ichigo jikan tries to deliver a compelling slow-burn, high-school romance story but severely falls short and ends up delivering a mediocre romance that desperately tries to wring sympathy and understanding from its readers. while i don't want my review to be brimming with spoilers, unfortunately those are parts of the story i find myself extremely frustrated with.
our mc ichiko's circumstances are almost laughable, and the way her mother is portrayed is enough to make you age ten times quicker. it's almost as if the manga wants to justify "being a mother at a young age is a great thing to be!" and, dare i say the agenda is to be a mother at the age of eighteen. if looked into deeper, it can be seen as how the lines between mother and friend are blurred due to the lack of age difference between mother and daughter. while it's played off as an annoying quirk of ichiko's mother, i do feel like there could be a deeper meaning, and exploration of the same could have really solidified both characters' personalities.
ran…oh, ran, where do i even begin with him? his entire lore is just one big question mark, especially with his role in this story. as i mentioned, i don't want to spoil the story too much, but how did he even get to where he is just at the age of 16-17? even if one is a prodigy, it doesn't sit right and seems illogical at most. again, this could have been explored and made us more sympathetic to ran's character and, hell, even made him more likeable.
aside from poor character development, even poorer clichés and tropes, and a very ghastly ending, one thing that truly makes this manga concerning is the age of the characters—setting a countdown for one's 17th/18th birthday as a story plot to show relationship progression seems predatory at most, and not just that, this is not how high schoolers behave. while this is not the worst romance or shoujo ever made, it is definitely not something to look past either. a true product of the 2000s, both in terms of art, story, and character tropes, and heavily lacking in appeal in the current shoujo market.
