Sep 26, 2025
In my opinion, it is best to be passionately or even atrociously bad than to be boring or generic. We all rant and rave about your rent a girlfriends, domestic girlfriends, works of fiction so baffling in their lack of quality that they're studied for generations to come even if only to be shat on.
Either way, replica datte koi wo suru or "even a replica can fall in love" (hereby shortened to Replica Datte) is the greatest example of this. This manga's most interesting aspect is almost nothing about what it has or does (aside from its premise), but what it doesn't do. Replica
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datte is an inherently simple and generic romcom manga, but the most interesting thing is to speculate about how it could've been way more ambitious and strived to tell an actually dramatic and emotionally resonant story.
The plot of Replica datte mainly revolves around the replica of a girl named Sunao Aikawa who we'll call Nao. Sunao uses Nao for a vast array of tasks like completing sports/physical tests, going to school when she's sick/injured doing her exams/homework and even making up with her friends after getting into a fight with them. Keep a pin in this for later but for now, Nao's entire purpose is to serve Sunao. Replicas shouldn't have emotions, desires or feelings beyond what the original has and so aren't really human. Throughout a lot of the story, Nao refers to herself as not human; she IS just a replica after all. Already, my writer's brain started itching at the possibilities. The way Nao's character is handled is rather fine. If given the opportunity, I would've made Nao into an Ice Princess archetype due to her false belief of her own lack of emotions, only really showing emotions that are Sunao's. However, the original's character work for Nao is already a good enough base for drama and development anyhow, so perhaps it should be left alone for now.
Back to the plot, Nao eventually meets Sanada-kun who joins her and ricchan's lit club where Nao and Sanada quickly fall in love and figure out that Sanada is actual a replica of the original Sanada (this replica shall henceforth be known as Aki). The romance in this manga is about as standard as you expect really; the allure of this manga was never in the romance aspect for me, but for the intrigue of the premise. As for Aki's character, i don't really have any problems. He's also just fine.
However, it turns out that Aki is covering for Sanada because he got injured by a senior in the basketball team and it's Aki's job to not only take Sanada's place in class but to defeat this senpai in a 1 v 1 basketball match. Of course, Aki wins, but immediately falls to the ground in pain and it is revealed that replicas take any illness and/or injuries of the original and this realisation should absolutely shatter Sunao's entire character.
Really think about it: this entire time Sunao had one very thin excuse that she's making Nao cover for her when she can't go to school, but now? She has no excuse. Nao has been enduring all of Sunao's pain and sickness while excelling in academics, sports and even romance. Nao is, by almost every metric, better than Sunao. Sunao is quite literally the worst version of herself. That realisation could break her. Sunao Aikawa is the original, but is she really? When compared to someone in such a higher league to her own, Sunao should be the replica instead. In fact, why is she even still here? Nao can do everything herself. All her friends, Aki and probably even family would prefer Nao. So what is the point of Sunao anymore?
That is one of the many avenues the story could've taken to actually create good drama. Sunao could be experiencing major impostor syndrome and an inferiority complex due to her reliance on Nao that digs her into an even deeper hole of making her rely more and more on Nao to the point where she feels like her existence isn't even justified. As for Nao, I would've made her a cold Ice Princess that learns to find her own emotions and be independent of Sunao while realising her own humanity. The inherent conflict between the 2 could be palpable and could've been absolute cinema and yet, that's not what the story did.
Instead, the conflict is resolved in less than a chapter and the manga rests into a typical romcom manga with a cute and wholesome couple. (After all the drama with the senpai, getting run over by that train and the seaside which honestly wasn't bad). There was limitless potential for this premise really that could've dealt with heavy topics that, while obviously exaggerated and dramatised, could still be relatable to many a reader. However, that's not what was made. There are dozens more reviews for this manga that could be written exactly like this, an exploration of what could've been and things that never were, but that only adds to my frustration at the sheer lack of any ambition. Truly, this could've been an amazing manga or at least a valiant effort, but it wasn't. This manga is the definition of painfully average
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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