It kind of makes me wonder what happened in the original timeline of this. Assuming Mitsurugi was still just as much of a jackass, what happened in the old timeline between him and Shijouin? Since Niihama wouldn't have been there to beat him in the duel, did Mitsurugi just end up bullying Shijouin into a marriage with him after all? (If so, and given how obsessed Mitsurugi is with status, he certainly wouldn't have stuck with her after Shijouin's family lost all of their money/prestige...)

Yeah, this manga is very much inspired by the Quintuplets one, I reckon. They're even doing the same flash-forward "Hey, remember <funny incident during such-and-such> when we were back in high school, that was actually me but you just didn't realize it" bit.

Well damn, spoke too soon. Just when I thought it was starting to take a more comedic direction, now it's starting to get back to the dark stuff.

Yeah, I just caught up on the last five or so chapters. It's definitely taking a more light-hearted turn than I was expecting given how it started, particularly with how dramatic the last-page developments have been. These cliffhangers (including the literal one for this chapter I guess) are getting so comically dramatic that I half-expect to see the JoJo "To Be Continued" arrow in the bottom corner, like in the old memes.

I'm still finding it pretty entertaining though, at least.

I'm excited to see where this goes!

Not even just because of the (awesome) page 16 development either. The whole thing with the 'remote-control date' was the sort of stuff I was hoping to see with the premise of Kubaru saying she'd be the "puppetmaster of his life", so it's cool that it looks like that premise is starting to come into play a bit more as well.

That's totally understandable with this manga though. I can't fault anybody for forgetting the story, plot threads and character motivations from previous chapters when even the mangaka writing it can't seem to remember any of those.

(I just caught up to Chapter 12, and let's just say that everyone's ire and all of the salt in the comments is warranted.)

Lol is that a real page from an upcoming chapter? Jeezus, what the hell happened to this manga in the last few chapters? Does the author even know where the story's supposed to be going anymore?

Y'know, comparing where the manga's at now against the early chapters (or where the anime stopped), it's like night-and-day. That early cringe-comedy of watching Tomoko fail to be sociable (or even just fail to not be a completely unlikable weirdo) was entertaining in it's own right, but I think having her friends and classmates come more into focus lately has been much better. I always saw people say that this manga gets more enjoyable once the rest of the characters start getting more 'screen-time', and so far I agree.

(Also lol Neko, chill out bro.)

Legit, it's like some extra entertainment at the end of every chapter. Scroll down to see what amusing banter the Jojo guy has gotten into with Neko and that Sakazaki fellow that always jumps in to defend him.

Their bickering is hilarious and I unironically hope they're all still around on this site even after the Disqus purge.

Wait, is Reiko actually going to win the Daisukebowl after all? She's had just as much romantic development with Daisuke as Chiaki has by this point, counting chapter-by-chapter. And I agree that it's probably safe to say that Chiaki doesn't win after that "10 years later" chapter (unless that whole chapter was a jebait, but I doubt it).

Yeah. Translators did the same thing with Hyouka and for the same apparent reason, that "the anime covers it just fine". There's like a 70 chapter gap in that one.

On the one hand, sure I get that translating manga is a tiring (and often thankless) job, and I'm always happy with what we do get. But on the other hand I agree with you. Not everybody watches anime, and even when they do, the anime might not capture everything that the manga covers due to the restrictions of the format. (I see a lot of people that say that the Love Lab anime was surprisingly faithful to Vol.1-4, and it seems like it is, but even then it's not perfect. I have an example of this actually: as someone who did watch the anime and came in to the manga at Vol. 5, it was a little jarring that one of the side-characters was just suddenly hanging around with a different set of girls than they did in the anime, until I realized that there was probably some backstory there that the anime skipped over. And to the manga's credit, it does flesh that transition out a little bit in one of the .5 chapters. But such things make me wonder what else the anime has skipped over?)

I noticed that they're actually going back and translating Vol.2-4 here recently though, so that might be something to look forward to I guess?

Yeah, good points. Not to mention that the only reason the new Jelly is even at the orphanage at all is because she's not the old evil Jelly that was more than happy to no-show.

I'm hoping there's an explanation later (and that it's not a plot hole...). So far 100% of the assassin's plan has depended on Jelly not being who he expects her to be, which feels contrived.

Going by that 'preview' that Takafumi was pointing to at the end, is Uncle seriously about to "power of friendship" the loli-possessing lich into his ever-growing harem? How much rizz does this dude have?

The real mystery they should be researching is the friends they made along the way how they've stayed in high school but also somehow celebrated 7 New Years.

That explains that, I suppose. We already saw Rin's medical dungeon room where she's nursing the comatose Jin back at the end of Chapter 41, and now we finally have the context.

I actually wonder if this "rich jackass" thing is just a ploy. Last chapter we had Shijouin's father talking about how he was going to make sure that the MC can "survive his taunting and jeers of my interview" because he wants to make sure MC isn't a spineless coward, and then the very next moment we've got a long-time family friend of the Shijouin's suddenly getting in Niihara's face, taunting him and challenging him to a duel over the finals. The rich guy is cartoonishly dramatic and self-centered, but notice that's something that both Niihara (last chapter) and Genji (this chapter) seem confused by. They hadn't heard anything about him being a narcissistic jackass when people were gossiping about him (which seems like a pretty prominent character flaw for people to have left out of their rumors).

I wonder if this whole thing isn't just the father calling in a favor from a family friend to try and figure out if the MC hanging around his daughter is a wimp or not.

Jin's ability was (is?) telekinesis. Rin used Jin's telekinesis against Nana back when they got into a fight in one of the earlier chapters.

Yeah I'm pretty sure it was a joke-translation. The sudden surfer vocabs would have been one thing, but Nakajima and the new journalist guy rhyming like they're in a Dr Seuss story was a little too on the nose.

Finally got around to reading the rest of this. Geezus.

Page 3 bugs me, and not just because of the open ending (I share the scanlator's opinion about that). What exactly is Makabe even remembering there? Aki never called him Piggy/Pig's Foot. That was like the whole big reveal of the original story, and how he managed to figure out Yoshino's treachery. Whatever he's remembering there didn't happen. So: what exactly are we looking at in that panel? Is it Makabe 'remembering' one of his rage-induced hallucinations? Or did the author just forget a major plot point (my money's actually on this one)?

I agree with the general feeling that we're getting towards the endgame here, so for fun and curiosity's sake I went through the previous chapters again to see if we could gauge the winner. Here's the lists of "dedicated chapters" (i.e., chapters where it's almost exclusively that girl interacting with Daisuke, or where there are clear romantic overtones focused on that character's pairing with Daisuke specifically):

Kotone (19 chapters): 15 32 41 46 70 98 120 129 169 190 215 252 254 276 296 304 311 323 351
Chiaki (27 chapters): 6 13 29 39 43 58 71 86 116 119 133 143 161 170 181 204 206 216 217 241 256 260 285 299 314 339 350
Suzu (21 chapters): 11 23 30 33 40 52 77 80 104 137 146 163 198 229 248 253 268 291 316 326 353
Asahi (4 chapters): 141 183 201 239
Nonoka (6 chapters): 56 76 138 156 266 336
Tanaka (16 chapters): 95 121 131 142 148 164 185 203 208 228 257 264 275 297 319 349
Reiko (26 chapters): 14 16 34 42 57 74 94 111 123 127 140 158 168 180 184 191 205 213 226 234 245 273 295 307 325 354

Chiaki's in the lead, which probably isn't surprising given the popularity poll from a few months back. I was surprised to see that Reiko had so many chapters where it's just her and Daisuke together, though. I always felt like she was a bit of a gag character, but in terms of one-on-one interactions she's always had most of the other girls beat throughout the course of the manga. Kotone and Suzu also had fewer romantic rendezvous with Daisuke than I thought they did. Assuming Reiko doesn't swoop in at the last second, I know who my money's on for the Daisukebowl.