i think arata iri puts a lot of effort into writting her characters a lot of ppl like to trash the side characters on tovarisch but i think they´re really well written, all of them have well defined personalities,they work really well as a group and the way every characters act differently depending on who they are talking to is something i rarely see on manga,
tovarisch feels really rushed to me. it's clear that all the characters are well designed, but they didn't have time to breathe. seemed like too much content was squashed into too few panels, and as a result it was extremely chaotic.
this series by contrast has had enough time to explore the entire ensemble cast, and its much better for it.
i really wanted to like tovarisch, since i like the characters, but it just wasn't readable for me. i couldn't follow the action and conversations from panel to panel.