These Two will be Married in 100 Days Read:

I'm up to date on Tonikaku Kawaii, surely well beyond what the anime will cover.  I also read another funny Hata Kenjuro manga that overlaps and ties in with Tonikaku and Hayate, 'Married in 100 Days'.  It's pretty short and simple but in some ways it's better than Tonikaku.  At least this married couple is willing to have sex.  Still not as good as Kanojo mo Kanojo though.

My biggest complaint with '100 Days' is the unrealistic odds of an unemployed guy landing an idol girlfriend.  Nasa landing a Goddess as his wife makes perfect sense, since Nasa is an intellectual superhuman who can accomplish anything at the speed of light, while also being extremely handsome, popular and cool.  But the guy in '100 Days' has nothing going for him.  Girls don't fall in love with losers, they fall for the best guy they know.  An idol would be in contact with a lot of cool guys, like other male idols, producers, directors, whatever.  Why would she settle for some guy off the street?  I guess you could say Himeka was tired of the idol life and thus found refuge in the anonymity of this loser's life, but. . .even then, couldn't she have had an omiai with a far more qualified man?  There are websites to match people up by interests and qualifications.

This is why romances are usually so bad.  Either the girl falls for the guy because he's an ubermenschen, in which case there's no particular chemistry between the couple, the guy could've worked things out with any girl he met; or the girl falls for the guy due to some bizarre coincidence like he saved her from being raped or something (ala Goblin Slayer), in which case the reader can never take the romance seriously because it isn't relevant to real life.

I much prefer the romances where a normal guy lands a normal girl because they get along well together.  I'm thinking of Clannad and Da Capo here, though admittedly it still took magic in both cases for things to work out.  But at least these visual novels are on the right track.  Don't parade out some stupid glittery vampire with super powers and vast fortunes (Hana Yori Dango comes to mind).  Don't give the male lead a ridiculous lucky break like a girl literally falling from the sky (Sora no Otoshimono, I'm looking at you!). 

Jinto and Lafiel have perhaps the best romance in fiction, neither of them perfect people but extremely effective when they work together, but for a romance like that to bloom you would require a galaxy-wide war that kills trillions of people so I'm not sure it's as real-life applicable as it seems. . .

Oh well, the point is romances are extremely challenging to write well because true love is extremely hard to come by in the real world.  So writing a convincing love story where two people fall in love is insanely difficult.  I of course have successfully done so -- it's called 'Sellsword.'  But then again I'm the greatest writer of all time, so it's difficult to find other stories on level with my own.

The new Goblin Slayer movie, Goblin's Crown also came out today.  It was okay.  It had a lot of recap and a lot of 'typical' goblin killing which really does nothing to characterize the cast or advance the plot.  Now that I've seen all the anime is willing to provide, I can switch over to reading the manga.  I need something to read after all.