The Transcendent One-Sided Love of Yoshida the Catch, for its long descriptive title, manages to not include any mention that the object of Yoshida the Catch's affections, Shimakaze, is a manga artist. Hijinks ensue, mostly around how Shimakaze is not a good project manager at all. Yoshida volunteers his time as Shimakaze's project manager, delegating tasks (including eating and resting) and handling Shimakaze the disaster human. The two have known each other since they were both students, which makes you wonder how long this one-sided love momentum can carry, but for the first volume at least, the hijinks are fresh and funny. (I received a free ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest opinion.)

Personally it was a fun read and kind of reminded me of Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun in a way. Yoshida has a one-sided love for Shimakaze and he does everything he can to help her that includes being an assistant for the manga artist after he gets of work. The other full and part timers try to help him while also doing their tasks.

I never knew how much I wanted to become a mangaka and have a totally 10/10 hottie assistant that moons over me despite how much of a mess I am. Thanks for helping me realize my dream.
Funny and cute with the tiniest hint of fan service for both those that like women and those that like men. A total win in my book.

Not going to lie, this was not an interesting read. While it’s an easy story you can finish easily, but the humour and romantic moments didn’t hit. I liked the art style, but there isn’t much for me to say because I just wasn’t invested in what was going on.

[Thanks as always to Kodansha and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.]

Yoshida is collected, suave, stylish, and yet only has eyes for one woman - the walking disaster area known as Shimakaze. When he isn’t at work, Yoshida is helping Shimakaze and her long-suffering assistants crank out her manga. Of course, if she maybe realizes that he’s doing all of it for love, that might be okay too…

Good stories start with a good atmosphere and this one comes to life after Yoshida’s introduction when a young kid goes to work at Shimakaze’s manga studio. The picture of these bleak, desperate souls is absolutely amazing and conveys at once how slipshod Shimakaze’s work ethic is. The amount of detail poured into portraying the workspace and headspace of these poor people is sublime.

Everything and everybody looks appropriately hopeless and they get a great little character moment where the new kid can’t do analog manga well because he’s been trained on digital (it’s a good bit of development just tossed in there which really stuck with me) and it’s all hopeless and then Yoshida shows up and saves the day. But what price victory?

The most interesting thing in this book is the dynamic between Shimakaze and Yoshida, two people who have known each other for years, yet understand one another far less than their time together would have you expect. Yoshida is absolutely crazy for Shimakaze, but, well, he has an odd way of showing it sometimes (including one verbal lashing that really felt like it crossed a line).

Shimakaze is less a professional woman than she is a force of nature that happens to draw really well and has about as much sex drive as a spayed cat. It’s clear that ever since high school she’s been absolutely oblivious about societal norms as equally as Yoshida has been fruitlessly trying to get his feelings across.

She also relies on Yoshida and her staff to roll with her incredibly poor decisions that she only occasionally realizes she’s making - the running joke in the last section about her rapidly increasing cranial lumps from Yoshida clocking her is a perfect use of this. There’s a great escalation as everybody is dumped further in the soup thanks to some earlier drunken antics.

The comedy is hoary as old shoes - in one instance, the manga needs a kissing scene so they try and get Yoshida and Shimakaze to act it out for reference, leading to a spate of obliviousness (and garlic) crashing up against Yoshida’s needless perfectionism. Poor Yoshida is harried and henpecked through the whole thing, but it’s entirely his own fault, which is a fun quirk. It’s just a whole lot of screwball, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

There’re a lot of jokes about manga writing - the series that Shimakaze is popular for creating is hilariously on point and I really hope we see more of it going forward. It’s not terribly original, I think many manga artists are tempted by ‘write what you know’, but it works because of how alive everything feels and the art here is simply bang on for this type of story. It’s flailing all over the place, just like it should.

Now, Fujisawa, the mangaka, also did <I>Hatsu*Haru</i>, a seminal work of shojo in my opinion, and this is not that. This is far broader, far sillier, and much zanier. It has the most riotously underwhelming fan service ever written, completely ruined because, again, Shimakaze has exactly zero concept of things such as shame. Don’t come here expecting a repeat of that series and I think you’ll be fine with the narrative here.

4 stars - this is doing a whole other thing than <I>Hatsu*Haru</i>, certainly, but it’s also very fun. Fujisawa is really cutting loose here, but their attention to detail and sense of humour brings this to life. Not perfect, but definitely a good time.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Kodansha for providing me this arc in exchange for an honest review. This was such a fun, cute read about a man who seemininly has it all, looks and a great career but he has a one sided crush on a manga artist. It was nice getting to know the characters and i will be definitely looking forward to the second volume

A really cute and fun read! Really light-hearted and a nice manga to pick up for a wind-down, casual read. Will def be carrying on with this series when volume 2 releases!

Rating: 3 leaves out of 5
-Characters: 3/5
-Cover: 3/5
-Story: 3/5
-Writing: 3/5
Genre: Comedy/SoL/Romance
Type: Manga
Worth?: Yeah

First want to thank Netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this in exchange for an honest review! Secondly, it wasn't a bad manga. I enjoyed it enough but the way it was written wasn't that great. I get it is from an outside perspective but it didn't help me connect to the characters as much as I would have loved to.

The story was quick and fun. We were kind of thrown into their world, but still with introductions of the characters and explanations of certain things through Rin Hanamori, who just joined the team. The characters were quirky and funny and overall it was just an enjoyable story with nothing too deep.

Thank you to netgalley and kodansha comics for this e arc.
Hibiki is a business man who is also a part assistant for a manga artist who he is in love with.
I really liked this manga. I thought it was so cute. I really liked how sensei was super dense about how hiniki liked him. Some of the parts with her made me laugh too. It had multiple narrators but I actually liked and it didn’t bother me. It was something new and I really liked it. Overall I loved this manga and I’m super excited to really vol 2!

Thank you to netgalley for allowing me access to these books, thank you to the publisher and the author for giving me access to this eARC.

Apologies for the late review life has been crazy.

This is a short easy to read manga based on the male lead and his unrewuited love for a female manga artist that he has known since childhood. Although this was fun light and easy which I did enjoy there was also aspects that I didn't like such as the cleche story line and the males reactions to her they just seem a little over the top and some are offensive but shesjust oblivious which I think stereotypes a lot so overall Im giving a 3 cause i enjoyed it but some aspects just didn't sit well with me.

The Transcendent One-Sided Love of Yoshida the Catch is a short manga that was a lot of fun. One thing I hate in books is when you cannot tell any of the characters apart. Everyone in this manga had a distinct personality and style.
(arc from netgalley)

While the characters are fun and whacky, I don't feel like any of them have enough depth for me to be attached to them yet. Also I am really unsure who the narrator is at this point.

Thank you to Kodansha Comics and NetGalley for sending me this eARC, and all opinions are my own. This was such a perfect start to the series! I absolutely adored yoshida’s blind devotion to our headstrong mangaka who is sadly completely oblivious to his feelings. All the characters are hilarious, and the manga as a whole is such a perfect comedy, with small genuine moments that perfectly balance out! The two are polar opposites, with Yoshida being a detail oriented office worker by day, and Shimakaze being a chaotic mangaka every hour of the day. Both start off as childhood friends, and have somehow stuck by each other ever since then. Yoshida has practically every girl imaginable fawning over him, and yet he has been entirely faithful in his adorable puppy love for shimakaze since they were kids. I can’t wait to see the two and the their relationship progress in future volumes, and hopefully our female lead will look past her work long enough to see her perfect match right in front of her!

Such a hilarious start to this series. I love the male leads devotion to the female lead mangaka. I enjoyed seeing the behind the scenes of what the process of making a manga is like. I like the comedy aspect that this series has. And for the relationship, while I feel that this is going to be a slow-burn romance, it looks to be a very entertaining read.

This is an adorable, fun and easy read that I read really quickly. I really enjoyed it and cant wait for volume 2

A cute manga about an extremely competent business man who moonlights after his day job for a manga artist that he's been in love with since their youth. It's super silly and lighthearted, which is fun, but nothing serious in the plot as of yet.

Thank you to Kodansha for the opportunity to review this ARC.

The Transcendent One-Sided Love of Yoshida the Catch Volume 1 By Shizuki Fujisawa is a full of gags read with wacky characters.

After finishing reading the story I had to go back to check the synopsis to be sure that I hadn't misunderstood the premise of the story. The premise was there, but I feel like the synopsis promised me something different than what I got. It sounded like it would be told from Yoshida's POV. That it might be an adult office romance, and that it would be a lot sweeter than it was. It was none of these three things.

It was different because the story is told from a third POV that is not mentioned in the synopsis. It's told by Rin Hanamori, a 15-year-old boy that becomes an assistant to the mangaka, Shimakaze, mentioned in the synopsis. In truth, this story is more about the poor assistants of the airheaded mangaka and what they have to go through to finish the pages every month. Their hero is Yoshida who is the only one that can get the mangaka back in order. They know of his crush and try getting them closer.

Every scene is one big gag while presenting terms and stages that might be necessary to draw a manga. In that aspect, I found it was a clever way to not make it so mechanical about how to make a manga, but the gags and inner commentary of Yoshida's transient crush were, I found, off-putting. It was bordering on ridiculing him.

Lately, Kodansha has published different series about people that find it hard to confess a crush, and they have been fun and uplifting, but the difference this time I think has to do with the third POV. It creates this distance and the story never becomes more than a cheap gag for laughs.

The story lacks something that makes it necessary for me to continue reading the series, sorry.

Big thanks to Kodansha Comica for the e-ARC of this title via NetGalley. This review is being given honestly and all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Overall this was a quick nd easy going read. As a start to a new serial I thought the story telling and art were pretty good. I did not enjoy this as much as I hoped I would. I was expecting the manga to either be in Yoshida's POV or the mangaka's POV. Definitely wasn't a huge fan of this being a 3rd person POV and maybe even the assistants POV?
This just wasn't what I was expecting so I didn't enjoy it but think it would be enjoyable for others.