5-toubun no Hanayome

It's over. After many chapters of lies, deception, severe cockblocking and an ocean's worth of salt, this rollercoaster of a manga is finally over. When I think of this manga, I think of the famous quote by the anime reviewer Glass Arkada, "The ending is paramount". This quote REALLY fits for this series.

Story: 7/10
The story of Go-Toubun no Hanayome is a simple one. It follows a studious high school student named Uesugi Futaro and his new part-time job tutoring the five beautiful Nakano sisters who are all dumb as shit. A “How I met your mother”-esk mystery is present throughout the entire story as we are shown that Futaro’s time in high school is actually a flashback he’s having while waiting for his bride, who is one of the Nakano sisters. Lies, disguises, and promises are made in order to keep the readers on their toes and keep guessing who the bride is; to this show’s credit, it does that very well. The mystery makes the story very “bingable” and you keep wanting to read more and more to unravel the identity of Futaro’s bride; that is until you get to the last couple of chapters of the story. Fuck you on that Negi Haruba. But, for the most part, the story is fun and engrossing.

Characters: 6/10
Go-toubun no Hanayome has six different main characters: the five Nakano sisters and Futaro. Most of the main cast have something to be said about them.

Ichika Nakano - The oldest of the Nakano quintuplet is a lying and manipulative actor. She’s the bitch with the dream and is willing to do anything to achieve that dream. People who think that she's best girl have an "ara ara" fetish or just into cunts.
Nino Nakano - One two Great Goddesses of Go-toubun no Hanayome. At first glance, she appears to be an absolute cunt like Ichika, but a couple chapters, a motorcycle, and a haircut proved me wrong and changed my entire perspective. People who know that Nino is best girl are Gods among men and should have their cocks sucked at all times by the lower life forms that do not believe in the two holy churches: The Church of Nino and the Church of Miku.
Miku Nakano - The second Great Goddess, Nino is precious and beautiful. I will personally go to the house of any haters of Miku fuck them in the ass until they submit to the Church of Miku. People who like Miku are also Gods among men, but they must adhere to their solemn duty and protect her with their life and shit on anyone who talks trash about this 2d girl.
Yotsuba Nakano - Oh Yotsuba… I have some choice words for her. She’s your typical “Genki”
girl and self-sacrificing to a fault. At first, I wrote her off as a generic, mainly comic-relief, character, but after that ending, all I can say is just Fuck me in my tiny asshole man.
Itsuki Nakano - The least notable out of the girls. She’s your generic tsundere, and her only unique trait is that she eats a lot of food and that she studies. Put generic in a script a million times and you get Itsuki. That’s it.



Uesugi Futaro - An actually likable protagonist in a harem show. He’s not an indecisive and horny teenager like most protagonists in the genre; he actually has character and growth throughout the story. He gets angry, he bitches people out, and overall he’s just a fun and likable character

To be fair, I was kind of overly hating on the characters. Besides Yotsuba and Itsuki, I actually enjoyed all the characters and their fun and interesting banter. (That still means I think that ⅓ of the cast is shit).

Art:
Negi Haruba’s art is gorgeous. I nutted almost 14 times each chapter (just get me a room already). The panels have a unique charm to them that just works for a lighthearted rom-com like Go-toubun. Sure, it starts off kind of stuff, but as Negi goes on with series and gets his footing, you really are able to see his artistic talent.

Overall:
Besides what I’ve been saying, I genuinely enjoyed this manga and keeping up with both the story and the community that follows it. The last arc did leave a *bit* to be desired for (Like what the actual fuck Negi), and too an extent it leaves a bad aftertaste. However, looking back I have fond memories of the character banter and the unraveling of the mystery of Futaro’s wife. (But seriously Fuck you Negi on that ending)

There are two possible reasons that this series went downhill and they both compliment each other. 1. The writer had no idea how to explain away all the BS he tried to pull. 2. He got lazy and just said screw it.

By god this series was a train wreck. Start was generic but it picked up the pace towards the middle and there are point where i'd considered giving this manga a 10/10 but the last 3rd and ending drag this series all the way down to a 3.

Oh my god the ending... While this series was really good up until the sisters war arc ended the same cannot be said for the chapters after or the climax of the manga. Glass reflection once said that the ending is paramount to a story, In the case of this story where everyone was guessing, making theories and trying to put together clues to figure out who the bride would be the ending felt hallow and unsatisfying no matter who you supported along the way.

Closure for each girl except Miku is nonexistent. A few of the characters even regress back to their undeveloped selves by series end. Having it be implied that each sister still harbored feelings for the MC after 5 years of him dating their sister is laughable. The losing sisters even want to go on the honeymoon with the recently married couple, You have got to be kidding me. I feel sorry for Itsuki fans most of all because her supporters got a giant slap in the face because of this ending, if you read the story you understand what i mean.

The series in some parts is a straight up 10/10 for me but the ending comes along and invalidates most of it anyway. Romantic progression was thrown in the trash, character development was thrown in the trash, hell even the MC just stands around and act like a trophy for the festival arc and beyond.

Don't get me started on chapter 119 as it is the worst chapter of the whole series by far, instead of tying up loose ends the author decided to make a date chapter where the MC proposes after most likely getting a concussion and the quint he's on the date with accepts it... on the first date.

The wedding is especially insulting to read. As a Nino fan i couldn't help but be very angry at the final 2 wedding chapters. As the author takes all the hints from the wedding and just gives them to someone else. "Oh the bracelet could mean something?" "Just make it vanish from existence."
"Nino mentions she wants to get her ears pierced before she gets married? Meh." and so on and so forth.

So in the end i couldn't send this series off with a tearful goodbye but rather a reluctant send of where i feel like the series could have done so much more but the author just didn't have it in him i guess. Also kinda BS that Miku got more closure than the actual bride. Do i hate this series? No. I'm i very disappointed in how it ended? Yes. It didn't matter who the bride was to me as long as she deserved it but some half assed one sentence development and a terrible date chapter don't really scream "She deserves it" to me. So the series goes from an 8 to a 3.

I first wrote this review when I had read about 80 chapters of Gotoubun no Hanayome and during the height of its popularity. I believed it to be a solid, well-developed, decently-paced school setting romcom - a rare gem for me, considering that I'm usually not a fan of those. I went as far as to say that Gotoubun made other modern popular animanga of the same genre look pathetic in comparison.

But whew... Talk about things that did not age well.

It's not to say that Gotoubun lost all of its value for me. I treasure those first 70-something chapters and the attachment I felt to the characters. I still think that what Negi accomplished there is praise-worthy and I stand by what I said, that it was a fun and twisty romcom with good characters and a likeable protagonist. But in a few years from now, I'm afraid that Gotoubun will be remembered by me not as "That quintuplets romcom that I had some fun with", but rather as "That quintuplets romcom that went to shit towards the end".

It's hard to explain what went wrong with Gotoubun without stepping into spoiler territory, so from this point on, you'll be seeing spoilers for the last 30 or so chapters of the manga.

One of my previous minor complaints about Gotoubun was that, although its twisty nature was fun and clever, it was starting to drag on a little and in danger of becoming a bore. I said that as of chapter 86. And now, with the manga completed at chapter 122, what I feared the most has come true: it overstayed its welcome greatly. And it resulted in what I believe was its ultimate downfall: The School Festival arc.

The School Festival arc was an absolutely dreadful experience to sit through, something akin to a modern Endless Eight. We are shown the exact same series of events in the school festival through the eyes of every quintuplet for a bunch of chapters. That doesn't sound too bad in theory, but weight in the fact that this happens directly after Fuutarou announces that he has finally come to a decision and will confess to the sister he loves after the festival is over, and there you go: all of those chapters are nothing but Negi trying to apply his twisty keep-you-guessing gimmick, only that this time he failed horribly. We as an audience at that point were tired and wanted a confession, a resolution, a BOOM moment. It was like listening to a song and waiting for the beat to drop, but then the beat never drops. What made those chapters extra nefarious wasn't even the fact that they were stalling the big reveal, but the way that they did it. To put it bluntly, they added nothing of value to the table - I mean, I guess they tried, but it was all written in such a lousy, confusing, superficial, strangely rushed fashion that I questioned if it was the same Negi that gave us the previous chapters. The girls' biological father shows up unceremoniously just to raise chaos and make Itsuki second-guess herself, all so that it ends with... Her not changing her mind about wanting to become a teacher after all, I guess? The fact that they lowkey tried to give their shitty adoptive father some sort of redemption also had me baffled. He didn't seem like he changed or regretted being absent from their lives at all, but we were just supposed to believe that he actually always cared because he left some flowers on their mother's grave? Don't make me laugh. And what about Fuutarou's former tutor showing up, doing absolutely nothing, then vanishing again? Geez, maybe the reason why Negi never gave a lot of attention to side characters is because he absolutely sucks at handling them in the first place. My point here is that this arc sealed a big, HUGE drop in the quality of the overall writing of the manga, something that is noticeable far back from Yotsuba's backstory arc.

I also regret saying that I felt like the manga was sensible and reasonable on the subject of love rivalry between the sisters, and that it even subverted some tropes that I usually hate. That was my reading back then, but towards the end it once again went all to shit: I had to see these characters I grew to care about becoming generic, incomprehensible shadows of their past selves and fall right headfirst into concepts deeply etched into the manga romcom genre that I so despise. Like, for example, the idea that romantic love between two people is something that you earn because you worked hard for it, rather than a connection and genuine bond being formed through quality time and affinity; romantic love isn't a job position, and while it requires effort and teamwork between the involved parties to work out, it isn't something you can simply get by being especially pushy or having a sadder backstory. Another one is the idea that once a girl is in love, she has to lose all of her self-respect AND her respect for other people because she has to "keep fighting for it and not give up", and thus continues to pursue the guy even after he's already settled for a girlfriend who he loves.

All of this contaminated Nino a lot specifically and it soured her character greatly for me, which was very upsetting considering that she was my favorite quintuplet. But I just couldn't be satisfied seeing her fall victim to this, saying that she would steal her sister's boyfriend away from her and that she didn't deserve him because his love "came ease even though she did nothing". It was also jarring to see the implication that she was still in love with Fuutarou even five years later on their wedding day. One of the main reasons why I'd be alright if Nino wasn't the bride even though I liked her the most was because I felt like she could bounce back easier than the others; she's headstrong, independent and values her sisters' happiness. And yet the Nino I saw towards the end seemed simply bitter and spiteful.

And although I was personally also rooting for Yotsuba because I thought she and Fuutarou made a good match, I couldn't be satisfied with the way it happened. She got reduced to the "I met you as a kid" trope for a brief while, and her backstory carried a wild tonal shift that made me not care for it. I waited patiently to see Yotsuba getting her time to shine, but the monkey's paw curled on me, I guess, because when she finally did, it was rushed and not nearly as satisfying as with the other sisters, and as a result people feed into the "it's unfair that it was Yotsuba!" mentality. It's not unfair that it was Yotsuba, it's unfair that Negi failed to give her resolution and proper depth the same care he gave the others! If Yotsuba was my favorite girl I would probably feel the most cheated of them all. I also didn't like seeing her throw away the symbol of her individuality at the end just because Fuutarou could tell her apart from her sisters. Individuality was so important to Yotsuba, it's hard to believe she would let go of it just because she got married.

Miku was also contagiated by the cliché love rivalry babbling, but to a lesser extent than Nino. At the very least, she seemed happy with herself and got a satisfying conclusion to her character development: we truly see her blossom into a more confident person without losing her essence, and that was fine by me. She grew from the experience of being in love.

What really caught me off guard, though, was the fact that Ichika and Itsuki, my least favorite girls, were the only ones who responded to the situation in a way that did not piss me off. Maybe it was because Ichika had been the target of the "I need to 'win' his love" mentality earlier in the manga and then had a change of heart, but by the time Fuutarou comes to a conclusion, she is accepting of it and maintains a healthy close friendship with him. Itsuki acknowledges that she is jealous and frustrated, but never lets this overpower her, and in the end finds her peace with Fuutarou being with Yotsuba instead, knowing that although she was not the one, nothing could break the bond she already had with him. They also had good conclusions to their personal arcs, with Itsuki becoming a teacher and honoring her mother, and Ichika realizing that there are bigger things in store for her than university and dedicating herself to her acting career.

Then there's Fuutarou, and it saddens me that I don't even quite know what to write in here, because he was so affected by the quality drop that I no longer felt his singular strength as a character towards the end. And that is TRAGIC, because Fuutarou being a solid, good character instead of a generic or unlikeable Joe was one of the driving forces of Gotoubun. I guess you can say that he never quite became a bad character, but... Proposing to Yotsuba out of nowhere? He seemed like a different person during their date segment, and I don't mean this in a good way. There was very little buildup to the reveal, and up until the end he didn't seem to show a preference towards any of them at all. And what about his dream of making it big? What about his relationship with Raiha? What about any of those things? Mere passing notes are all they're worth? Had the manga gone on for 2 chapters longer I'd nearly be able to say he had a full descent into a generic harem romcom protagonist; he dodged quite a bullet here.

And then the very ending, the thing that made so many people understandably froth at the mouth... Oh boy. You can say that it wasn't strictly a "it was all a dream"-type ending: you could easily see that as a narrative resource to make a parallel between their graduation and the future. But what it really felt like to me was Negi trying to find his easy way out of sticking to a definitive decision. He's definitely a crowd pleaser - he made sure we got to see all of the sisters individually confessing and kissing Fuutarou, as though he didn't want to see the fans of any of them feeling left out. And although he did settle on Fuutarou choosing Yotsuba, by presenting the notion that the wedding might have been just a dream, he can make people wonder "well, but maybe he will break up with her and marry another of them in the future". Which is, if you ask me, a coward's way out. I can't even properly complain about how shitty the writing of the whole "guess who's your fiance!" scene was because it might not even have happened at all. But let it be known that it was so, so shitty and childish, a far cry from the emotional depth and involvement I saw on the very same manga 50 chapters earlier.

Credit where it is due, the art remained amazing to the very end, with beautifully drawn expressions and extremely dynamic panels. Even though the characterization and writing completely fell apart on its seams, it offered a generous serving of eye candy, and the girls' designs were as cute as ever, which might have even make the whole thing feel less bad at some times. But this was really all that stayed consistent, and that's a crying shame.

Gotoubun rocked the animanga community. People got excited over it, and not for little reason: it was one of the best of its genre. It was a solid, well-developed, decently-paced school setting romcom. It was out there making other modern popular animanga of the same genre look pathetic in comparison. I don't feel happy editing this review and taking back the praise I had for it. In fact, I wonder why it went so wrong. Did Negi lose his passion for the project? Was he feeling pressured over its overwhelming popularity? Is he simply not skilled at writing conclusions? I guess we'll never know. All that's left is looking at all of these reviews graded 5 or less and contemplating the fall of this empire.

Rewriting the wheel. In a world where harem has been dogged, overdone and rehashed, 5-toubun no Hanayome is the revival of the harem genre. The story focuses on the protagonist (Uesegi) having to help quintuplet sisters graduate high school. While the premise of the story may not be original (hint hint "We Never Study), it wins in a place so many harems fail: pacing/plot and excessive fan service.

Due to the complexity of love stories, authors constantly dig themselves into a hole and introduce filler arcs, fan service or new girls to slow the story down. These speed bumps lead to a clunky, inconsistent story that just isn't believable. In this manga, however, there are no problems. We learn about the characters without being distracted by constant fan service (clothing malfunctions). Thanks to this the story moves forward in a consistent, believable fashion with progress such a hand holding coming in 5 chapters instead of 50.

Overall, I feel like this manga is a huge upgrade from Nisekoi and harems others. If you want a story that possess good romance and pacing, this is what you're looking for! Enjoy!