Desperate March for Love Review
A Moody Muddled Mess of Good Ideas that Barely Hold Together
Hello Yuri Enjoyers!
Happy Pride Month! I’ve been partying it up a lot lately, and damn, it’s been amazing! Making friends, going to events, and enjoying the summer air is something I’ve been craving for months, and now that it’s finally happening, I’m kinda bummed that I can’t read more Yuri and write more reviews!!
While I might not be reading quite as much, I sure as hell am pushing to share Yuri with more people. I started a book lending program with a group of other transgender people in my local community, and it’s been a magical time sharing stories, making recommendations, and hearing other reader’s thoughts in person. This Substack feels like it has been a stepping stone to that goal, and for that, I am so grateful.
I hope you’re getting out and enjoying the summer, but for now, enjoy the review!
Desperate March for Love
The Yuri genre is no stranger to dark topics and themes. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that for every bright love, there is a dark despair, I will admit that a bit of shadowy drama can highlight the joy and hope of Yuri in many circumstances. The balance needed between positivity and negativity is a slippery slope, often leading to overly edgy and eye-rolling absurdity when too many dark topics are thrown in.
Desperate March for Love strikes me as a poignant example of a story that puts a bit too many eggs in the dark topics basket. While the story has many great attributes holding it up and clearly had a story it wanted to tell, it’s apparent that somewhere along the line, cuts were made, the careful balance was thrown off, and what was left ended up barely holding together.
Background
Desperate March for Love is a standalone Yuri manga written and illustrated by Michika Tomizawa. The volume was published by Kadokawa in 2023 before being brought to an English audience by Yen Press in 2025. The translation was well done with no notable issues I can recall.
Plot
Desperate March for Love follows Rei, a high school girl who is in love with her friend Ami. Rei confesses her love for Ami in a desperate attempt to, at the very least, get rejected so that she can move on from her feelings and put distance between her fickle and teasing crush. To her surprise, Ami says she likes Rei too and they should date, but Rei is quickly struck with the realization that Ami is not on the same page about their relationship in almost any way. The rest of the story follows Rei as she struggles with Ami’s flighty behavior, the dark undertones to Ami’s actions, and her own internal feelings as they grow in twisted ways.
As a whole, Desperate March for Love wobbles between very different vibes, often landing in silly, high school girl antics, but every time the reader gets comfortable in that groove, the story will depict some deeply painful feelings. While the story inevitably moves back into silly antics, I couldn’t help but feel thrown around by the sudden shifts in tone. The pace of the story adds to this feeling of being jostled around. Due to the brevity of the manga and the scope of the plot, it often feels like a lot of detail and a lot of time to develop the characters was lost, leaving the audience with the bare minimum needed to have the story make sense.
The manga plays into many tropes of the Yuri genre, specifically the tropes usually found in high school romance stories. Some of the tropes are well done here, and there is even a subversion or two. Generally, the tropes worked in the favor of the story’s structure and goals of pulling the reader back and forth between silly antics and serious melodrama and darkness.
Themes
Because of the lean nature of Desperate March for Love, the themes are extraordinarily barebones, and to be honest, hard to really find. The start of the story seems to follow a theme about the importance of communication, but that quickly breaks down into physical violence due to a truck-load of hidden details. Then, it almost seems to take a theme of intense, spontaneous expression of love (sometimes in a bad way) being the key to kindling their relationship. This also breaks down to an extent, but ultimately ends up being the avenue the story takes to reach its “happy ending”.
Between all of this, there are moments that the story delves into traumatic topics of abandonment and how it leads to unhealthy habits around love, friendship, and connection. While this can be a good theme to cover, Desperate March for Love doesn’t delve into the nuances of abandonment, instead using it as a quick justification for actions taken and leaving all the details in the background to be pieced together in a very vague way.
Ultimately, the themes of the story suffer from a lack of time and details for such a sprawling collection of interesting topics and characters. It’s clear that Tomizawa had a lot of ideas, but either due to publishing issues or disinterest, collected the major points together and strung them together so they at least made sense. Nothing feels particularly cohesive with theming or deeper meaning, so the manga remains a surface level drama that has little to offer intellectually after the surprise of the first reading.
Characters
The characters of Desperate March for Love are somewhat interesting, but sparse and have little going on to make them feel dynamic. There are five characters with any relevant role to play in the story, and even then, they are generally straightforward.
The main character, Rei, is quickly set up as a very emotional and somewhat irrational girl, having outbursts of sadness, anger, and frustration on the regular. By the end of the story, this remains almost entirely the same. Rei’s friend, Yuri, acts solely to move the plot along and encourage Rei as she struggles to understand and tolerate Ami’s behavior. Aono-Sensei is the school’s biology teacher and is almost entirely there to facilitate the drama and tensions between Rei and Ami in a very inappropriate way that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense overall. Ami’s Mom is barely present as a character but plays a role in Ami’s backstory and as a justification of sorts for Ami’s behavior.
And then there is Ami, the character who will either be the reason you read this manga or the reason you hate it. Ami’s whole character is built around the fact that she has no clue how love and relationships work (or she knows and wants to seem oblivious). She is avoidant to an extreme degree, yet throws herself into relationships of all kinds for whatever they can offer her. She buries herself in friends and trips and food, and yet she doesn’t genuinely get close to anything for fear of being hurt and abandoned. She is riddled with trauma, and yet it’s notable that the moment she seems to break from this in a meaningful way is when she goes through one of the more egregious events of the story. When it comes down to it, Ami holds a lot of darkness within her, and while it tends to be the most compelling part of the story, it isn’t done with nearly enough tact, detail, and nuance to make it a satisfying arc from start to finish, especially when so much of her change is done behind the scenes, only for us to be told about it in retrospect.
Illustration
The most impressive part of Desperate March for Love is the art. The manga takes on a very moé style (intensely cute and often childlike), with expressive faces, detailed designs, and lots of fun flourishes that make the art shine. The art is somewhat effective at letting the reader settle into the cute and silly moments before throwing in darker drama that undercuts all the wholesome sweetness. Tomizawa’s flexibility with the art is genuinely impressive, and it’s the primary reason why I wish this story were given more time to breathe and set up its plot. The background art is of a high quality with plenty of variation that fits the mood of a given scene, and the flowery flourishes are, as always, appreciated.
One particular moment that happens near the end really touched my heartstrings, and funny enough, it wasn’t even a unique scene. It was the classic scene of cherry blossoms blowing in the open classroom window while a girl sleeps on a desk. Yet, the art Tomizawa drew for the scene made my heart hum. The gentle smile on her face; the petals fluttering in the gentle breeze; the light glittering in the air. It really touched me. Then, I remembered that I had just changed my hormone dosage the day before, and I realized that it probably wasn’t so much the manga itself that made my body get the warm fuzzies, but that I was processing estrogen in a way I hadn’t been before! All of this to say, the art is great, but also that I am likely to be way more emotionally affected by Yuri going forward.
How to Approach
This manga is an interesting case for the question on how to approach it. On one hand, I struggle to recommend it to anyone due to the shallow themes, the rushed plot, and the lack of meaningful characters. It feels like it would only be disappointing. On the other hand, I feel that a reader who likes a brief rollercoaster ride of dark drama with a complicated love interest and a good enough ending can find value in this story. While it’s not fantastic in most regards, it absolutely nails the moé style and has some great art, so at the very least, it’s a visual treat.
If you are sensitive to dark topics being handled poorly, I’d recommend passing up on this story, especially with the lack of nuance and possible misrepresentation of trauma and violence.
Content Warnings (Minor Spoilers)
This section will have some minor spoilers, but I will keep it to the necessary details some readers will need to know.
A high school girl has a relationship with a teacher who is retiring due to marrying an adult man.
Lots of cheating.
Physical violence in retaliation to cheating.
Characters with poor coping mechanisms to trauma and infidelity.
Abandonment Trauma.
Lying and manipulation.
Conclusion and Overall Ratings
Desperate March for Love is a mixed bag of good ideas that was poorly put together and needed more time to cook. With enough time and some better structure, the story could have been a very compelling drama that dove into dark topics in ways that some Yuri tends to steer around. Unfortunately, we ended up with something a bit too slim for the topics at hand. While I don’t think the manga is bad as a whole, and I look forward to what Tomizawa does next, I can’t give this work a recommendation unless you are especially interested in Ami’s character, can relate to her story, and value cute art above all else.
My overall ratings (Check Notes for category clarity)
Recommended Age: 15+
Absurdity: It’s a bit too goofy and the negativity is a bit too intense.
Depth: Little to find under the surface other than lost potential.
Drama: Can be quite heavy with the drama at times, but overall, compelling.
Romance: Quite toxic and dysfunctional, but ends positively and makes me smile.
Political: None. Nobody questions lesbian relationships in the slightest.