Kuno Chiyo the Esper · review
This is a rom-com manga composed of four page long chapters without any sort of plot beyond the relationship between the main couple. The main couple is a girl named Chiyo and her classmate Kishida. Chiyo can see visions of the future and has a secret crush on Kishida. Kishida is also very open about being in love with Chiyo. However, Chiyo still rejects him because her visions show that if they start going out, they’ll have kids way too early. Thus, she basically acts like a typical tsundere towards him. This manga overall just isn’t that interesting. The biggest issue is that the whole futurevisions aspect isn’t really used properly. The vast majority of the time, the visions have a negligible effect on anything important. Furthermore, there isn’t really any sort of explanation provided for the visions nor is there any logic to how they work. It’s also kind of kind of strange how most everyone already seems to know that Chiyo has visions of the future and this is just treated as completely normal.
Beyond that, the romance is decent but incredibly plain. There’s a good amount of romantic fluff and their relationship definitely does grow over the course of the manga. However, this is all incredibly generic without anything to make it stand out. There are a few side characters whole also get into relationships but there’s very little substance their either. The comedy also isn’t all that great. The majority of humor is centered around Chiyo taking unexpected actions due to her visions and the people around her being confused. This not only gets repetitive, but it also doesn’t make much sense considering that they all already know about her visions and should have gotten used to them.
The art is somewhat plain and generic, but is otherwise pretty good. However, I should note that the art in the official translation, which is based on the volume releases, is better than the art in the scanlation, which is based on the serial web version. The earlier parts of the manga have been pretty much completely redrawn, though there’s not as much of a difference towards the later parts. However, the web version has extra chapters and color pages which the volume version does not, so there’s no clear winner here.
tl;dr: A generic rom-com that fumbles its only unique aspect.