Yamada and Teacher · review
Truly one of the manga of all time. You have to wonder why the heroine is even there in the first place. A quick look at the demographic, the first adjective used to describe her, and the aggressive comments from the male lead from the first chapter really should have made it obvious why. Now I'm not here to rain the parade on tropes I don't like, such as sexual harassment (with varying degrees of intensity) that gets patched up with "sorry about that lol." After all I came here expecting a teacher-student romance so I'm no stranger to liking tropes that frequently get shamed. But ifthe narrative is going to seriously address one main issue, namely that of the male lead's loneliness, isn't it fair to properly address you know, the harassment? Or the titular heroine promoted with the male lead? Not once does she get a POV.
More than that, you can't really call this one a romance. This manga is not about a romance, it's about the inner world of this guy who is inexplicably aggressive towards and resentful of all living beings. Which is fine, I can just read another manga for the main thing I'm looking for. However here, this "inner conflict" isn't even sufficiently dealt with narratively. This is mainly shown by the heroine's actions. The way the manga ended and how the heroine acted in the last couple of chapters compared to how she acted in the beginning really made no sense at all, and it seems that the author was never interested in addressing that even though this person is so integral to the male lead's inner conflict. Why did she approach him in the first place? Why was she so eager to submit herself to sexual innuendo and even accept such encouragement from her "friends"? As mentioned before, this could have been fixed with an insight to whatever is going up in that mind of hers, which is surely as warped as Sensei's. But before Sensei can do anything else, the manga ends with no closure for either of them.
The art is truly wonderful and not something I'd expect to accompany a story like this so I was surprised when going into this blind. Should have had my alarm bells ringing at "well-endowed."