We're all familiar with the childhood friend trope, right? Often, this is an element or subtrope of a larger trope that a slice-of-life or romantic comedy series revolves around. For example, a childhood friend may be one of the girls in a harem or the main love interest in a slow-burn romance. However, what about a story where everybody was a childhood friend? I don't want to dismiss that premise on its face, despite how uninspired it sounds, because I have enjoyed plenty of manga that have played with tropes completely straight, yet pulled out some pretty inventive comedy or situations out of them. This is not one of those series, despite there being a little glimmer of potential in almost fifty chapters' worth of reading material.

One thing I can appreciate about this series is how self-aware it is. It focuses on a guy who loves romantic comedies and is very aware of their tropes. Whenever he finds himself in a situation where he might end up pursuing a romantic future with one of his many childhood friends, he practically screams from the rooftop that he's in some kind of romcom. The characters will even be overly aware of romantic comedy tropes and try to manufacture those situations to progress the romance between them. That's a cute premise, but the problem with the story is that it doesn't go far enough with any of these tropes, and the self-awareness is incredibly surface-level.

There are no fourth-wall breaks or clever exaggerations; these are just normal kids who really like romantic comedies, but when you remove their interest in romantic comedy tropes, these are some of the blandest characters I've ever seen. Our main character is just a regular guy, Shio is just a regular girl, Akari is just a tsundere, another girl gets introduced as the little sister type and then, towards the end of the last couple of chapters, the tomboy gets introduced in such a contrived way with the cast originally not recognizing her until she randomly decides to enter the story because it needs to try to keep things fresh. I would overlook some of the more contrived situations that make up the story's drama and comedy if it led to actual progress, but all it amounts to is the same cycle on repeat.

The story is so desperate to keep its status quo that it's impressive. If I took a shot of alcohol every time a character was confronted about their feelings for another person, only for them to adamantly deny it within earshot of said character who was JUST toying with the idea of romantically pursuing the other, I would probably be dead by chapter twenty. Sometimes the romantic setups are cute, and there is believable chemistry amongst the main cast despite the fact that none of them are interesting on their own. I can see situations where couples could sprout between them. But every time the story takes a step forward or goes out of its way to almost create an unavoidable romantic situation, it immediately walks it back so that the other girls don't lose any ground in the competitive romantic race.

There is more development in the relationships between the four girls who are all in love with the same guy than there is between Hero and any of the girls. Sometimes the story will play up a tragic angle, like how the friendship of the girls can get in the way of them wanting to pursue Hero romantically, because if he picks one of the girls, that could potentially ruin the friendship with the other characters. But much like everything else in the story, it's very undercooked. The story isn't dramatic enough for me to feel invested in any of the characters, and the comedy isn't strong or creative enough for me to appreciate.

There is comedy in just how forced the series tries to come off, like it's trying to hit a quota. Some of these situations reach a level of ridiculousness that can be funny regardless of how intentional it's supposed to be, because it's almost like the series is pushing how far it can go with the characters before reeling them back. For example, almost every girl directly confesses to Hero at some point, only for it to immediately be walked back. But even if this series could've cracked the code of creating the funniest joke on the planet, it doesn't matter when you've said it over fifty times. I get desensitized, and I just don't care. Eating your favorite meal fifty times in a row will make you eventually get sick of it, except this doesn't even have the advantage of starting as my favorite meal. This is more like enjoying a subpar bag of chips and then being told that I can only review how I feel about the bag of chips after eating fifty bags back to back. It's a miracle that I didn't hate MY childhood friends by the time I sat down to write this review.

Maybe the story was hoping that the occasional bits of fan service would carry any blandness that the story was lacking. The irony of the story playing around with romantic comedy tropes is that it also plays around with the idea of everyone being put into compromising situations. However, the tropes are played so straight that it just ends up…being those tropes rather than any type of subversion. Maybe this fan service would've worked on me twenty years ago, but now, it doesn't do anything for me, and part of the reason is that the designs for all of the characters are so bland. Everybody looks like they were ripped right out of another, better show and scrubbed clean of individuality. I have seen Hero and all of these childhood friends in dozens of other stories. I've seen these tropes and have been disappointed in similar ways by various other titles. Do not waste your time on this.