The attraction of swelling complications and its consequential drama can find storytellers sitting on something with a great sense of mass. While when effective, it can sweep its audience off their feet, but, failing to inspire, relate or entertain can initiate a domino effect towards detachment, apathy, or disgust. Rumiko Takahashi’s first volume of Maison Ikkoku is an example of composing drama within humbler means. It aims its sights on a young student’s (Godai) infatuation with his boarding house’s newly appointed manager (Kyoko), a goal-setting plot that defines the story’s macro blueprint. However, it is in the narrative’s observant eye of the protagonist’s intrusive neighbours that raises criticism towards the mainstream domestic culture; a portrait that is as problematic and culturally grotesque as anything that I have recently consumed. I feel, at least currently, I am left with a story that pulls on my sympathies and repulsion through its presentation of its sets of characters. On the one hand, the former response was gushed upon its two romantic leads - knocked on its sparing tendencies towards a sexual male gaze - while the latter was generated from its manipulative and self-centred characters, deliberate in the lack of opportunities for insight or empathy. There is a clear distinction between Kyoko’s ideals and aspirations that is radiated in its storytelling, perhaps also as a means of also highlighting its depiction of society’s moral dichotomy. All packaged within a story that never feels lost in its ambitions, and with that, also came a feeling of being impressed. That being said, my hope is kept towards a story progression that is not reliant or preoccupied with its use of its problematic extended characters and instead sinks its teeth deeper into its two primaries.