Series Overview:
Vol 1 ★★★★☆
vol 2 ★★★★☆
Vol 3 ★★★☆☆
Vol 4 ★★★☆☆
Vol 5 ★★★★☆
Vol 6 ★★★☆☆
Vol 7 ★★★☆☆
Vol 8 ★★★★☆
Vol 9 ★★★★★
Series average: ★★★☆☆
Unlike many people here, I actually enjoyed the last volume's dream sequence. I would have liked for the volume to explore their college life for real and bypass the trope, but it was still nice to get a glimpse into their future lives.
This series had a lot of ups and downs for me. It started strong with the first few volumes, then went down in the middle, and picked up again with the last two volumes. It feels like the author tried to stretch it out for way too long, so the middle volumes were fairly uneventful/uninteresting and only served as filler.
I liked the J-drama, which is why I picked up the manga afterwards, but now that I've read the whole series, it unfortunately falls flat for me in many places. I think the drama did a really good job, and I still enjoy it very much, but the manga was pretty average.