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高校デビュー [Kōkō Debut] #10-12
High School Debut (3-in-1 Edition), Vol. 4
Friendship and love are put to the test when Yoh’s friend Asaoka reveals that he likes Haruna. The two boys strike a deal—whoever loses the school sports meet will give up on her! Later, Haruna grapples with an unattractive girl who’s obsessed with Yoh… But can Haruna win against jealousy and sabotage?
560 pages, Paperback
First published November 4, 2014
4 people are currently reading
101 people want to read
About the author
Kazune Kawahara
164 books289 followers• Birth Date: March 11th, 1972
• Blood Type: A
• Zodiac: Pisces
Kazune Kawahara (河原和音) made her manga debut at age 18 with Kare no Ichiban Sukina Hito (His Most Favorite Person). Also, while thinking of her manga, she often spaces out and brings grocery baskets home. Adores her nieces.
• Blood Type: A
• Zodiac: Pisces
Kazune Kawahara (河原和音) made her manga debut at age 18 with Kare no Ichiban Sukina Hito (His Most Favorite Person). Also, while thinking of her manga, she often spaces out and brings grocery baskets home. Adores her nieces.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
August 31, 2020
This is a fun, shoujo series!
I really enjoy the growth that Haruna goes on. Though she is a bit awkward in the beginning, it's hard to not root for her to find her happiness. Yoh is really a good boy in a grumpy, attractive package, and we love to see it.
The cast of characters in this series are really enjoyable as well! Some favorites being Mami and Fumi! They all feed into what the main couple needs, and it works really well.
I wish I could have tweaked a couple of things, but other than that, I genuinely enjoyed the reading experience on this one!
I really enjoy the growth that Haruna goes on. Though she is a bit awkward in the beginning, it's hard to not root for her to find her happiness. Yoh is really a good boy in a grumpy, attractive package, and we love to see it.
The cast of characters in this series are really enjoyable as well! Some favorites being Mami and Fumi! They all feed into what the main couple needs, and it works really well.
I wish I could have tweaked a couple of things, but other than that, I genuinely enjoyed the reading experience on this one!
May 29, 2022
*3.5*
It’s been a while since I’ve read the series, so I’m not sure how into it I was. Obviously love the characters, but Yoh’s sister is…something else. Also, not sure how I felt about Haruna getting chubby and the other girl being “chubby,” because they both were considered unattractive.
It’s been a while since I’ve read the series, so I’m not sure how into it I was. Obviously love the characters, but Yoh’s sister is…something else. Also, not sure how I felt about Haruna getting chubby and the other girl being “chubby,” because they both were considered unattractive.
November 19, 2018
It was fun to read!
May 27, 2025
Right after I talked so much in my last review about loving the communication and lack of jealousy in this series...
This, unfortunately, was a case where the omnibus didn't really have a strong enough volume to pick the flawed ones up. Maybe it's the shoujo slog, where a story goes on for long enough that extra drama gets inserted just to drag things out. And it'd been going so well...
The beginning was good, closing out the school sports festival with a serious display of how hardworking and dedicated Yoh is. He fights through an injury and his own introverted embarrassment to beat Asaoka in their bet, becoming kind of the hero hunk of the school as a result.
I do think it might've been more interesting to have him lose the overall bet, with Asaoka making the choice to keep his crush on Haruna quiet, for the sake of his friendships. Instead, Asaoka claims it was a joke and then tells her anyway!! But she doesn't take him seriously so it doesn't impact anything. Mami, though, overhears his conversation with Yoh and promises Asaoka to keep his secret.
The whole madcap scene with Yoh officially meeting Haruna's family was really funny and sweet. He is such a good guy and he tries so hard for her. Her parents and brother are really nice, but...well, as odd and difficult as Haruna is. I laughed at the massage chair incident, and at Yoh somehow getting bundled into the bath and then having to have a whole conversation with Haruna's dad - while he's sitting in a strange bath with no clothes! - about his intentions for her.
I still think it's weird that we haven't seen Yoh's parents at all. Is Haruna ever going to meet them?
Volume 11 had some good parts but started sliding into frustrating elements. It's mostly about Yoh, as a third year, preparing for college entrance exams. While Haruna had been looking forward to a long summer with her boyfriend, he's too busy in prep school to see her much - although he actually does make a lot of time for her, wanting to meet up at the park or calling her whenever he's out of class.
Haruna supports him wholeheartedly and goes out of her way to find a study guide he'd been looking for during one of their shopping trips. In the process, she runs into a weird, angry girl who's been harassing Yoh at the prep school, and finds out that the girl is the older sister of one of the freshmen Haruna had helped during the welcome ceremony.
Unlike his sister, Akito turns out to be a real sweetheart, who also doesn't appear to be any sort of romantic threat. While he hugs Haruna at one point - and Yoh shows up and gets the entirely wrong idea - it was genuinely just because she was crying and he didn't know what to do. Crying, that is, because his older sister said horrible things to her.
This whole storyline is...I don't know. Miyabi's whole problem centers around a complex she's developed about being "ugly." She's got bushy eyebrows, thick glasses, hair that's always pulled tightly back, and clothes that kind of look like she's just wearing her school uniform all the time? Her brother, Akito, is very pretty and angelic-looking, with the personality to match. Apparently their parents have treated them differently since birth, with Miyabi being criticized or punished for things that Akito gets away with just because he's so cute. At least, that's her interpretation of it.
So she hates attractive, popular people...which is fair, I guess, but she also tells random attractive strangers to their faces that she despises them and they're fake and full of themselves. Yoh admits to Haruna that it hurts his feelings a lot, because he's a way more sensitive person than anyone would expect. But because he is so kind, he ends up helping Miyabi after she falls down the stairs, and then later when she passes out from the heat, and she develops an obsessive crush on him.
It's honestly so stalkerish that Akito immediately goes to Haruna about it to warn her to be careful, which could seem like an exaggeration...except for the part where Miyabi steals Yoh's phone, sends a breakup text to Haruna, blocks her, replaces Haruna's number with hers in Yoh's phone, then disguises her voice and sets up dates with him, just to make it seem like Haruna's standing him up.
Yoh does ask "is this really Haruna" before the beach date, but I would think he'd know his own girlfriend's voice better...
All of this scheming is working out because Yoh and Haruna have had their own fight in the meantime, since Haruna isn't able to explain that she's horribly jealous about Yoh smiling at Miyabi.
I have mixed feelings about that. Some of it feels out of character...Haruna wasn't even jealous or worried about Yoh's literal ex-girlfriend. She had zero concern about him spending long hours with the prettiest girl in school, the other festival school captain. But she's jealous of this angry, glowering girl because she sees Yoh laughing and smiling with her.
She does say something later on that made it kind of work for me. Which is: on her birthday, one of her main wishes was for Yoh to tell her what it is that he likes about her. His answer was very sweet and made her cry...he told her that he's always at his happiest when he's around her. So for Haruna, who doesn't think she's the prettiest or most graceful or put-together girl in Yoh's world, it matters a lot that he smiles and laughs with her in a way he doesn't with anyone else. And Miyabi...well she's not pretty, but Yoh didn't choose Haruna because of her looks. He sees past that into personality, and if he's finding Miyabi oddly charming and fun to be around...I guess Haruna's insecurities start to make some sense.
They do eventually talk about it, when Akito helps Haruna crash the beach date, and they're dismayed to discover that Miyabi had been manipulating them both all along.
There are still some unsettling elements here, though, like the whole bit with Haruna gaining a bunch of weight from eating a ton so she could sleep without being depressed and anxious over Yoh. It just felt unnecessary and kind of fat-shamey, especially when there's a closing panel with Miyabi getting a full makeover and her brother telling her that clothes will look nice on her if she just loses some weight.
To Yoh's credit, while he does comment on Haruna's sudden and surprising weight gain, he picks her up without hesitation and kisses her and treats her the same as usual. In the next volume, Haruna muses about how she still hasn't lost some of her extra flab but that Yoh wouldn't mind and would tell her as much if she asked. Which, again, should be a baseline for decent relationships, but kind of isn't.
So yeah, that volume was...kind of a mixed bag. From there, we jump into Haruna's big weight loss routine so she can go back to "normal" and set up her first overnight date with Yoh. Which she doesn't realize has certain connotations when you're dating. Honestly, her naivete is starting to get kind of excessive. Especially because she reads so much shoujo?? Even if she hasn't had hands on experience, she would've run across plenty of storylines about what happens over the course of a romantic relationship.
It's also a little strange that they've only kissed like four times over about a year of dating. Yoh is being very respectful and going at her pace, but sometimes they don't actually seem all that romantic...kind of like two buds hanging out, except for the part where she freaks out and avoids him when anything even mildly physical is involved. I appreciate that Yoh is being gentle with her, and they certainly don't need to rush into anything they're not both ready for, but it's weird that she isn't even thinking about that part of dating?
Plus their dates have been starting to feel kind of awkward, overall. She spends most of their pool resort getaway stuck in her head about the evening, and then starts sobbing when Yoh just says he had a really nice time and then gets into his own separate bed and shuts off the lights to go to sleep. She cries a lot now, and there's just...less of it seeming like they're actually getting along and having fun together. I don't know. It's starting to bug me.
They talk, though, because Yoh is such a sweetheart and wants so badly to make Haruna happy, and it's hard to tell if they would've gone any further, because Asa shows up with Mami and the boys in tow and takes over their room for the night.
Asa's selfish personality takes the forefront again, which is the next big story arc: her deciding that she doesn't like Haruna as her brother's girlfriend, after all, and that they should break up. Yoh gets frustrated with her and tells her that he loves her and will always be her brother, but she needs to quit treating him like her crutch. Because she can be mean and selfish and nasty around him and he'll still care about her, she latches onto him super hard and doesn't take chances to make other friends. Which shows, a lot.
One of Asa's complaints is interesting, and aligns pretty well with what Asaoka had told Haruna in an earlier volume, while he was talking around his crush on her. Asa hates that Yoh has turned into this soft, mushy, kind of embarrassing boyfriend, instead of being the super cool aloof pillar of perfection he'd been to her for so many years. His popularity made her more popular, but now he's shoving his face in a bowl of flour in front of hundreds of people just to win a school competition (for Haruna).
Asaoka, on the other hand, told Haruna that this is Yoh's true self, the soft, squishy, sweet side that he'd always hidden behind a cool facade, for his own protection. Haruna saw through to the real Yoh and liked that version of him, which has freed him up to be a whole lot happier.
While Asa is such a frustrating character, she is fairly realistic as a self-centered teenage girl, and I appreciated that the "brother complex" had logical reasons behind it and didn't go into weird territory. And that Haruna's relationship with her brother is wildly normal and not like that at all.
A lot happens in these three volumes, as you can tell from the length of this review...and maybe that's part of the issue, too, that it's a lot of big stuff that's somewhat clumsily dealt with. Mami finally shows up a little more in Volume 12 - she'd been fading into the background a lot, and Kawahara even seemed to have forgotten that Haruna's rival had switched her attention to Mami, because in the school festival she was back to competing with Haruna instead...
Yoh starts praising Mami a lot, for her level head and maturity and intelligence, which leads to Mami sadly saying that she has a big "betrayal" she's been hiding from Haruna, who will never forgive her.
The obvious conclusion is the one Haruna eventually draws, with plenty of red herrings sprinkled in to make it seem like Mami had developed a crush on Haruna. I was actually starting to think that, despite the slightly homophobic author's note in an earlier volume, that the secret might be that Mami has been regularly rejecting other guys because she's been in love with Haruna all along. That honestly would've made so much sense and could've added some amazing depth to the story - because there's no way Haruna wouldn't have fully accepted her and then started to try to find her a great girlfriend.
But nope...the big terrible "deception" was Mami making the wrong call as a catcher and leading, in her eyes, to Haruna's pitch getting hit in the game-winning play that lost them the tournament back in middle school.
That was...anticlimactic. Really. That's it? Which is basically what Haruna says when Mami finally spills the beans. Then Mami goes phew now with that weight lifted, maybe I'll try dating some guys! With the implication that maybe she'll end up with Asaoka after all.
The cliffhanger for this omnibus is a big one, which I also find kind of frustrating...Haruna, after all her support and promises and encouragement, cries AGAIN and asks Yoh to not pursue his dreams in a Tokyo university, because she doesn't want to be in a long distance relationship for a year.
I had really liked how Yoh brought it up to her initially, telling her that he can't see himself loving anyone else and wanting to prioritize her, so he would stay local if she couldn't stand being apart. But...I didn't expect Haruna to swing back around and actually ask him to stay. That had better be fixed in the final volumes.
This, unfortunately, was a case where the omnibus didn't really have a strong enough volume to pick the flawed ones up. Maybe it's the shoujo slog, where a story goes on for long enough that extra drama gets inserted just to drag things out. And it'd been going so well...
The beginning was good, closing out the school sports festival with a serious display of how hardworking and dedicated Yoh is. He fights through an injury and his own introverted embarrassment to beat Asaoka in their bet, becoming kind of the hero hunk of the school as a result.
I do think it might've been more interesting to have him lose the overall bet, with Asaoka making the choice to keep his crush on Haruna quiet, for the sake of his friendships. Instead, Asaoka claims it was a joke and then tells her anyway!! But she doesn't take him seriously so it doesn't impact anything. Mami, though, overhears his conversation with Yoh and promises Asaoka to keep his secret.
The whole madcap scene with Yoh officially meeting Haruna's family was really funny and sweet. He is such a good guy and he tries so hard for her. Her parents and brother are really nice, but...well, as odd and difficult as Haruna is. I laughed at the massage chair incident, and at Yoh somehow getting bundled into the bath and then having to have a whole conversation with Haruna's dad - while he's sitting in a strange bath with no clothes! - about his intentions for her.
I still think it's weird that we haven't seen Yoh's parents at all. Is Haruna ever going to meet them?
Volume 11 had some good parts but started sliding into frustrating elements. It's mostly about Yoh, as a third year, preparing for college entrance exams. While Haruna had been looking forward to a long summer with her boyfriend, he's too busy in prep school to see her much - although he actually does make a lot of time for her, wanting to meet up at the park or calling her whenever he's out of class.
Haruna supports him wholeheartedly and goes out of her way to find a study guide he'd been looking for during one of their shopping trips. In the process, she runs into a weird, angry girl who's been harassing Yoh at the prep school, and finds out that the girl is the older sister of one of the freshmen Haruna had helped during the welcome ceremony.
Unlike his sister, Akito turns out to be a real sweetheart, who also doesn't appear to be any sort of romantic threat. While he hugs Haruna at one point - and Yoh shows up and gets the entirely wrong idea - it was genuinely just because she was crying and he didn't know what to do. Crying, that is, because his older sister said horrible things to her.
This whole storyline is...I don't know. Miyabi's whole problem centers around a complex she's developed about being "ugly." She's got bushy eyebrows, thick glasses, hair that's always pulled tightly back, and clothes that kind of look like she's just wearing her school uniform all the time? Her brother, Akito, is very pretty and angelic-looking, with the personality to match. Apparently their parents have treated them differently since birth, with Miyabi being criticized or punished for things that Akito gets away with just because he's so cute. At least, that's her interpretation of it.
So she hates attractive, popular people...which is fair, I guess, but she also tells random attractive strangers to their faces that she despises them and they're fake and full of themselves. Yoh admits to Haruna that it hurts his feelings a lot, because he's a way more sensitive person than anyone would expect. But because he is so kind, he ends up helping Miyabi after she falls down the stairs, and then later when she passes out from the heat, and she develops an obsessive crush on him.
It's honestly so stalkerish that Akito immediately goes to Haruna about it to warn her to be careful, which could seem like an exaggeration...except for the part where Miyabi steals Yoh's phone, sends a breakup text to Haruna, blocks her, replaces Haruna's number with hers in Yoh's phone, then disguises her voice and sets up dates with him, just to make it seem like Haruna's standing him up.
Yoh does ask "is this really Haruna" before the beach date, but I would think he'd know his own girlfriend's voice better...
All of this scheming is working out because Yoh and Haruna have had their own fight in the meantime, since Haruna isn't able to explain that she's horribly jealous about Yoh smiling at Miyabi.
I have mixed feelings about that. Some of it feels out of character...Haruna wasn't even jealous or worried about Yoh's literal ex-girlfriend. She had zero concern about him spending long hours with the prettiest girl in school, the other festival school captain. But she's jealous of this angry, glowering girl because she sees Yoh laughing and smiling with her.
She does say something later on that made it kind of work for me. Which is: on her birthday, one of her main wishes was for Yoh to tell her what it is that he likes about her. His answer was very sweet and made her cry...he told her that he's always at his happiest when he's around her. So for Haruna, who doesn't think she's the prettiest or most graceful or put-together girl in Yoh's world, it matters a lot that he smiles and laughs with her in a way he doesn't with anyone else. And Miyabi...well she's not pretty, but Yoh didn't choose Haruna because of her looks. He sees past that into personality, and if he's finding Miyabi oddly charming and fun to be around...I guess Haruna's insecurities start to make some sense.
They do eventually talk about it, when Akito helps Haruna crash the beach date, and they're dismayed to discover that Miyabi had been manipulating them both all along.
There are still some unsettling elements here, though, like the whole bit with Haruna gaining a bunch of weight from eating a ton so she could sleep without being depressed and anxious over Yoh. It just felt unnecessary and kind of fat-shamey, especially when there's a closing panel with Miyabi getting a full makeover and her brother telling her that clothes will look nice on her if she just loses some weight.
To Yoh's credit, while he does comment on Haruna's sudden and surprising weight gain, he picks her up without hesitation and kisses her and treats her the same as usual. In the next volume, Haruna muses about how she still hasn't lost some of her extra flab but that Yoh wouldn't mind and would tell her as much if she asked. Which, again, should be a baseline for decent relationships, but kind of isn't.
So yeah, that volume was...kind of a mixed bag. From there, we jump into Haruna's big weight loss routine so she can go back to "normal" and set up her first overnight date with Yoh. Which she doesn't realize has certain connotations when you're dating. Honestly, her naivete is starting to get kind of excessive. Especially because she reads so much shoujo?? Even if she hasn't had hands on experience, she would've run across plenty of storylines about what happens over the course of a romantic relationship.
It's also a little strange that they've only kissed like four times over about a year of dating. Yoh is being very respectful and going at her pace, but sometimes they don't actually seem all that romantic...kind of like two buds hanging out, except for the part where she freaks out and avoids him when anything even mildly physical is involved. I appreciate that Yoh is being gentle with her, and they certainly don't need to rush into anything they're not both ready for, but it's weird that she isn't even thinking about that part of dating?
Plus their dates have been starting to feel kind of awkward, overall. She spends most of their pool resort getaway stuck in her head about the evening, and then starts sobbing when Yoh just says he had a really nice time and then gets into his own separate bed and shuts off the lights to go to sleep. She cries a lot now, and there's just...less of it seeming like they're actually getting along and having fun together. I don't know. It's starting to bug me.
They talk, though, because Yoh is such a sweetheart and wants so badly to make Haruna happy, and it's hard to tell if they would've gone any further, because Asa shows up with Mami and the boys in tow and takes over their room for the night.
Asa's selfish personality takes the forefront again, which is the next big story arc: her deciding that she doesn't like Haruna as her brother's girlfriend, after all, and that they should break up. Yoh gets frustrated with her and tells her that he loves her and will always be her brother, but she needs to quit treating him like her crutch. Because she can be mean and selfish and nasty around him and he'll still care about her, she latches onto him super hard and doesn't take chances to make other friends. Which shows, a lot.
One of Asa's complaints is interesting, and aligns pretty well with what Asaoka had told Haruna in an earlier volume, while he was talking around his crush on her. Asa hates that Yoh has turned into this soft, mushy, kind of embarrassing boyfriend, instead of being the super cool aloof pillar of perfection he'd been to her for so many years. His popularity made her more popular, but now he's shoving his face in a bowl of flour in front of hundreds of people just to win a school competition (for Haruna).
Asaoka, on the other hand, told Haruna that this is Yoh's true self, the soft, squishy, sweet side that he'd always hidden behind a cool facade, for his own protection. Haruna saw through to the real Yoh and liked that version of him, which has freed him up to be a whole lot happier.
While Asa is such a frustrating character, she is fairly realistic as a self-centered teenage girl, and I appreciated that the "brother complex" had logical reasons behind it and didn't go into weird territory. And that Haruna's relationship with her brother is wildly normal and not like that at all.
A lot happens in these three volumes, as you can tell from the length of this review...and maybe that's part of the issue, too, that it's a lot of big stuff that's somewhat clumsily dealt with. Mami finally shows up a little more in Volume 12 - she'd been fading into the background a lot, and Kawahara even seemed to have forgotten that Haruna's rival had switched her attention to Mami, because in the school festival she was back to competing with Haruna instead...
Yoh starts praising Mami a lot, for her level head and maturity and intelligence, which leads to Mami sadly saying that she has a big "betrayal" she's been hiding from Haruna, who will never forgive her.
The obvious conclusion is the one Haruna eventually draws, with plenty of red herrings sprinkled in to make it seem like Mami had developed a crush on Haruna. I was actually starting to think that, despite the slightly homophobic author's note in an earlier volume, that the secret might be that Mami has been regularly rejecting other guys because she's been in love with Haruna all along. That honestly would've made so much sense and could've added some amazing depth to the story - because there's no way Haruna wouldn't have fully accepted her and then started to try to find her a great girlfriend.
But nope...the big terrible "deception" was Mami making the wrong call as a catcher and leading, in her eyes, to Haruna's pitch getting hit in the game-winning play that lost them the tournament back in middle school.
That was...anticlimactic. Really. That's it? Which is basically what Haruna says when Mami finally spills the beans. Then Mami goes phew now with that weight lifted, maybe I'll try dating some guys! With the implication that maybe she'll end up with Asaoka after all.
The cliffhanger for this omnibus is a big one, which I also find kind of frustrating...Haruna, after all her support and promises and encouragement, cries AGAIN and asks Yoh to not pursue his dreams in a Tokyo university, because she doesn't want to be in a long distance relationship for a year.
I had really liked how Yoh brought it up to her initially, telling her that he can't see himself loving anyone else and wanting to prioritize her, so he would stay local if she couldn't stand being apart. But...I didn't expect Haruna to swing back around and actually ask him to stay. That had better be fixed in the final volumes.
August 17, 2023
I'm loving this so much! I can't believe that previously I stoped at volume one. I love the main characters and how much they have grow and how much they do for their relationship.
The friend groups are also fantastic and I love following them.
The books are considerably getting better from the first one and I can't wait to see the end of this series.
The friend groups are also fantastic and I love following them.
The books are considerably getting better from the first one and I can't wait to see the end of this series.
July 13, 2022
It’s still great I still love their relationship and I can’t wait to see what happens next! Yoh is better at expressing his feelings in this one and it’s really cool to see how he’s grown I’m excited to finish the series but I also don’t want it to be over! I love these books way too much!
January 2, 2026
This volume was a struggle to get through. The story line with his little sister and the girl from cram school. Then they made her fat for two chapters for some reason I can decide other than fat phobic shit. I think the author didn’t know what to do or something but created drama no one wanted.
February 22, 2018
I want a friend like Haruna, haha :3
June 16, 2018
Cute couple! I really like this series!
May 4, 2020
4.5/5 stars
March 7, 2021
Almost done.
May 30, 2021
I really did not like some of the storylines in this one.
June 15, 2021
We deduct a star because the girl with the glasses had too much to say
August 20, 2022
Volume 11 and bits of 12 were kind of a train wreck for me, but I want to know what happens and hope it gets back to better!
October 10, 2022
3.5 stars. there were some strange storylines in this one lol.
June 8, 2023
- Haruna’s family is a TRIP!!!
- Asa is still annoying…
- I kinda want a spinoff story about Mami
- Asa is still annoying…
- I kinda want a spinoff story about Mami
May 20, 2025
⭑*•̩̩͙⊱• reread on 5/20/25
this is so adorable. I believe I finish this second reread in the next deluxe volume!!!
this is so adorable. I believe I finish this second reread in the next deluxe volume!!!
February 6, 2017
Review to follow soon.
February 28, 2015
So, I finally got around to reading this after it’s been sitting on my shelf for well over a few months. (Thank you real life.) And I’m still really enjoying this manga, but there were points in this that I felt didn’t work as well.
The subplot of Asaoka being in love with Haruna finally comes to a head in this volume. I’ve never really liked this plotline to begin with, just because there’s something about Asaoka that rubs me the wrong way (please don’t pair him up with Mami, this is my biggest fear in the next omnibus). It’s a little bit more believable for Asaoka to be in love with his best friend’s girlfriend than I’ve read in other romance manga (reading this and Say ‘I Love You’ makes the parallels really noticeable. I’d hate going through High School Debut, Kimi ni Todoke, and Say ‘I Love You’ all in one go because that would be too much shojo manga for me to handle at once.) but I just didn’t grab the storyline in here as I have with other series. And the fact that we see the other side of this storyline with Haruna discovering Mami’s ‘betrayal’ of her, I think it works a lot better between them because Haruna does have to confront her oldest friend. (BLESS HARUNA AND MAMI’S FRIENDSHIP FOREVER. I loved the reveal of Mami’s betrayal and Haruna’s “ARE YOU KIDDING ME THAT’S WHAT I WAS WORRIED ABOUT THIS WHOLE TIME?” reaction.)
It also feels egregious when we get to the plotline with the Jyoho siblings. First of all, yay we get a name for the awkward underclassman in the last volume. I do really like Akito, and his slowly-evolving friendship with Haruna, especially since they’re both awkward and can’t express their feelings to people. Then there’s Miyabi. I understand there are massive societal differences at work with what happened, but my God. I was rooting for somebody to tell her off at the end of that arc. (Especially after Yoh and Haruna find out that she was behind their not-really breakup.) She’s manipulative as all hell, and the emotional torment that she puts Haruna and Yoh through is just not okay in the slightest. It’s really my least favorite part of this volume over all. (Again, thank God, I started reading High School Debut in the omnibus volumes, because I don’t know if I would have hated that arc more if these were individual volumes. It certainly speeds up things.)
However, the Miyabi arc does do one good thing, which picks up from the last volume, and that’s the introduction of Yoh having to start to prepare for college entrance exams and how that’ll affect his time with Haruna. I really liked that they both have to deal with Yoh going off to college and the possibility that they’ll have a long-distance relationship. I really like that Kawahara illustrates that this is a huge deal for both of them and it is going to have an impact on Yoh’s future. I like that even though Haruna eventually reveals that she’s upset about the prospect of a long-distance relationship, she’s still going to try to support Yoh and his decision, and even finds her own potential career path in the process.
This is all kicked off, by the way, with a very long and overdrawn chapter about the two of them going to stay overnight at a resort and everyone but Haruna making the assumption that they’re going to have sex for the first time. While Haruna’s increasingly innocence about the whole subject—going from honestly not picking up on hints to freaking out every time Yoh is shirtless or holding her hand—is done in a manner that becomes annoying, when we finally get to the two of them admitting their fears about the evening, it’s redeemed. I really liked that both Yoh and Haruna are nervous about the prospect of “their first time” and that when they try to get intimate, it’s awkward and they screw up before figuring out that they’re not ready. (Which is then negated but having all of their friends crashing the weekend, which I’m not a fan of how that’s the conclusion, but I kinda also expected it.)
As this volume ends with Haruna’s admitting that she doesn’t want Yoh to leave her, and that I know the next volume is the last one, I am still interested in how the story is going to wrap itself up. I don’t think that this collection was as strong as the last one (as there are more romance manga tropes in here that irritate me more), but I still think that the story’s still strong enough to keep me invested. And the last arc about Yoh and Haruna’s relationship and how they’re debating their future and next steps in their relationship was handled a lot better than the first two parts of this volume. I’m excited and a little sad that this is ending in another volume. This wasn’t the best volume so far, but there’s still things that I liked about it.
The subplot of Asaoka being in love with Haruna finally comes to a head in this volume. I’ve never really liked this plotline to begin with, just because there’s something about Asaoka that rubs me the wrong way (please don’t pair him up with Mami, this is my biggest fear in the next omnibus). It’s a little bit more believable for Asaoka to be in love with his best friend’s girlfriend than I’ve read in other romance manga (reading this and Say ‘I Love You’ makes the parallels really noticeable. I’d hate going through High School Debut, Kimi ni Todoke, and Say ‘I Love You’ all in one go because that would be too much shojo manga for me to handle at once.) but I just didn’t grab the storyline in here as I have with other series. And the fact that we see the other side of this storyline with Haruna discovering Mami’s ‘betrayal’ of her, I think it works a lot better between them because Haruna does have to confront her oldest friend. (BLESS HARUNA AND MAMI’S FRIENDSHIP FOREVER. I loved the reveal of Mami’s betrayal and Haruna’s “ARE YOU KIDDING ME THAT’S WHAT I WAS WORRIED ABOUT THIS WHOLE TIME?” reaction.)
It also feels egregious when we get to the plotline with the Jyoho siblings. First of all, yay we get a name for the awkward underclassman in the last volume. I do really like Akito, and his slowly-evolving friendship with Haruna, especially since they’re both awkward and can’t express their feelings to people. Then there’s Miyabi. I understand there are massive societal differences at work with what happened, but my God. I was rooting for somebody to tell her off at the end of that arc. (Especially after Yoh and Haruna find out that she was behind their not-really breakup.) She’s manipulative as all hell, and the emotional torment that she puts Haruna and Yoh through is just not okay in the slightest. It’s really my least favorite part of this volume over all. (Again, thank God, I started reading High School Debut in the omnibus volumes, because I don’t know if I would have hated that arc more if these were individual volumes. It certainly speeds up things.)
However, the Miyabi arc does do one good thing, which picks up from the last volume, and that’s the introduction of Yoh having to start to prepare for college entrance exams and how that’ll affect his time with Haruna. I really liked that they both have to deal with Yoh going off to college and the possibility that they’ll have a long-distance relationship. I really like that Kawahara illustrates that this is a huge deal for both of them and it is going to have an impact on Yoh’s future. I like that even though Haruna eventually reveals that she’s upset about the prospect of a long-distance relationship, she’s still going to try to support Yoh and his decision, and even finds her own potential career path in the process.
This is all kicked off, by the way, with a very long and overdrawn chapter about the two of them going to stay overnight at a resort and everyone but Haruna making the assumption that they’re going to have sex for the first time. While Haruna’s increasingly innocence about the whole subject—going from honestly not picking up on hints to freaking out every time Yoh is shirtless or holding her hand—is done in a manner that becomes annoying, when we finally get to the two of them admitting their fears about the evening, it’s redeemed. I really liked that both Yoh and Haruna are nervous about the prospect of “their first time” and that when they try to get intimate, it’s awkward and they screw up before figuring out that they’re not ready. (Which is then negated but having all of their friends crashing the weekend, which I’m not a fan of how that’s the conclusion, but I kinda also expected it.)
As this volume ends with Haruna’s admitting that she doesn’t want Yoh to leave her, and that I know the next volume is the last one, I am still interested in how the story is going to wrap itself up. I don’t think that this collection was as strong as the last one (as there are more romance manga tropes in here that irritate me more), but I still think that the story’s still strong enough to keep me invested. And the last arc about Yoh and Haruna’s relationship and how they’re debating their future and next steps in their relationship was handled a lot better than the first two parts of this volume. I’m excited and a little sad that this is ending in another volume. This wasn’t the best volume so far, but there’s still things that I liked about it.
February 10, 2016
Title: High School Debut
Author: Kazune Kawahara
Volume(s):
Chapter(s):
Genre:
Status:
Language: English
Read in: manga app
I really love this manga. There's no boring moments as the story goes on. The characters are loveable and likeable especially the main characters. I really loved all of it. I wish I can manage to purchase a copy or please please someone whose rich out there please provide me a copy which is licensed in English T.T
Author: Kazune Kawahara
Volume(s):
Chapter(s):
Genre:
Status:
Language: English
Read in: manga app
I really love this manga. There's no boring moments as the story goes on. The characters are loveable and likeable especially the main characters. I really loved all of it. I wish I can manage to purchase a copy or please please someone whose rich out there please provide me a copy which is licensed in English T.T
April 5, 2017
Volume I liked the least so far. The plots were so naive and unbelievable they made me cringe. And Haruna was incredibly annoying. Hopefully the last volume will give the series a good closure.
August 14, 2016
I love this series but this volume was awful! Will continue to read and hope that it gets better.
September 8, 2024
The relationship is so cute!!! Outside of glasses girl and her brother this was a great volume!
August 26, 2025
one of my favorite manga series i’ve ever read, so so cute
April 23, 2017
I wish they hadn't used the crazy stalker plot line but I have to say that I appreciate the way Yoh's eyebags get more and more distinct the longer he's in cram school.
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