Brand Peace

Kurahashi Erika's short mangas seem to be either complete misses or a hit, and this one by all standards was a miss.


She is definitely better at stories with 'strong/decisive' female leads. Or because readers seem to prefer them because we don't like dumb idiotic whiny moped crybaby female leads? That too, but it's also how she writes about the annoying female MC, do they progress and become less annoying etc.


I definitely feel some of her other stories are more focused and written tighter than this one.

As with her female leads, the male leads seem to mimic the female leads as well.

If the female lead is decisive and knows what she wants, the male leads are usually similar.

I prefer 'charisma doll' her other story, but I do like that she tries to write different personalities of female MC.


For this story, the biggest problems I feel, if we ignore the female MC, was how disconnected I feel the pacing is.

I didn't feel her childhood friend fell in love with her. People say it's better to 'show not tell' but she didn't show it well.

If it were me, I would 'tell' it more by narration, inner monologue or through other characters telling the feelings out for the main pairing.

The last chapter or two was rushed. Definitely could have been extended to chapter 10.

Also, a Big problem with why I couldn't enjoy this series is because I feel the translations were terrible. It made very little sense to the point where I had to second guess by the pictures alone.


The only reasons I continued with this series despite all that is because the narration about falling in love was quite good imo. There were little glimmers of heart in this series.

Another reason is because I Like childhood friends who weren't in love with each other slowly fall in love.

Also because this series most people would think she would somehow win over the black hair guy's heart since a lot of the story focuses on them.

But I was rooting for the childhood friend and the other guy was just MEH.

And the female MC was annoying about how she needs to find love and kiss, but there Are these type of people in the world. So we cant always have strong female MC, nor always annoying female MC.

Overall this story was a mess, but there were glimmers of heart in there that I wanted to see how the story played out, which was rushed and not as believable as I would like.


'Show more tell less' is for those who are seriously focused with a very well planned progression down to each panel and word for the story. Also it takes a lot of skill, which the mangaka lacked.

Even if you want to tell less to make it more subtle to let readers fill in the blank or interpret, you should still include panels of her childhood friend staring at her or hinting a little more. Otherwise him falling in love with her feels contrived because it wasn't hinted or foreshadowed well with the drawings etc.

Also the female MC sorting her own feelings out definitely was rushed or two whole chapters could have been included.