Well, to be honest, this is my first time writing a review. The main reason why im doing so for this manga is because I find that most of the reviews here range from extremely good (10) to extremely bad (3) and it shouldn't be. Pardon my frustration, I read this series in a day because I saw the good reviews and wanted to get to the core of what was so good about this manga. Sadly, I can't say it is even remotely close to being perfect.

Firstly, I have to say there is potential in the story. Because it has a slight mixture of time trips, but that doesn't put it apart from the usual romance manga. I really have no objection to cliches, but the fact this story tries to get out of the cliche zone is its main flaw. The execution is lacking and emotions built up are shallow.
Therefore , Story: 6/10

Secondly, the art is by far one of the more aesthetically pleasing ones. It's really beautiful to look at and the characters are designed well (in terms of art) Not to mention the 'movement' of the characters isn't quite that stiff, so it's a great read in the light of art^^
Hence, Art: 8/10

Let's come to the real dread and most ungainly part of this story. The character development is a near nil. Naho (main) has literally no other emotions other than guilt and regret, she has two close friends and they are hardly utilized to built that type of emotional togetherness. It was as if they were pasted into the manga to look pretty. I honestly liked the idea of takako and azusa, but nothing was done, they were very flat characters.

How is it possibe Orange is above Kimi ni Todoke, if anyone recalls kimi ni todoke, Yano , Yoshida , Sanada and Kurumi were given their own roles in the story, they had lots of lines as well, because of the feelings they had and their contrast with the main character,brings out the good emotions. Whereas there are very little shits given about the side characters in Orange. Kakeru (main) confuses me, I get he is playing the role of changing factor of the tragedy, but I can't feel his pain, his expressions vary from anger to sadness to happy. No bittersweet, sour looks, frustration or relief.The fact that his interaction with Naho does not move their relationship further at all, neither do we get to know more about them, shows how bad it is. There is a relentless amount of the common scenes thrown across the book, if they were real and in a relationship, it looks as though they had no opinion of each other, no build up to their romance, no anger towards each other (even when they do, its one sided and never develops into anything big).

No quarrels= No further understanding
No friendship breaks or built = No personality, no backstory
Tears, tears and more tears over the same topic across all 5 volumes= A reader that's losing hope

Naho is meant to be a sweet and docile girl, that's a good thing. But the story makes her robotic. The fact that she has *small spoiler*

a child and is married in the future but still treats her husband and friends as a secondary to her past decisions...

Makes her more indecisive and seemingly a person that never learns from her mistakes, never lets go and has only a narrow way of thinking. Suwa clearly likes Naho, hence he gets more lines than Takako and Azusa but only for a small period of time before the story drops back to Naho and Kakeru's repetitive talk. If this was a novel, it would be a mere thesaurus of synonyms.

This is why I felt Character should be given a 2.

As much as I hate how high up this manga is, I'm not going to give it a horrid score so that I can pull it down, because logically that's not even possible. And besides, I can see the effort put in the manga, all the characters have strong potentional, their expressions and mainly their forsaken backstories were well thought of, but we readers get nothing but a glance. I'd say enjoyment is fairly fine if you take into consideration the fluency of the pages and its initial 'beauty'.

But srsly its a 6 , it's not gross because it has good art and reading for the fun of it is not that bad