We Were There is a pretty big romance series that was featured in manga format. The fact that I’m reviewing a romance manga means that I may have finally gone over to the other side…or this is going to be a preeeeetty negative review. Either way you should take note that I’m not a fan of the romance genre, so while the manga may sound bad in my review, you may still like it. It all depends on how much you like romance and drama.

All right…this is one of those manga series where it’s a little hard to talk about the plot without spoiling it as well since they connect to each other. Well, I’ll give it my best shot and divide the series into two parts. The first past of the series is about Nanami and how she becomes friends with Yano. At first Yano is rude to her, but eventually she gets him to start being a better person. It’s very emotional and the arc has a pretty intense ending. Honestly, if the series had ended there, it would definitely have had a much better ending.

Arc 2 is arguably still about Nanami, but she has to share her screen time a whole lot. We get some new characters like Sengenji who get their own mini plots inside of the real plot. The “real” plot is very intricate, but I’ll at least mention some of the parts of the plot. Nanami is trying to cope with the realizations that come from the first arc, but now one of her friends is trying a little too hard to be friendly. Will she have to tell him the sad facts of life? Yano is a mystery at this point and the volumes all keep hinting at what may have happened to him….what did happen to him!? Sengenji got the title of “Beauty and Brains” which was pretty cool for her at first, but it got annoying after a while. Can she stop someone from calling her this?

So, there’s the plot in a nutshell. It really is in a nutshell this time because I didn’t mention many of the numerous plot twists or subplots that are in the manga. There are certainly a lot of them, so you need to always keeps a sharp eye and have a lot of caffeine so that you don’t fall asleep while reading! It’s not that the series is boring, but the fact that there is so much romance!

All right, this is a romance series so should I expect any less? Well, I do expect the manga to balance romance with plot, but this series goes a little too far. You can rarely go a single chapter without some kind of romantic plot advancing. One of the only characters who isn’t affected by this is the dog and he’s the best character of the series!

Artwise, the series is decently good. It’s not going to win any awards on my watch, but it’s good enough. The panels are clear and you understand what is happening, but there aren’t any big fight scenes to test the artist’s ability. The series nearly lasted for 20 volumes which would have been impressive since that’s something that shonen series tend to do. (And Skipbeat)

Let’s go into the characters, although you can likely already tell that I don’t like any of them. Nanami is the protagonist and while she may be a nice kid, she ends up hanging with the wrong crowd. She could have been a great person and gone on to revolutionize the editing world, but Yano and the others dragged her down to their level. It was a never ending cycle where they would hurt her feelings and then she would hurt them back. It just wouldn’t stop and that should have been a sign for her to get away from them.

Yano is one of the other main characters and he’s pretty awful. Yano is definitely not a great character and he makes more mistakes than I can count. Some of them are completely unacceptable and show why he’s not a very honorable person. If we placed him in a manga like Yugioh, he wouldn’t last a minute! We’ve also got Takeuchi and he’s not very good either. Granted that he’s better than Yano, but not by much. He nearly wrecks his friendship with one of the characters and he was very pushy throughout the whole series. He should really know that he has no chance and he should just stick to having fun at his job. He’s definitely a lot nobler than Yano, but again….that’s not saying much.

Yuri is another one of those characters who seems to be here for the sole purpose of dragging other characters down for the count. Yuri manages to take on several characters throughout the series and she never really has any good reasons. She gets a sob story like the other characters, but it’s hard to sympathize with her decisions. She is one of those characters who never really got better as the series progressed. We’ve also got Nana who gets so many plot twists through the series that it’ll make you take a step back. What’s the true story behind her actions!?

There are other characters around, but you get the idea of the series. The characters are all pretty negative and not people that you would want to be around in the real world or even on the wired! So, the manga series doesn’t go so well because of the abundance of romance, lack of action, bad characters, and the fact that there aren’t any things that you can take interest in.

Overall, this definitely wasn’t my kind of manga. You can probably tell already since a manga review with 10+ volumes will usually be a lot longer than a mere 1K words. That being said, if you are a romance fan then you’ll possibly like it. It depends if you will end up minding the destruction, drama, and sad things that end up happening to the main characters all the time. Personally, I would not recommend this manga and would instead point you over to Tsubasa. It’s the closest thing to a romance that I would highly recommend at this point unless you count Bleach.

Overall 2/10