I feel like the author is kind of calling out general harems with the bonus chapter, and I love it. She made a work where the protag is aware of her sexuality, is interested in and interactive with each member of the harem, and each member of the harem as others have been discussing is into her for a different sense.
Compared to a decent amount of hetero harems, where the guy is generally unaware and dense, he's not actively into the harem members and so there's not a lot of back and fourth, the girls are also just into him simply because he's protag guy. There's also Reverse Harems (girl has guys that revolve around her, not sure if there's a better name), where from what I've seen of them they tend to have a lot of very abusive and mean guys, that for some reason are supposed to be love interests.
I don't want to be too generalizing here, as there's many works of all different kinds. So I'm only sharing some of my personal experiences, and also saying I'm so far loving how the author is handling this harem dynamic, but I guess we'll see how it goes.
I agree with all of this completely, and I like it a lot. My first anime was Tenchi Muyo so when I got into anime, I got into harem anime, and I liked it but as I grew up I kinda realized it's all.... bad? For the reasons you said above
So a manga that deconstructs it and reconstructs it is something I didn't really realize I'd like to see. And in that same vein I'd really love to see the polyamory end, possibly because I AM polyam, but also cause it's underrepresented and avoids some of those negative harem tropes. If they AREN'T going for the polyam ending though, my gut tell me either Smell will be the one who wins, or Touch will be. Smell because she's around MC the most, and Touch because First Girl Syndrome.
I had a dumb epiphany that I wanted to share:
There are in fact more than the standard fives senses that most people think of. I believe the standard sixth sense is balance. So clearly the high school crush needs to return and bring balance with her. Whether this means she’s the winner or she’s the poly stabilizer is up for debate. Also I guess the MC herself could be balance.
A very fun idea, and if I was writing this I'd prolly do it like this? The HS Crush is of course gonna come back, that's how these stories go, we don't leave that thread hanging forever, it has to be tied up. But I don't know if they'd go for that, not cause it's not a good idea... but I dunno, I get the vibe they wouldn't because when people think of the senses, they don't really think balance.