Reiroukan is genuinely one of the most baffling series Ive ever read. Theres honestly a beauty in that. Every truly awful manga is bad in its unique ways and Reiroukan is one of the most unique Ive seen. The art is great the character designs stand out the premise is decent mostly and the story decisions are some of the most confusing Ive ever seen. It doesnt feel like what an incompetent would come up with. It feels worse. Youd have to be trying to make something this stupid. It makes you wonder if the author once realizing they were probably going to be canceled decided to just fuck around. And despite that the author Tomi Akihito has genuinely grown since then. Lets put this into context. I found Reiroukan because of a manga called Sinner of the Azure Abyss. A manga which has even better art and one of the most promising beginnings Ive seen. Its one of those manga that feels incredibly interesting and entirely natural like the author lives and breathes manga. It only has eleven chapters translated at the time I write this but I enjoyed those chapters greatly and am really excited for where else it will go. Because I enjoyed it so much I decided to read all of the authors older work. I didnt expect anything as good as Azure Abyss of course. Most authors take some time to grow into their skills and Ive seen plenty struggle greatly before figuring out what theyre trying to do producing garbage in the meantime. But this is a ratio of early garbage to later genius I havent seen since Oshimi Shuzo. I am honestly proud of Tomi Akihito for not giving up and polishing their craft after producing schlock such as this. So lets dig into Reiroukan itself. Our manga begins with our protagonist whose name I already forgot okay its Genta. He moves into a fancy mansion known as Reiroukan to dorm in while studying in college. There are a fair number of other students there although its not full. Honestly the premise is already strange. Youd think a place so fancy and beautiful would have a waiting list but no he has to be convinced to move in. Something he only decides on after seeing an attractive girl changing but Ill say more about that later. The fundamentals of the premise are solid. A group of college students living together in a beautiful environment getting into wacky hijinks and goofy shenanigans. Now that I type that out I realize that this could have been a breath of fresh air compared to all the high school slice of life out there. Unfortunately the first problem this manga has is that its ideas for episodic plots simply arent very good. The feeling I got during the early chapters was a mostly benign confusion as opposed to the active confusion later on. The plots dont explicitly not make sense but they tend to flow awkwardly and make you forget whats actually supposed to be happening. And whenever the author cant fill the page time with things actually happening we get fanservice. For instance Chapter 2 has eighteen entire pages of two girls in a room together changing outfits and talking about nothing only for the actual plot of the chapter to be the main character fell asleep after drinking a glass of wine and the other guys moved him under the bed in the girls room so he was there the whole time. That gets a whole six pages. Similarly theres a bathhouse chapter that just has some of the girls being naked together in a public bathhouse with the actual plot mixed in between so sparsely that I was again genuinely confused by it. The mansions bath broke and they had to fix it I guess? Other chapters just dont really have anything happen. Chapter 5 has a blackout and thats it. Yeah theres a blackout. They need to get candles. Nothing else really. Oh except the B plot where one of the college students is tutoring a ninth grader who simps for her and shes so scared of the dark that when he says hell protect her and wants to date her she actually agrees. Yeah. This is not a great manga. To be fair after the blackout ends she becomes sane again and says shes not going to date a ninth grader at least not until hes older? Yikes. But lets go back to Chapter 2 for a moment. The one where the main character was stuck under a bed while two attractive girls were changing. Dont you think thats an odd thing to happen in the second chapter of a series? The first chapter has Genta touring the house meeting people and agreeing to stay there. Youd think in a series like this with an ensemble cast the second chapter would involve him spending more time with and interacting with at least one of the members as we start to flesh them out. But instead its drawnout fanservice where nothing happens at all. Thats a trend for this manga. The character designs are great. Distinctive memorable lots of personality conveyed just through their art. And thats about all the personality youll get out of them. Its not that theyre theoretically boring characters. Its that the events of the plot never actually serve to bring anything out of the characters. Chapter 3 for example follows Genta on a wild goose chase trying to find Youko the caretaker. Oh yeah I should mention another part of the premise. At the end of chapter 1 he hears that Reiroukan is going to be gone in a year. Unlike a normal person he doesnt immediately ask a question about that it goes unacknowledged for most of chapter 2 and then chapter 3 has him following a trail of Youkos insane antics. It doesnt even end with him finding her and actually getting to ask something. The charade is pointless as most of the chapters are plotless. But eventually we do get confirmation that Reiroukan will be demolished because the company or family or whatever that owns the land needs to build something else there to not go bankrupt. Youd think that theyd do fine if they charged more than 300 per month rent or that people would want to live in a literal mansion enough for the demand to drive that price higher not that I support landlords mind you its just that this premise doesnt even make sense. Its unfortunate for Reiroukan to be lost. It genuinely is a beautiful piece of architecture at least to my amateur eyes that know nothing about mansion design. But regardless of how it looks the manga wont let you forget that its beautiful as it spends much more time using Youko to tell you that Reiroukan is important and shouldnt be destroyed than it does showing you. And this is where the framing gets weird. I understand why Youko is heartbroken about it having poured her life into taking care of it and the students living in it. I even understand why she rejects historical preservation or turning it into a museum out of a belief that its meant to be a place for students to live together. But its really not the biggest deal in existence. It makes sense as something for a character to feel not for it to be their driving motivation and basically their only character trait. I dunno about you but I think there are bigger problems in the world than whether a bunch of college students get to live together in a mansion. I mean most of the plot of their drama together would be the same if it was any old dorm. Like its a nice place. Id want to keep living there too and certainly wouldnt want it destroyed. But its just a place. You know whats more important than the place you live in? The people you live with. Thats the most obvious bogstandard easy theme to go for and Reiroukan doesnt. No in this story the place is genuinely what matters not the people. After all you cant believably make it about the friendships when none of the friendships portrayed seem particularly deep or meaningful. But Im being extremely literal when I say they make it about the place. The ending of the manga shows twenty years after the demolishing of the mansion how one of the characters has created a television drama about college students living in a mansion together getting into drama. Honestly itd be kind of sweet if I could tell you literally anything about that character or if he did literally anything during the plot beforehand. Anyway he spends all of his time lamenting that his TV show isnt as good as the real thing and he misses it. He goes to the old site which is replaced with a genuinely impressive piece of modern architecture that he completely disrespects only to find that Reiroukan has been rebuilt? Yeah our main character apparently got money. I think he inherited his family construction company? Well theres a new Reiroukan. And we get to see Youko arrive and cry tears of joy. Because its not about the people or the memories. Its just about having the nice mansion. I think a manga about the value of historical preservation would be interesting. They talk about how Reiroukans blend of western and japanese architecture is genuinely unique. Its a piece of art that would be honestly lost to the world when destroyed. But thats not what this manga is really about. No it outright rejects that. The real message is that people should have nice places to live. These specific people and this specific nice place of course. Not people in general. You cant make the theme about the people rather than the place when theres never any real connection between the people. And where this manga tries to portray one is where it truly put itself among the worst manga Ive ever read. Lets talk about the reason I gave it a 2/10. Lets talk about the romance. Its not particularly present during the first half but there are a few things I skipped over that are relevant. Firstly when Genta meets his roommate a certified Youko simp who insists that Genta stay away from her. Genta says not to worry as he has a girlfriend. I was happy when I read that. Not like ecstatic but hey its kind of nice to see that kind of dynamic going into a manga. Yeah I didnt know what I was in for. It gets a little strange when Genta looks through a slightly open door and sees our main girl Mikoto as shes changing. Immediately after this he makes his decision that hed like to live here. Thats a little odd isnt it? Like he has a girlfriend. We even got a flashback of how much he loves his girlfriend. But he decides to move in because he sees a hot girl changing? I mean I guess pervert is a character archetype in manga. The next few chapters keep putting him in positions to leer at the girls. This isnt impossible to believe characterization but it feels like hes being written as your typical lonely single protagonist rather than someone with a girlfriend. Right now its still lulling you into a false sense of security though. While all this happens you see Genta developing no relationship with anyone including Mikoto. He has a few conversations with her but its all superficial. Everything changes in chapter 7. The plot here is that Genta wants to learn how to cook and Mikoto is ready to teach him. Causing everyone to freak out which immediately makes you expect that this is your typical gag of someone who cant make something edible. But no the joke here is actually that Mikoto is an incredible cook so incredible that everyone who takes a bite immediately has a Food Wars level foodgasm and promptly passes out and loses their memory of what happened. Everyone except Genta that is who enjoys it but is otherwise fine. The sheer uniqueness of this trait causes Mikoto to fall in love with him. I honestly thought it was a gag at first even for the next couple of chapters. Haha a character temporarily falls in love with the one who can actually eat her food. Move on. But no this is literally it. She fucking loves him. Immediately. Instantly. No relationship development beforehand. Ill take a bland harem protagonist with no reason for girls to fall in love with him over a reason as stupid as this. Oh and as she confesses Gentas girlfriend walks in to visit him. Only to eat some of the food and pass out to lose her memory of this. Next chapter shes still visiting and we see Genta and her perfectly happy together to Mikotos frustration. The plot of the chapter after that is that Mikoto frustrated with her unrequited love sneaks into Gentas room every night gets naked gets in bed with him cuddles and then leaves before he wakes up. Its around here I started to wonder why nobody in this manga can act like a human being. Except Midori Mikotos friend. She hears that Mikoto and Genta have been spending a lot of time together and catches her in the act. At which point Mikoto loudly confesses her love and Genta kisses her. Im still baffled. Genta has a girlfriend. We see a flashback of how happy they were together. We see them happy together in the present when she visits. Meanwhile the literal only connection Genta has to Mikoto is that he saw her changing once and is horny for her. Like his girlfriend is attractive too? Frankly I like her much better because she seems like a perfectly normal person who doesnt do things like sexually assault her crush or fall in love for insane reasons. This is where Genta starts to come off like a real scumbag. A cheater of course which only Midori and one other character are sane enough to call out. But theres still something off about it. If this was a narrative of a guy finding feelings for someone else while apart from his girlfriend thatd be an actual interesting drama. If it was just about him being a scumbag it would frame it more around his libido than it does and not frame their love as genuine. But instead it just expects you to believe that hes genuinely in love with this girl after showing none of why no connection or development between them and the dumbest reason for her to love him that Ive ever seen. I try to just take manga as they are. The character is acting like a scumbag so theyre a scumbag. But sometimes theres such a blatant disconnect between what the author is trying to do and whats actually on the page that it completely takes you out of it. That happens a lot in this manga with unfunny gags and story beats that fail to leave an impact. Genta genuinely isnt supposed to be a scumbag but being written as one anyway is the worst of it. Along with how it tries to portray their love as something beautiful. Im starting to wonder if this is all a big joke Im not in on if its supposed to be tongueincheek if its supposed to be a deliberately ridiculous romcom for the hell of it. I doubt it. The next chapter has Midori spy on him as he breaks up with his girlfriend a person I genuinely feel bad for. The humor here is supposed to come from him only making her feel worse while attempting to be nice saying they can still be friends and all and buying her a goodbye gift. On one level it just feels meanspirited as she genuinely did nothing wrong. I mean she obviously deserves better but by all reasonable logic he also should still love her and not feel anything for the random girl hes barely talked to. After that we have another case of the manga taking what would be a oneoff gag in any other story and taking it absurdly seriously. After the declaration of love Youko declared that tenants are not allowed to sleep in each others rooms. Only for a wall to accidentally get broken down between their rooms allowing them to see each other in the night. They try to sneak through they get caught and yeah theyre kicked out now. Maybe dont do the thing that will get you kicked out? I guess horny youths are horny. But the entire reason the hole exists at all is so contrived Im not even gonna sum it up. The only reason it doesnt feel like a ridiculously forced and annoying way to get them kicked out of Reiroukan is that theres no reason to actually care about them getting to stay in Reiroukan after all. Finally they go home to visit his parents to tell them that they want to get a house together. It gets suggested that they just get married at which point Gentas mother asks him to say if hes truly serious about this girl. And he says he is. I dont believe the manga when it says this. Its just fucking lying to me. This girl who fell in love with him because he didnt pass out eating her food and this boy who fell in love with her for literally no reason and broke up with his girlfriend to be with someone he barely talked to on a serious level. I dont care that the moment is meant to be genuine and heartwarming and he obviously isnt lying. Unless there were magical timeskips unseen between chapters they got together a matter of days before this. The manga is wrong. The manga is wrong about what it is. I dont know if this is the worst romance Ive ever read but its definitely the stupidest. Im sorry I didnt mean to give you a play by play of their whole romance. I probably could have written this review with just a quick summary alluding to the fact that the romance is stupid and nonsensical. But I wanted to explain every layer of how ridiculously and unbelievable it is. There are a lot of manga about which people say the romance is awful and I wanted to make it as clear as possible to you that this is even worse than those. It feels like a joke. Like it was designed to be frustrating. Genta being serious about his love for Mikoto is the perfect punchline. But I dont think this manga is in on it and it spends enough time on other unrelated plotlines that I dont believe it. Its not something an author would create just to be stupid. I think it wants you to cry at the end when Youko sees Reiroukan rebuilt. It really could have been mediocre. Stick to the premise drop some unfunny bland slice of life chapters and youre golden. It didnt shoot for the stars. It shot for a wall and hit an innocent bird. 2/10. Seriously though the author improved so much. Go read Sinner of the Azure Abyss. Failure helps you learn. Does that mean that a failure this bad teaches you even more? Im not sure about that but it certainly doesnt mean you cant learn.