By Spring is a short Drama, Romance and Seinen series that serialised between late 2019 to November of 2020 running for a little over one year. I found this series kind of randomly, no recommendation no nothing, one day I just kinda found it while scrolling through Mangakakalot, the artwork piqued my interest and I was kinda interested by the plot, so, I gave it a read.

[Story - 5/10]
The series follows a very basic premise, Middle school kid Souta who lives with his single mother, are living in near poverty and Souta (the absolute big brain) Spends his money on a rumoured prostitute who lives underneath a bridge. The story is pretty ok, some parts are way better than others some parts are way worse than others. The story starts off kinda slow but picks up steam as shit gets more intense at school, at home and with Haru (The rumoured prostitute). It has solid progression and there's certainly strings of events that lead to the climax of the story. Where the story loses me is just how rushed everything feels, I feel like I'm missing so many pieces to the puzzle that would make it so much more interesting. There was a relationship between Souta and a girl named Takasaki (this total bitch), a semi romance, and it looked as if Takasaki had some genuine feelings for Souta, as seen through a flashback. However I get this feeling that it was a scrapped idea so that we could have a generic villainous character. I got this feeling that there was so much more underneath the surface that just never got peeled back. There was also something at the end of the Manga that really miffed me, the message at the end seemed to be along the lines of "You can buy love" which is kinda of a stupid fucking message to be sending to your audience as the scenario portrayed in the Manga is something that wouldn't happen in 1 million years making the message seem kind of stupid.

[Art - 8/10]
Easily the best part about the manga, the art looks really nice. It's not as mesmerising as watching Araki Hirohiko paint with watercolour, but it's still gorgeous. The characters look very nice and the art is good. Well done mangaka.

[Characters 4/10]
The characters are bad, to put it simply they are characters that I cannot sympathise with. Souta and his mother being poor is a struggle that I can totally sympathise with, but the actions that they do within the story just rub me the wrong way, it goes like this for literally every character. Souta is a child living in poverty, he's 14 years old, he should know that his family is poor, and he does, he very clearly acknowledges this. Yet this absolute fucking big brain decides that he wants to have sex, so he gives away all of his money to a prostitute. What? I don't care if Haru is the most PG rated prostitute in the world, Souta acts like a dumbass, It's hard to sympathise with a characters who acts like a dumbass to create unnecessary drama for himself. The mother is much more sympathetic, it's clear that she loves her son and provides for her family the best way she can, to an almost destructive point. But this kind of goes back to the point of the characters feeling unsympathetic, for a woman who was betrayed by her husband, left barely surviving, she just makes everything harder for herself, she acts so fucking stupid. For example, Souta's mother is a sex worker, a pick up girl, a job she hates, here's some food for thought, you're telling me that in suburban Japan, near a city, there's no part time jobs that need workers, they say in the manga you went to college so I'm sure you could get a Job, this way you would have a constant stream of income and would be able to spend time with your son (whom you claim to love) because you have normal working hours and aren't expected to work erratic hours at the convenience of others, plus it's more stable. But no you decide on sex work, the one thing you hate and despise because your husband betrayed you by getting a fucking hooker. It honestly feels as though she is being hypocritical for hypocrisy sake, this is all the illustrate the point that the writer made the mother hypocritical for what is basically stakes in the story because they couldn't think of other ways to implement stakes into the story. Haru is the other character, she is the rumoured prostitute who lives under the bridge. Out off all the characters she is the one that makes me the most confused. So basically she gets money off this kid, even though she is rich. Ok well maybe theirs a justifiable reason for this? But apparently not because the reasoning for this is that She has daddy issues and doesn't want to go to college? What? If I'm not missing something here, thats a really, fucking stupid reason and is another point that adds to the fact I can't feel sympathy for these people. The last character I would like to talk about it Takasaki, Takasaki is a popular Beautiful girl at the school Souta goes too. At the beginning it seems like she is a kind and nice character who likes Souta because he showed some kindness to her. And that's exactly what she was, until she pulled some fucking bullshit 180 and went like full Yandere until her great anime betrayal nearing the end of the story. Now she was obviously upset about Souta being with Haru, but that seemed to be because she liked Souta, until she pulled some fucking 180 and went psycho. My question to her is why? You act like your head over heals for Souta then when he finds that he doesn't like you, you throw him under the bus and get him fucked. You might think? But isn't she supposed the be a villain? And that's what confuses me, to me she didn't seem as if she was presented as a villain, more like a love rival, the part where she throws Souta away would make so much more sense if you established her character that way. Anyway in the end the entire cast struck me as a bunch of unsympathetic cunts who act completely retarded for what is no absolute reason.

TL;DR / Summary
This manga had some great potential, I thought it had an interesting concept and I think that the artist is very talented, but it seemed to fall short with some lacklustre characterisation and sub par storytelling

[Overall/enjoyment - 5/10]
I think that if this story had more time to fully develop it's ides it could have been really good, but as it stands it' s a mediocre Seinen rom-com with some very nice art.