Is Love and Lies Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Quick facts
Format	Manga (shōnen)
Run	completed
Community score	MangaUpdates 6.5
Content	None significant
Where to read	Kodansha — official

Overview

In Musawo's near-future Japan, the government assigns every citizen a marriage partner the moment they turn 16, chosen by a compatibility algorithm built to raise the country's birth rate. Yukari has spent years quietly in love with his classmate Misaki, and on the eve of his own assignment, he finally works up the nerve to confess — only to learn the next day that the state has paired him with someone else entirely: his sickly, idealistic classmate Ririna. Love and Lies ran in Kodansha's Weekly Shonen Magazine from 2015 to 2022, including a hiatus partway through, and is licensed in English by Kodansha USA, with a 2017 anime adaptation covering part of the story.

What it does well

What elevates this above a standard love-triangle premise is how seriously the manga takes its own sci-fi conceit. The government-matching system isn't just a plot device to keep Yukari and Misaki apart — it's a genuine thematic question the story returns to again and again: is a relationship built on data and social utility less real than one built on a feeling you chose yourself? The manga doesn't pretend the answer is obvious, and that ambiguity is what keeps the love triangle from feeling like empty melodrama.

Ririna, the arranged partner, is the story's best asset. She could easily have been written as a simple obstacle standing between the reader's preferred couple, but instead she gets her own convictions, her own arc, and genuine reasons for believing in the system even as her feelings for Yukari complicate things. That choice makes the whole triangle feel more honest.

The dual-ending structure at the finale is a genuinely bold move — rather than picking a definitive winner and treating the other route as a loss, the manga commits fully to both outcomes as separate, valid endings, which suits a story built around the idea that there isn't one correct answer to who you're supposed to love.

Where it falls short

Yukari himself is the weak link for a lot of the run — he spends long stretches being pulled along by decisions other characters make rather than driving the story with his own convictions, which can be frustrating in a story so interested in the idea of choosing love deliberately. The government-conspiracy subplot around the marriage system's origins also doesn't always mesh smoothly with the character-driven romance; some chapters clearly exist to service worldbuilding rather than the emotional throughline.

The manga's hiatus left visible scars on its pacing too — the chapters after it returned move faster and feel more compressed than the careful buildup of the earlier volumes.

Verdict

This is a love triangle with real philosophical teeth, using its government-matchmaking premise to ask an honest question about what makes a relationship legitimate rather than just manufacturing jealousy for its own sake. The passive lead and some clunky worldbuilding hold it back from greatness, but the dual-ending finale and Ririna's arc make it worth seeing through.