Rereader's Reviews > Beauty and the Feast, Vol. 1

Strap in folks, this is gonna be a long one.

First and foremost, let's address the elephant in the room: the age gap romance. Is this problematic? Yes, I am not going to argue with anyone about that. Does it bother me? Honestly, no. In fact, I actually find them to be really cute together and I can already understand why these two are good for each other. Does that excuse the mangaka's decision to make this an age gap romance? No, they could have easily made either Shohei older or Shuko younger, but again this doesn't bother me. Why doesn't it bother me? Mostly because, at least to me, their budding relationship was treated with care and respect towards them. Any sexual or inappropriate implications were made by other people (who we will discuss later), but the actual interactions between Shuko and Shohei were genuinely sweet and wholesome. Also, as someone who genuinely loved Kiss Me at the Stroke of Midnight (another age gap romance, but with the genders reversed) it would be incredibly hypocritical of me to denounce this series and not that one when, again, Shohei's and Shuko's budding relationship is being handled with care (at least in my opinion and as of right now). All this being said, I can understand why this could and will bother some people and respect others' decisions to not continue the series because of it.

With all of that out of the way, let's talk about Rui and how conflicted I am about her character. First, the positives: I actually really like how honest and unabashed she is about her motivations for being with Shohei. It is genuinely refreshing to see a love interest be so upfront about their less than pure intentions and I found it refreshing. That being said, her character is very strong (not in a good way) and having a whole chapter of her was waaaaay too much. I get why, obviously we need an entire chapter dedicated to introducing the main love rival, but boy her character was grating after awhile. Though Shuko's response, "I just don't understand kids these days," struck me on a personal level. Same Shuko, same. Finally, I have mixed feelings about how quickly her thoughts lead to something dirty when thinking of romance. On one hand, I appreciate that the manga acknowledges how dirty-minded women/girls can be (since for some reason we're still operating under the delusion all women/girls are pure, virginal flowers), but on the other hand it bothers me that the only character that views Shohei's and Shuko's budding relationship in a sexual way is the female love rival. I dunno, it just rubbed me the wrong way, can't really explain why.

All of that ranting aside, I did have fun reading this. Fan service and age gap aside, this was a cute, wholesome start to the series. I have the rest of the current volumes, hopefully it'll keep this cuteness going. We shall see.