[DeepL Translation - needs review] The special "Maria-sama ga miteru" color illustrations are included in the electronic version of the "Maria-sama ga miteru" version! Genji (red) or Heiji (white)? On the morning of his entrance into the Buddhist Hanadera Gakuin High School, Yukichi Fukuzawa is faced with a choice. He does not understand what it means, but the other new students go right and left without hesitation at the Genpei barrier (a forked road) that appears shortly after entering the...
Overall: Pretty decent start to the companion series for マリア様がみてる | L29. At least for this volume, no knowledge of that series is required (tho you'll recognize some familiar names, and a certain box; and enjoy Yumi's appearance). While I have some critiques (mentioned below), I overall really enjoyed this, and can't wait to read the next one!!
Language: besides the Buddhism-related vocab, I'd say the language difficulty is similar to (and maybe a bit easier than) マリア様がみてる. There's much less hyper formal speech, and this makes various things easier to follow. Otoh there's more rough speech, and that can be a bit hard to follow - but not too extreme.
Setting: In terms of setting, I found it a mix of interesting, intense, and disappointing. Yuuki attends 花寺学院 a Buddhist (浄土教 specifically) all-boys school. As one might expect - the testosterone is really flying, and it's a bit of a rough place. Anyway this school's main thing is that it's split into the jocks (源氏) and nerds (平氏), which is imposed on everyone from the moment they enter school. And everyone takes it way too seriously, and unforgivingly. This (amongst other things) will be quite the source of pain for our beloved protagonist.
Anyway I found that along with the almost complete lack of school staff (and the fact that they apparently don't see any issue you with such an extreme and overly simplistic division) kind of hard to buy. I also found the implementation of the 烏帽子親子 (Oboshi oya/go) system (Hanadera's analog to the スール system) a bit ridiculous. I did appreciate that there's a decent amount mentioned of Buddhist rituals and ritual objects. Safe to say tho, this is a far cry from the refined world of Lilian's Academy.
Plot: In terms of plot, the structure is pretty great, and the execution was mostly good. I was surprised the author chose to start it on Yuuki's very first day, but that was put to really excellent use. The incredibly endearing Yuuki faces some interesting challenges (with successes and setbacks), and the way he reacts to them is really enjoyable to watch. As you might expect, his equally endearing older sister (Yumi) puts in an appearance for a chapter, and is awesome. The supporting characters are pretty great too - they add a lot to the story, and all have very distinct personalities and relationships with Yuuki. I did find some of their actions a little hard to buy, given the timeframe - but I'll just write it off as "things move faster at Hanadera than Lilian's".
Where the plot lost momentum for me was in the last 1/4. The PoV character switches to Yuuki's nemesis, whose main personality traits are worshipping a certain individual Kashiwagi, Suguru - the student council president, and hating Yuuki for "stealing" the object of his affection, and is constantly angry - which would have been fine, if we hadn't already heard about it all book. Anyway it was setup for the next volume's arc - so I'll live.