Huh… a timeskip.
I suspect that was the mangaka’s way of saying, “No - this isn’t going to turn into a harem, and no - nobody is going to ‘win.’ Now back to our regularly scheduled goofy hijinks.”
I’m okay with that.
Yeah, this caught me by surprise. I am happy to see them all grown up like this and that the dynamic feels exactly the same (with the exception of sensei…that age gap seems a lot smaller now).
I suspect we are going to hear about White Day as a flashback from these future characters. But I don’t know what is going to happen next. It would be wild if, this many chapters in, it is suddenly about adult characters now.
I genuinely think this was just inserted as a reset, since so many people had started treating this as a harem manga, and making so much noise about who they thought should or should not “win.” The point is to kill all of that by timeskipping ahead to show that there is no winner, and after school they all go their separate ways, so the manga can then go back to focusing on day-to-day weirdness and silliness without the added weight of the expectation that something is going to come of the various romance flags that might pop up from time.
Of course, since it is this manga, pretty much anything is possible…
The potential existence of the adult characters (if this isn’t some sort of dream or delusion) is interesting. They could just be ignored from this point on, and all we get is the clarification that there is no lasting romance, so the manga can just go back to being what it initially was and everyone can just sit back and enjoy the silliness. It seems sort of a shame to waste them though, so I tend to think it’s more likely that we’ll see them again, at least from time to time. And it’s possible that they could eventually grow into a new focal point, so we can move away from a setting that was honestly starting to get a bit stale, and into a whole new setting and a “new” cast of characters, for a whole new set of adventures.
Again, pretty much anything is possible in this manga, essentially by definition…
This all seems reasonable. I really do hope that these characters become regulars going forward, they are still a lot of fun. Looking forward to White Day coming up next.
The thing with harems is that they’re a trap. The author can’t keep dragging things out or the fans get frustrated - we want a resolution. But pretty much the moment there is a resolution, the manga’s dead. Without the dynsmic of the harem, there isn’t va point any longer.
And I assume that’s exactlyvwhat the author is trying to avoid here.
But I was thinking the time-skipped characters would just be there long enough to kill all of the harem noise, then just stay in the background as a framing device - the story is being told through their reminiscences.
The more I think about it though, the more I hope they’ll become a regular part of the manga, and potentially even the “new” protagonists. That could open up the possibility of a whole new set of adventures, and with characters who are sort of both familiar and new, which could really be pretty neat if it was done well.
We’ll see…
