Teetering between three-and-a-half and four stars. Great title, by the way.

The author of this manga series is a veteran anime scriptwriter who has worked on, if not put together from the beginning, movies and series like A Whisker Away, Anohana, Toradora!, and Hanasaku Iroha, which are the ones I recognize now from her long list of credits. You can tell that level of professionalism in how she wrote this series: it balances the character arcs of five high school girls, each the protagonist of their own tale, who make up their local literature club. I envy authors who can orchestrate multiple viewpoints in the same story, each with its own character arc.

The series starts with one of the girls reciting a risqué passage of one of the novels they choose among themselves to read: A vision of her pale flesh, and then the soft tangle of her undergrowth, filled my eyes as I got down onto my knees and buried my face into the lush, fragrant bower; moused trembling lips over the contours of her flower to slake my thirst on the sweet, aromatic nectar spilling from the crevice. The way each of the five girls reacts introduces their character arcs.

We have a physically undeveloped girl who, as an aspiring writer, is attempting to publish erotica, but she’s getting rejected because she lacks real experience, and she can’t wait to get fucked and get it over with. A cool, mysterious model-like beauty who appears mature, but who as a child had been (as we find out fairly early on) princess-zoned by a pedophile, which screwed her up. A “childhood friend” type who has lived her entire life next to the guy she likes, but who sees her as a sister, so she isn’t getting anywhere with him. A cheerful and kind girl who has never felt the tingles for anybody, and who isn’t sure if she even likes boys. Finally, a total prude for whom any notion of sex makes her feel as if she’s sinking in toxic sludge.

As the author exposes in the notes at the end of the series, she relied on anime artists to design the girls, and you can tell: those kinds of artists focus on differentiating the visual design of the characters as well as their personalities, something that even novelists should take into account. They end up feeling quite memorable in that respect, as if they could carry a much longer series.

Anyway, the inciting incident of the girls’ development happens when, during one of the many doki doki developments in their (non-suicidal, non-murderous) literature club, they discuss among themselves what they’d like to do before they died. The cool, mysterious beauty of the club says simply that she wants to get fucked (in softer terms). From that day onward, the five girls attempt in their fumbling way to navigate their developing sexuality, usually in manners that involve extreme awkwardness and running away; I don’t think I have ever read any other series in which running away was the solution to so many problems.

As the main dude in this story we have the childhood friend and neighbor of the girl who wants to date him. For whatever reason he’s seen as a suitable mate, although the guy is a clueless dork who is obsessed with trains. As I was wondering what angle the author was playing with him, she soiled the guy further by having that girl catch the kid at home as he was masturbating to rape porn (onboard a train, of course). This is the link to that moment in the anime adaptation.

The girls don’t understand their feelings nor their impulses, and make dubious decisions like trying to score with their teachers, with their former abusers, with each other’s love interests, or with each other. Quite realistic and entertaining in that respect.

Although I have read plenty of manga over the years, even these last few, that involved high schools somehow, this was the first series during which I thought, “Oh shit, is this too girly for me?” I don’t read straight shoujo (nor straight shonen for that matter; I couldn’t get into My Hero Academia). I recall an anime whose concept intrigued me years ago, because it involved a magician who traveled to the past and had to hang out there for reasons. I was going along with its girly parts until they started using pocky sticks as magic wands, at which point I was forced to beat my chest and look up videos of people pummeling each other, to regain my masculinity. But yes, during this series I’m reviewing, I wished it fell much more into the seinen category. Curiously enough, that’s what the author intended, as she says in the notes, but when she started writing the script, the girls kept rebelling, due to their initial innocence, to the sexual activities the author intended to force them through. Still, the story is likely quite risqué for Japan.

I enjoyed the story. I empathized with the girls’ struggles to shed their innocence and become hardened degenerates. However, some emotional moments didn’t land that well for me; I felt that he author was trying to tie everything too neatly. But perhaps I simply didn’t understand the emotional depths she was plumbing. I’m quite emotionally retarded, after all.

Anyway, you’ll enjoy this series if you are interested in the budding sexuality of high school girls.