TIGER & DRAGON: OSANANAJIMI 3-NIN NO OTAWAMURE BIYORI

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REVIEWS

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  RoseFaerie

  74/100
  Messy writing and yanderes galore! It had me constantly laughing but I can't say it's an aspirational work.

  If anything, this makes me excited for Mizuki Hoshino's upcoming work. Mizuki Hoshino's series are always funny and never fail to make me laugh, though they have their problems. Miniamaru Kareshi crossed a few personal boundaries with how some characters were treated, and I couldn't stand the ML by the end. And this series, Tiger & Dragon, is a hot mess, improving in some areas but falling short in others. It was clearly intended to be a short-term project, and it shows.

  Tiger & Dragon follows Konomi, a high school girl who still hasn't let go of her kindergarten crush on her neighbor, Tora, who moved away, believing they were fated to be together. However, her childhood friend who stayed by her side when Tora was gone, Mikkun, harbors feelings for her. Mikkun asks her out and in a fit of impulsivity Konomi agrees. But right when she begins to contemplate dating her friend, Tora returns to his old apartment. Will Konomi choose her fated love or the boy she grew close to over time?

  If you don't like love triangles, this is not the series for you. The whole plot revolves around the love triangle, ending when she chose a guy. However, it's also a short series, and I actually quite enjoy love triangles when you don't know who's going to win like this one. I personally was Team Tora (I promise I'll explain why, though a good chunk of the reason was that I didn't like Mikkun).

  

  The writing is a bit of a mess. It mostly consists of Konomi getting thrust in a bunch of romance manga cliches with the various guys and other comedic shenanigans. I didn't mind this since it was funny. It seems that Mizuki Hoshino prioritized her comedy in this one, though at the expense of the plot. I sort of stopped caring about the plot elements and I was not particularly attached to either male lead until near the end of the series. It was just really messy and plot elements would literally come out of nowhere. The characters' relationships weren't particularly fleshed out either.

  It's not to say that I didn't enjoy it. I did. It had me laughing a few times every chapter. There's something about the mangaka's sense of humor and comedic execution that hits perfectly for me. The comedy and the female lead (and eventually Tora) were the things I liked most about the manga.

  The conflict comes from Konomi being unable to choose between her two love interests. She has feelings for both of them and she's not well versed in manners of romantic attraction. She doesn't know if she loves them both romantically or platonically and if she favors one over the other. I honestly think that it was a missed opportunity that the series didn't go into the fate vs a relationship establishing over time thing that the two boys represent. I also wanted it to be more about her figuring out what she wanted and didn't want in a partner instead of flipping and flopping between the two love interests like a light switch.

  Konomi is dumb as bricks in an endearing way. She's very naive and idealistic, and she takes things to some crazy extremes trying to figure things out. She's so stupid and chaotically funny that she's the type of lead that I adore. She has cheating related trauma, due to her parents both having affairs at the same time and divorcing when she was a little kid. She was left with her aunt, and she connects the idea of cheating with her abandonment issues and trauma. And she views her inability to choose between the two as "cheating", which serves as great comedic moments and deeper insight into her character.

  

  She goes so far as to say she doesn't want to choose either of them yet and wants things to return to the way they were before. (I did appreciate that she was told she didn't have to date either of them if she didn't want to.) I just wish the two guys respected her wish to stay friends for the time being until she could figure things out on her own terms. Because, if there's one thing I've learned about Mizuki Hoshino, it's that she loves to pair up the innocent girls with the possessive yandere guys, and when two of them are around it's bound for trouble.

  Mikkun is easily the more possessive of the two, and I never really liked him. Also, the relationship they had felt a lot more like a sibling relationship, since he was acting as an older brother and even a bit of a parental figure for Konomi. It just felt so off to me, since he seemed to be the most romantically into her, when he also sort of treats her like a child or a much younger sibling. (For additional context, he is a year older.) I like a good “childhood friends to lovers” series, but this didn't feel like it should have been romantic from the beginning. He also tells Konomi that he won't do anything that makes her uncomfortable, but then he goes and kisses her and puts moves on her often, things that she is visibly not comfortable with, especially with her cheating complex. He was just so pushy and kind of stalkery.

  Tora was much more respectful and followed through with his promises. However, like Mikkun, he's also very possessive and pushy, just to a lesser extent. For much of the love triangle there isn't much to distinguish them personality-wise. However, around volume 2 and 3, I decided I liked him best because he didn't creep me out as much as Mikkun did, and I felt like their interactions felt more natural and I think he and Konomi had more chemistry and more natural scenes.

  I'm realizing that my opinion on fated couples has less to do with the concept and more with the relationship execution. I want to watch the couple interact, have meaningful conversations, learn, and grow beside each other. I want to see the chemistry and the relationship build up. I don't like it when we're told characters have a great relationship without seeing their interactions, and the "it's fate" thing gets slapped on. I think it's a "show don't tell" thing for me.

  Something I noticed was that Tora had more impactful and emotional scenes with Konomi that established their characters a lot more, while Mikkun's scenes with Konomi were more traditionally romantic. His scenes focused more on physical intimacy. I wonder if that also contributes to why I preferred Tora.

  

  To return to Tora, he is airheaded and innocent but also discovers his latent sadistic tendencies, which was funny. He's surprisingly mature about his feelings despite being super innocent when it comes to romance. He's a bit of a contradiction. Imagine the innocent airhead, but he discovers he likes messing with people and enjoys watching them squirm and suffer a bit.

  As for the decision between the guys, I think it was poorly executed and based on some buried memory Konomi had. There was so little development that it literally came out of nowhere like a dramatic reveal in the last volume. And I will spoiler tag my opinion on the winner for obvious reasons:

  It was Mikkun, so I obviously wasn't super happy because I don't like Mikkun. I like Tora, and I've established why I don't think he and Konomi work. Tora had so much more going on as a character.
  

  The art is nice to look at. The characters all look younger than their actual ages, but that's a common trait of Hoshino's art. It's very cute and visually pleasing but it's not my personal favorite style.

  Anyways, I had fun with it and laughed a lot. (The comedy is easily this manga's biggest selling point.) I just feel like it was wasted potential, and it ran out of steam about halfway through and had some poorly executed things. It's far from being a terrible manga, though I can't say it's a must read or for everyone. I'd say it evens out to be something enjoyable and funny for the most part, just don't think too hard about it. I'd personally revisit it since it made me laugh that much and it doesn't have the draining bits that Miniamaru Kareshi had, but it's a deeply flawed work. Check it out if it interests you or if you love comedic shoujo, but otherwise you aren't missing much.

  I just can't wait to see what other funny things Mizuki Hoshino has in store for us because she has a new work coming, announced shortly after this one ended. I genuinely like her works, and I'm hoping her newest title has tighter writing.

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