Ever grew up closely with someone in your childhood, only to drift apart once you grow older? I feel we've all had that happen.

The beginning half is rather slow and rocky. It starts off episodic, introducing the cold dynamic between Minato and Toru. But once you keep watching, it becomes a lot better. Minato basically ends up dressing as her high school self, "Mina," and bumps into Toru on the street. And from there, Toru asks her out because she looks like his first love.

The story becomes a lot deeper than your basic shoujo/josei. It's supposed to be cringey because Minato is pretending to be someone else. Once Mintato accidentally dates Toru, she learns there's more to Toru and she starts examining what she's been missing out on their relationship. They're step siblings that basically don't get along. While she's with him as Mina, she starts grieving over what she could have had with him: he could have actually been in her life instead of her pushing him away. At the beginning, she even tells Toru to not talk to her while they're attending the same college. As the story progresses, you learn that Toru is the reason why she's a germaphobe and why she incessantly cleans.

I found that to be a lot more interesting. She met Toru as a child but once they grew up, they drifted apart. She basically thinks that Toru doesn't like her, not even as a person. I can feel the deep longing Toru had for Minato. It came across as purer. My heart did skip a beat. The ending felt a lot more romantic; I was so turned off by the way the manga handled the ending.

The manga is funnier than the movie, but I'm glad the story was streamlined, without taking anything away. It takes volumes for Toru to find out she's pretending to be Minato, whereas in the movie, Toru has a brain. The love triangle didn't drag out as long as it did in the manga. And I'm glad that Minato put down a lot of boundaries while she was dating Toru as Mina. The manga was a lot more graphic in the romance scenes, and I found that to be too much to handle. Whereas the manga didn't sell me on their relationship, the movie did.

I wished there was your classic love confession. I get that Minato's been wanting to know what Toru really thinks of her. They basically apologize to one other, explaining their feelings: how they both thought they had hated each other, which makes sense. But where was the love confession? We get it on Toru's end, that he's been in love with her since they met. But we didn't really get that on Minato's end. Because that is kinda a big bomb to drop, when she's assumed he's hated her all this time! Toru assuming that she's ok with it. But what if she wasn't ok with that???

Toru's the better love rival than her "so called male friend" who forced her to go to a hotel with him.

My verdict: skip the manga and stick to the movie. The manga did better in the beginning chapters, but the movie made the story a lot more concise and tolerable.