(L) 5-Toubun no Hanayome

[Lex79]

Originally Posted by Chosen_Hero

^^I don't care how "sweet" of a chapter it is, all the bullshit and retconing that has happened so far ruined this manga, which used to be one of my favorite things I used to look forward to each week, thanks Negi.

Good for you if you can still stand this crap, but I personally lost any respect I had for this manga and Negi as a writer for the things mentioned above. Like I said before, I would be fine with this IF it made any damn sense with the story we were given, it didn't, not even when you try to force yourself to make it so (unless you are a Yotsuba fanboy or Negi who is literally making shit up to justify this ending), I am not giving it or Negi a pass and I am definitely not reading anything he writes in the future.

The big difference is that while disappointed for various things that happened in this manga I don't consider it as much of a train wreck as others do, and I don't think the ending would have been much more satisfying had Fuutarou chosen another girl in 113 (my personal shipping aside), so it's probably way easier for me to still be able to appreciate a good chapter even in the middle of botched storytelling.

[Chosen_Hero]

Originally Posted by WingedAccelerator

I told you some time ago that it was really Chapter 21 that sealed the deal already, but you said it doesn't make sense in retrospection. I was so right on the money. This chapter just further confirmed it with what you have just said.

But I leave this page here anyways.
https://i.imgur.com/oWPsOWg.jpg
Tell me how this is not a foreshadowing of the ending of all of the quints. And this happened in Chapter 42. From Chapter 10 till the end of her flashbacks, Chapter 90, Yotsuba had the least amount of screentime. Yet, to Fuutarou, only her having feelings for him was obvious, not the rest of the quints, so his heart only cared about her from the joke confession, Chapter 21.

1. Ichika wants to be an actress. Fuutarou has his doubts, but she makes it. But, she is not the Bride.
2. Nino loves her sisters, but fights a lot with Fuutarou. Still, she also ends up falling in love with him. But, she is not the Bride.
3. Miku has low self-esteem, doesn't believe in herself. Meeting Fuutarou changed her and she is finally happy. But, she is not the Bride.
4. Yotsuba is strong, Fuutarou wants to depend on her and wants her to depend on him, but her behavior gives him the biggest troubles. She is in love with him. Turns out she is the Bride.
5. Itsuki is hard-working, but bickers a lot with Fuutarou. Still, Fuutarou doesn't want her hard-work, her dream to become a teacher go to waste, because he knows she can do it. But, she is not the Bride.

With the swings, the manga boils down to:
- Yotsuba falling in love with Fuutarou, but not confessing because of her complexes and guilt due to the school transfer.
- Fuutarou falling in love with Yotsuba twice, but doesn't know how to deal with the other sisters also having feelings for him, so he stalls them until the end.

Truly a rigged game from the start.

Like I said, the entire story is just an actual waste of time.

Originally Posted by Lex79

The big difference is that while disappointed for various things that happened in this manga I don't consider it as much of a train wreck as others do, and I don't think the ending would have been much more satisfying had Fuutarou chosen another girl in 113 (my personal shipping aside), so it's probably way easier for me to still be able to appreciate a good chapter even in the middle of botched storytelling.

Like I said, good for those of you that still like it, but I stop caring about a story when a writer tries to insult it's readers (my) intelligence to this extent. Excuse the slight aggressiveness in this next line (seriously, don't take it personally), but I don't give a damn about individual chapters when the overall story is a literal waste of time and nothing I read seems to have ever fucking mattered at all, if Negi didn't care to even try to give the story and his readers a proper coherent ending, why should I praise any of the individual chapters that are spreading retcons and literal bullshit? Why should I appreciate the shit that is being smeared in my face? It's simple, I don't have to and I won't and at this point nothing will change my mind.

[Sixth]

Good chapter. Can't wait for the wedding chapter.

[OH&S]

Originally Posted by Proto

I guess it comes down to how much you manage to care about the series and the characters. Personally I never cared much for the series beyond a mild like and slightly looking forward to the release every week. As such the ups and downs of the series never affected me as much and I can still enjoy the series all the same, even to this day

Compare that to hi score girl or kono oto tomare when I was basically squealing like a girl every episode.

My thoughts mirror yours exactly; right down to the squealing for the other series mentioned.

[~Yami~]

Brilliant victory for Yotsuba...
and it is a really bad choice to peek at that proposal scene for the sisters.. must be hurting inside

Yotsuba is pretty much rewarded.. you could see that they are actually looking good together

[WingedAccelerator]

Here comes a historical moment from me, where I use the local ribbon girl from Nisekoi as a positive example. Who could have thought Negi could break me like this?
https://i.imgur.com/FiWimQn.jpg
She ran away, but a valuable opportunity presented itself for her, and she doesn't want to waste it for her growth and future. I can wholeheartedly respect her decision, even after the climax.

See, this is what Yotsuba is lacking. Ambition outside of Fuutarou. The more you think about it, the more it's becoming apparent how the dreams and goals of the others were planned as the escape routes for them, while Yotsuba's route had to be Fuutarou, nothing else. It's insulting. Not only that, as if Negi somehow reversed the characters, Fuutarou, the one with top grades and countless opportunities as a result thinks he is the inferior one in the relationship. He is inexperienced with romance, but between the two of them, he seriously thought about his future and not all of his thoughts were about how he can please others. Yotsuba continues to shower him with pity speeches regarding the sisters' happiness over her own, so Negi's solution was to make Fuutarou lamer. Yotsuba is too good for him, but their path should be mutual, he wants to stand beside her with everything and help her, which sounds exactly like a necessary complex. Too bad Negi brought back Takebayashi to say he outgrew that, but how the story ended up by Chapter 119, I don't see it. Especially how he bothered to remember that oh, yeah, he doesn't know Nino's and Yotsuba's careers, goals, dreams. What a coincidence that his choice doesn't have one, but has the convenient childhood dream of becoming a Bride and just proposed...

The choice should have been the culmination of the journey, the closure of the winning heroine. That's why Ichika, Nino and Miku made sense in my eyes. However, if Yotsuba's issues can only be cured by being chosen by Fuutarou, the others really didn't stand a chance at all. She gets chosen to learn to be selfish, to learn that she has the right to be happy. It's not like it wasn't said to her numerous times in the manga... There is Ichika, whose self-destruct could have easily been a path for Yotsuba with her bottled up feelings, or Itsuki, who realized it's futile to try after the choice, she wasted all of her chances by being passive. Yotsuba's path is getting the reward, only then getting the character development. What a great message. Good job, Negi!

[wuhugm]

The rest of the quints are pitiful

But don't worry!

Their children will be the same age and enter highschool together~

[Hakai]

Originally Posted by wuhugm

The rest of the quints are pitiful

But don't worry!

Their children will be the same age and enter highschool together~

Fuutarou and Yotsuba will have a son

The other four will have daughters.

And we have a sequel

[Wandering Soul]

Originally Posted by Proto

I guess it comes down to how much you manage to care about the series and the characters. Personally I never cared much for the series beyond a mild like and slightly looking forward to the release every week. As such the ups and downs of the series never affected me as much and I can still enjoy the series all the same, even to this day

Compare that to hi score girl or kono oto tomare when I was basically squealing like a girl every episode.

Yeah, that sums up my position as well.

[rulfo]

Where did it all go wrong? Did Negi just say "Screw it. I'm done with this crap. Enjoy." This is really a tragedy.

I'm on the camp that doesn't really care who the hell wins as long as the execution is great. This series failed to do that with flying colors.

[blitz1/2]

Originally Posted by Dragon Sin

Fuutarou and Yotsuba will have a son

The other four will have daughters.

And we have a sequel

Do it, I need a wincest work. Or rather have Yotsuba/Fuutarou have one son and the rest daughters named in honor of Yotsuba's sisters. xD

[wuhugm]

The implication is that the 4 other quints will get impregnated at around the same time by their respective partner just to spite Yotsuba

[devil_slayer]

Originally Posted by blitz1/2

Do it, I need a wincest work. Or rather have Yotsuba/Fuutarou have one son and the rest daughters named in honor of Yotsuba's sisters. xD

It's not incet really if they are just his cousins.

[WingedAccelerator]

Originally Posted by rulfo

Where did it all go wrong? Did Negi just say "Screw it. I'm done with this crap. Enjoy." This is really a tragedy.

I'm on the camp that doesn't really care who the hell wins as long as the execution is great. This series failed to do that with flying colors.

Most people think that he started giving less about 5toubun the moment his second child was born. It also marks the start of the Yotsuba flashback, which was textbook example of how to gather support for the winning heroine without giving her development. Make her as miserable as possible, but also reveal how she loved the protagonist from the beginning, but couldn't bear to do anything, because of her complexes. Poor soul.

So the notorious issues are:
1. Fuutarou's POV = Readers' POV, yet Yotsuba doesn't stand out or feels inferior to the rest of the quints. After the choice, Yotsuba was actually meant the world to Fuutarou all along, too bad initially there was hardly anything that suggested it.
2. Yotsuba's lack of development. Cheaply getting the development after getting chosen, even though all of the main cast gave her a speech throughout the manga that should have helped her. No, her getting chosen is her cure. Nothing would have worked.
3. Fuutarou's realization. He kept thinking for months, yet still didn't know who to pick on the festival before the end of Day 2. He optimistically said he will choose, but needs three days to sort himself out, but three days during a busy school event for something like this is hardly a reasonable choice, when it's the climax of the manga. His decision didn't came naturally, Ichika forced him the most and somehow he couldn't connect two and two together to pick the one, who made him the happiest for months. Go back to Point 1., and we didn't really see how this should be Yotsuba without getting puzzled. 15 chapters are wasted on this to come up with a bullshit excuse.
+Bonus: All of the secret identities that could have made Fuutarou queestion his choice got discarded.

But it doesn't matter. Negi just tweeted that the manga sold more than 10 million copies. He can retire with peace. He is filthy rich now.

[Blazor 98]

It's actually interesting because Yotsuba wasn't the choice many people were expecting. She wasn't as popular as Miku and Nino and she wasn't the "first girl introduced" like Itsuki.

[WingedAccelerator]

"Interesting" doesn't make it good. It's almost like a subversion for the sake of subversion on similar wavelength to those people, who wanted Itsuki to win, because they thought she was the only friend all along and not a love interest like the rest of them. And then there Nino's speech from Kyoto that it doesn't matter who was the first one to fell in love with Fuutarou. Yes it did, yes it did. Even the attempted Present > Past message was forced last minute before Fuutarou's decision, instead of doing something with the revealed Rena secret.

[blitz1/2]

Originally Posted by devil_slayer

It's not incet really if they are just his cousins.

To some, it can be considered so.

But we can always have Imouto Paradise setting in which protagonist can hook with his 4 sisters.

[rulfo]

Originally Posted by WingedAccelerator

Most people think that he started giving less about 5toubun the moment his second child was born. It also marks the start of the Yotsuba flashback, which was textbook example of how to gather support for the winning heroine without giving her development. Make her as miserable as possible, but also reveal how she loved the protagonist from the beginning, but couldn't bear to do anything, because of her complexes. Poor soul.

So the notorious issues are:
1. Fuutarou's POV = Readers' POV, yet Yotsuba doesn't stand out or feels inferior to the rest of the quints. After the choice, Yotsuba was actually meant the world to Fuutarou all along, too bad initially there was hardly anything that suggested it.
2. Yotsuba's lack of development. Cheaply getting the development after getting chosen, even though all of the main cast gave her a speech throughout the manga that should have helped her. No, her getting chosen is her cure. Nothing would have worked.
3. Fuutarou's realization. He kept thinking for months, yet still didn't know who to pick on the festival before the end of Day 2. He optimistically said he will choose, but needs three days to sort himself out, but three days during a busy school event for something like this is hardly a reasonable choice, when it's the climax of the manga. His decision didn't came naturally, Ichika forced him the most and somehow he couldn't connect two and two together to pick the one, who made him the happiest for months. Go back to Point 1., and we didn't really see how this should be Yotsuba without getting puzzled. 15 chapters are wasted on this to come up with a bullshit excuse.
+Bonus: All of the secret identities that could have made Fuutarou queestion his choice got discarded.

But it doesn't matter. Negi just tweeted that the manga sold more than 10 million copies. He can retire with peace. He is filthy rich now.

I understand that he has his family to take care of but I wish there could have been a hiatus to give him some time. Rushing the ending like this and discarding tons of stuff that should have been here is a slap to fans that followed this series. In the end, I don't really give a damn about the circumstance. I will remember this series as wasted potential and a huge waste of time.

Originally Posted by Blazor 98

It's actually interesting because Yotsuba wasn't the choice many people were expecting. She wasn't as popular as Miku and Nino and she wasn't the "first girl introduced" like Itsuki.

Yotsuba had so much baggage that she would have been a juicy character to break down and develop. All that potential got wasted and she was handed with the thing she wants the most on a silver platter without actively defeating her demons.

[WingedAccelerator]

It's confirmed that the manga will end in 3 chapters, including the next one.

Supposedly, this is it for the next chapter:
https://i.imgur.com/rd5AcNJ.jpg
Some other source said concrete things like Ichika is a TV star, Itsuki getting to the university she wanted to, and Fuutarou saying something like he is not alone.

Guess, those who said this manga is more of a coming of age story for the quintuplets were right. Still, it's not an acceptable explanation for how could Negi butcher the romance aspect like this. Flashbacks, off-screen development for the win.

[Lex79]

Personally I think that as a coming of age story it's even worse.
Three chapters left, I guess the last one (supposedly double lenght) will be the wedding.
And we still don't know who Is the bell kisser.