Chapters: 789 (each is one page except for some omake chapters)
Status: Ongoing
Genres: 4-Koma, Comedy, Romance, School, Slice of Life
Serialization: twi4

Synopsis

Aizawa Tomo is the biggest tomboy you've ever seen. She's having trouble being seen as a romantic partner by her childhood friend, Junichiro Kubota.

I feel that, within the manga community, there are a few elite comedy manga that stand out from the rest. They consist of "Grand Blue", "Kaguya-sama", "Horimiya", "Hinamatsuri", "We Can't Study", and "Tomo-chan". I'm probably missing something important here. These manga are the ones that people generally think of most fondly and have the largest followings.

Out of the list above, the only ones that I had not been caught up with are "Grand Blue" and "Tomo-chan". As such, I saw it appropriate to give it a read despite almost being 800 chapters long. What I didn't know was that each of these "chapters" was only a single page. If I pretended that this was a standard manga with about 30 pages per chapter, then this would equate to about 27 chapters. So it really isn't hard to just plow through in a day or two.

Now that I'm caught up to the latest chapter, would I say it was a worthwhile read?

Characters

As is the case with most high school rom-com manga, the over-arching narrative isn't going to blow minds. Its charm comes from the interactions between its characters and how they grow over the course of the story. Tomo-chan is certainly no exception. It features a great cast of characters that all play off of each other's personalities really well.

Jun and Tomo

The central couple, Tomo and Junichiro, are athletic monsters that can cave in peoples' faces while playing dodgeball or do a marathon run as a morning warm-up routine. You can really feel how much they love just playing sports together, which is why it becomes so awkward to advance that relationship further.

Gundou

The supporting cast all play an interesting role as well. Gundou Misuzu is kind of hard to explain. She's a character with a really short temper, quick to throw insults and threats at anybody, but is also very protective and territorial regarding her close friends. She's not exactly deadpan, but I guess she's sort of soft-spoken in a smug way. Anyway, while all of her screentime is complete gold, her dynamic with the main couple is what really makes her shine.

She's been friends with Tomo since they were children just like Jun, so she wants to see her happy, and she knows that a relationship with Jun would be the best way for that to happen. But at the same time, she cherishes the time that she spends with Tomo, and is scared that she'll lose that time if Tomo and Jun end up in a relationship. This internal conflict makes her very endearing and gives a lot more context to her behavior up to that point.

Carol

The other prominent supporting character is Carol Olston. She can only really be described as a fluffy ball of cotton candy. She's always beaming with pure gentle innocence and just wants to be close friends with Tomo and Misuzu. She's also a rich princess lacking in common sense. This in itself isn't unheard of, but it works really well combined with the rest of her character.

Carol also has her own plot with a fiance who doesn't take her seriously as a romantic partner similarly with Tomo and Jun's relationship but very different in nature. Overall, Carol presents an interesting contrast to Tomo. Where Tomo lacks female companionship because she's too aggressive and boyish, Carol has a difficult time making friends because she's so girly and innocent that she becomes unfathomable to the people around her.

Everchanging and Enigmatic

What really sells the characters for me isn't the characters themselves, but how their relationship forms over the course of the story. Jun is constantly sin-waving over whether or not he's comfortable with having his usual intimate "bro" contact with Tomo as his view of her changes.

Carol proves on several occasions that she is capable of being just as scheming and manipulative as Misuzu, which makes their interactions very shocking when they do suddenly act out of character. These are only a few examples of what makes this manga feel a little more difficult to pin down compared to other rom-coms.

Conclusion

Like I said before, I don't know what else to say besides breaking down how intrinsically designed the characters in this manga are. The art does the job well enough. Misuzu's smug faces are some of the best in the game, as does any face representing intensity or anger.

This counts as a chapter btw

Like I said before, the ~800 pages aren't nearly as intimidating as it sounds because it's a 4-koma manga. You can get the basic idea of the page with a single glance, as opposed to something like Goblin Slayer that might need at least 10-20 seconds on some pages to really take in the information being thrown at you.

I had a great time reading it, and I'm looking forward to keeping up with it in the future. The really great thing about that is that a new chapter comes out everyday. Compare that with something like Horimiya that takes 2-3 agonizingly long months for a single chapter to be released, and I know which one I'd prefer.

That said, Tomo-chan is filled to the brim with exaggeration and "unrealistic" elements, but if you've been keeping up with my recent posts, you'll know how much of a non-issue that is for me. It's not the most revolutionary high school rom-com ever, but I think I can confidently say that Tomo-chan's cast of colorful characters are some of the best I've ever seen. Check it out if that sounds interesting to you.

Tomo-chan wa Onna no ko! - Manga Review