My Love Story!! Review: The Biggest, Most Sincere Love Story You Will Ever Read

Quick Take

• A massive, intimidating-looking boy who has never been liked by a girl saves one from a train groper — and she likes him, not his handsome best friend
• The most warmhearted romance manga I have ever read, and a deliberate inversion of every shojo love interest cliché
• 13 volumes, complete, and genuinely happy throughout

Who Is This Manga For?

• Anyone who needs a romance manga that is genuinely, consistently kind
• Readers who are tired of brooding, cold, or cruel love interests
• Fans of stories where good people are rewarded for being good
• Anyone who wants to feel better about the world for a few hours

Content Warnings & Age Rating

Age Rating: T (Teen) Content Warnings: None significant

The cleanest, most uncomplicated reading experience on this list. Zero darkness.

Yu's Rating

Category	Score
Story Depth	★★★☆☆
Art Style	★★★★☆
Character Development	★★★★☆
Accessibility for Non-Japanese Readers	★★★★★
Reread Value	★★★★☆

Story Overview

Takeo Goda is enormous. He is built like a professional wrestler, has a face that frightens small children, and has never been liked by a girl in his life. Every girl he has ever liked has ended up with his best friend Makoto Sunakawa — beautiful, effortlessly charming, and completely indifferent to romantic attention.

When Takeo saves Rinko Yamato from a groper on a train, she falls in love with him. Not Suna. Him. Takeo does not know this. He assumes she must like Suna. He resolves to help her confess to Suna, because he is that kind of person.

My Love Story is the story of Takeo and Rinko getting together very quickly, and then being very happy together across 13 volumes. The obstacle is not whether they get together — they do, early. The joy of the manga is what their relationship looks like: two people who are completely sincere, completely supportive of each other, and completely delighted by each other's existence.

Characters

Takeo Goda — One of the great protagonists in shojo manga. His strength is used to protect people, his size is never played as anything but his, his kindness is absolute and not complicated. He is good in a way that is presented as genuinely heroic without being naive.

Rinko Yamato — A small, sweet girl who fell in love with someone's goodness rather than their appearance and knows exactly what she chose. Her certainty about Takeo is the emotional anchor of the manga.

Makoto Sunakawa (Suna) — Takeo's beautiful best friend, whose friendship with Takeo is one of the best male friendships in shojo manga. He is perceptive, quiet, and has been turning down every girl who insulted Takeo to date him. He is perfect.

Art Style

Aruko's art uses the contrast between Takeo's massive proportions and Rinko's dainty ones as a recurring visual joke and a recurring symbol of the relationship's inversion of norms. Takeo's face — drawn to be genuinely intimidating — becomes endearing through repeated exposure. The couple together is consistently drawn to emphasize the sweetness of their dynamic.

Cultural Context

The manga directly engages with the shojo convention of the beautiful, cool love interest and inverts it completely. Takeo is the opposite of every shojo male lead in appearance. The joke and the point are the same: the quality that makes someone worth loving is not what they look like. Rinko choosing Takeo over Suna makes this explicit.

What I Love About It

Suna. The friendship between Takeo and Suna is the best thing in the manga. Suna has been rejecting girls who talked badly about Takeo for years, silently, without ever telling Takeo, because Takeo would feel guilty. When Takeo finds out, across a quiet conversation, what Suna has been doing — it is one of the most moving moments in the manga. Not because it is dramatic, but because it is completely in character and completely unannounced.

I also love that this manga refuses to introduce artificial drama. Rinko and Takeo do not break up over misunderstandings. They do not drift apart. They encounter difficulties — the difficulties of two people from different worlds learning to communicate — and they talk about them, support each other, and move forward. This is radical.

What English-Speaking Fans Say

My Love Story is loved in Western fandom specifically as an antidote to standard romance manga tropes. It is recommended to readers who are burned out on cold love interests, manufactured drama, and extended will-they-won't-they. Western readers frequently describe it as "healing" — a word used in Japanese fandom that translates exactly for this manga. The anime adaptation is considered good but the manga is slightly warmer.

Memorable Scene ⚠️ Spoiler Warning

The scene where Takeo and Rinko have their first proper argument — about something real, not a misunderstanding — and what Suna says to Takeo about it, and how they resolve it, is the manga at its most true. Arguments in romance manga are usually manufactured. This one is about something genuine. Its resolution is something they both learn from.

Similar Manga

• Horimiya — Similar warmth; the relationship starts early and focuses on what it's like
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War — More comedic obstacle; less warm
• Ouran High School Host Club — Different subversion of shojo tropes
• Yona of the Dawn — Very different genre; similar quality of goodness in the protagonist

Reading Order / Where to Start

Volume 1. The couple gets together quickly; you are reading to see them be happy, not to see if they get together.

Official English Translation Status

VIZ Media published the complete 13-volume series. All volumes available.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• A romance manga that is genuinely kind throughout
• Suna and Takeo's friendship is one of manga's best male friendships
• Complete in 13 volumes with a satisfying, happy ending
• A direct and successful subversion of the cold love interest trope

Cons

• Low conflict by design — readers who want drama will not find it
• Some arcs feel slight compared to the main relationship's strength
• Rinko is less developed than Takeo in some volumes

Format Comparison

Format	Notes
Individual Volumes	Standard VIZ release
Digital	Works fine
Physical	Fine

Where to Buy

Get My Love Story!! Vol. 1 on Amazon →

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