28 chapters in, there's still nothing to care about. Things are happening, but we haven't been given any reason why we should be invested. Mizutani is training to fight her childhood friend, but given either outcome, what's the point? She doesn't have particularly much to prove, all the boxers are already aware of her ability. This childhood friend hasn't shown himself to be an asshole, or given really much of a reason for wanting to win either. We can infer that he wants to be able to stand up for himself since she used to defend him, but again there's no payoff in that; we don't have a reason to sympathize particularly with that goal of his. At some point, he will become stronger by default in any case.
Satoyama suffers from the same issue. In the other Adachi work I've read, Rough, there was an obvious point of conflict that carried the story; the feud between families and the question of whether their children would be able to resolve it. But Katsu has nothing like that. Typically a sports story works by having the main character work to be recognized, but there just aren't challenges that have been put in front of the characters like that here.
It gets a perfect 5 because it's a record of a series of events that happened, like reading a report. Nothing good, nothing bad. Did I to mention that the reader has no investment in it?
