Romantic Killer

A romantic comedy about a video game and sweets loving high school girl with zero interest in romance who is suddenly forced by a magical being into a shoujo manga-like program full of handsome suitors pursuing her. The only catch is she’s banned from her favorite video games, sweets and beloved cat until she completes the program.

I wasn’t really into this series when it started in Jump+. It has a vertical scroll layout which it doesn’t really take advantage of it and it ended up leading to a lot of unused white backgrounds. It’s also in color which is nice but that accentuated the sparse backgrounds further. I did really like how the main character absolutely refuses to go along with her magical creature’s romantic angles for two handsome guys who suddenly enter her life. I think Wataru Momose has a real good handling on the comedy bits of this series but not anything that takes advantage of the vertical layouts. And to be fair, The Vertical World is the only web manga I’ve read that uses the vertical layouts effectively.

As I kept reading Romantic Killer I eventually really started liking the story, mainly because I liked how the protagonist would go out of her way to protect people she cared about. It’s usually a characteristic you see with male protagonists in shonen manga but it really works for our female lead. I was bummed when this ended suddenly but I assume volumes sales were poor so they axed it. It feels like a lot of these web manga are destined to end early if they’re survival is based on sales. A real shame for titles like this enjoyable romantic comedy.

~dakazu