*This review contains plot spoilers about the ending of Scum’s Wish manga and anime* I have strong opinions on the ending of this manga included in this review so read at your own risk…I would love to discuss your thoughts so please feel free to comment with your opinion.

This manga is about two high school students, Hanabi and Mugi who share an unrequited love for their teachers, Akane and Narumi. Since they can never be with the person they love they decide to form a pact where they turn to one another for physical and emotional comfort instead. They both have their own emotional issues that challenge them throughout the manga.

I’m sorry but I was really disappointed with the manga and anime. When I first heard about this series, I was excited to see how it was going to turn out. After the first episode I was hooked, hoping they were going to find love together and I wanted more so I decided to read ahead in the manga.

If you want to check out this, I recommend you read the manga instead of watching the anime because some of the important underlying emotions of the characters were left out of the anime. To be honest if I had just watched the anime and not read the manga I would probably have accepted how it ended, but since I knew the characters on a more intimate level I just couldn’t. You can read the manga here.

Now there really wasn’t anything wrong with the ending of the manga, it made perfect sense with the direction the author was going. However, this manga was a little too realistic for me. I like to read manga and watch anime because of the fact that it’s not realistic and it provides me an escape from reality. In my opinion, the common themes throughout this manga like cheating, using others to satisfy sexual and emotional desires, and unrequited first love happen all the time in the real world and are painful so why would you even create a story around them in the first place unless you wanted to give people hope with a happy ending? To me, it’s pointless to even read something you can experience in real life unless there’s a different outcome. Hoping for this, I decided to keep reading.

If you haven’t guessed yet Hanabi and Mugi don’t end up together despite sharing mutual feelings. They decided to go their separate ways and find real love with someone else. I would have been okay with this if I would have seen a time skip of them meeting in the future and falling in love for real with each other or with them at least continuing to be friends and be in each other’s lives. I think that would have been a realistic approach because it happens all the time in real life where people meet early on, face some sort of conflict and get pushed away only to reconnect again in the future. I mean there wasn’t even a time skip of them finding love in the future with someone else, so I don’t feel like the ending provides any closure for the reader at all.

My other big issue is in the character emotions in the manga, not seen in the anime. Throughout the manga you can see Hanabi and Mugi’s love start to develop as they begin to see one another as more than just a replacement. At one point they were going to actually become a real couple after confessing and being rejected by the teachers they were in love with. What is even the point of getting the reader excited by showing them they care for each other only to have them go their separate ways in the end? It would have made sense if they were still using one another but their feelings begin to change and their bond was growing stronger after each chapter. I mean Mugi liked Hanabi so much he didn’t want to ruin her by having sex with her. She was one of the only women in his life he abstained himself from and that doesn’t mean anything to the author?

I couldn’t believe the psychopath teacher, Akane got a happy ending but the main character didn’t. She should have instead been thrown in prison to rot for having sexual relations with a student. I saw someone comment and say that this is the kind of thing that happens in real life. Um sorry, but I’m really going to have to disagree with that. Psychopaths can never be happy not matter what happens to them and they can never change. They can’t change, especially not for someone they love because they can’t love people in the first place. So I think it’s interesting Akane could suddenly love with Narumi but Hanabi and Mugi’s mutual feelings couldn’t grow and change as well? That’s one of the flaws I’ve found in this supposedly realistic plot.

Then you have Narumiwho wants to marry a psychopath who is going to cheat on him one day and create endless misery for him because she enjoys it but he unconditionally loves her anyway? He has some really low expectations for himself then. If I was Hanabi I would have given up on him a long time ago because he’s pathetic. I was so disappointed that there was a large focus on the relationship between the two teachers, the two characters I couldn’t care less about. The last few chapters really focused on their relationship which I personally felt were wasted chapters that should have focused on Hanabi and Mugi. I think I would have felt better about Hanabi and Mugi not being together had the teachers not been together too.

To end this review on a positive note, I really enjoyed the art of the manga and anime. The characters and physical contact scenes were drawn really well. In the anime, the use of lighting and contrasting between light and dark was amazing. I liked the idea of the plot as well, I only would have executed it differently had I been the author. The anime also had a great opening song, so props to the person who decided on that. It would make my list of favorite opening songs if I had one.

I watched this anime during the season it was released and noticed that it had a relatively high score on MyAnimeList going into the show but when it was over the score dropped quite a bit. Maybe some other viewers were disappointed like I was. If you enjoy good endings, whether they are happy or sad I wouldn’t recommend reading Scum’s Wish.