! It feels like there an impending doom reading it for some reason.. There is weird foreshadowing for something more dramatic than a break up among childhood friends. On the fun side there is an ikemen Olympics happening in this manga. Seriously beautiful art work and writing.

(Gifted a copy on NetGalley in exchange for a review)

Volume 1 of <i>Anyway, I’m Falling in Love With You</i> reminded me in the best and worst ways of those early 90s and 2000s shoujo mangas’ whose high drama and pacing delighted me even as they made for uneven reading experiences.

It’s a promising start. Mizuha’s a high school student, conveniently childhood friends with four attractive boys. She’s an aspiring manga artist and inexperienced in romance. When one of those four friends confesses his feelings for her and begins flirting in earnest, she’s out of her depth, overwhelmed by new feelings and the danger this presents to ... the friend group. To say nothing of her old crush coming back around!

So much happens in each volume in a kind of melodramatic haze that it’s hard not to gasp aloud. The downside is of course that you’re given so little time to get to know anyone before being thrust into this mess of hormones and crushes. If you can stay with it, it’s fun but I can easily see that being a problem for readers looking for a more conventional tone.

There’s also, of course, the fact the story takes place in 2020, a manga written during the outbreak of COVID that had to adjust to that new reality. On one hand, its existence, beyond being hard to accept in our high drama high school tale, is often just awkward. Characters never mask and regularly attend class even as we’re told events are being canceled left and right. On the other hand, there’s some sweet intentions in how our characters try to find new ways to still have their high school years (a camp trip in the backyard, a new motivation for a sport). If you’re cautious about material about the pandemic though, I might pass on this, just since it hasn’t quite justified itself narratively and yet is still so clearly here.

It’s got my attention, but we’ll have to see if it finds its pacing. Readers missing that high drama, everything happening rush of 2000s shoujo manga might find that itch scratched here.