Manga 137313 Isshiki-san Wa Koi Wo Shiritai

Most manga are set in high school, whether those high schools are in our world or in some fantasy world. From ninja academies to magic schools to knight training, it makes sense to start the hero's journey early so we can watch the protagonist grow and improve. Watching characters grow from immature children to responsible adults is extremely gratifying. It's definitely a valid genre.

But is it possible to write something else? Just once in a while, please? You start with the premise of a workplace manga, so why must the two leads act like immature high schoolers anyway? There are a sum total of perhaps ... 5 workplace romances in manga in existence. Is it really necessary to make the female protagonist underage? What possible purpose does that serve other than a weird fetishization of high school girls? What would have been the harm of making her 18 or even 20?

The answer is simple: this author is not mature enough to write a romance between two adults. While the fMC really *is* 17, the MC is said to be 19 but *acts* closer to 13. The MC gets flustered over holding hands, receiving a hug, and walking next to his partner. This is not the emotional maturity of an adult man. At least the fMC has a narrative excuse for being clueless about love. What's the guy's excuse? He might be the least mature 19-year-old in all of Japan.

I'm disappointed because I picked this up hoping for a workplace romance. Instead I got a gimmicky paint-by-numbers story with all the predictable events (so predictable that I am copy-pasting these from my last review of a bad romance manga):

- MC and fMC have to hide from people who might discover their relationship so they're trapped in an extremely confined space where their bodies press against each other
- fMC goes to the swimming pool and the string of her bathing suit comes off
- MC accidentally gropes fMC's chest when she falls down
- fMC mistakes MC's sister for his girlfriend (in this case the sister introduces herself as his girlfriend, because that's super normal...)
- amusement park date, hot springs date

It's kind of the author to think of the planet, since they are so devoted to recycling.