My Little Monster volume 1


By Robico translated by Joshua Weeks (Kodansha Comics USA)
ISBN: 978-1-61262-597-3

Solidly appealing to lovers of traditional  Shōjo (“girls’ comics”) comes a grand and sassy tale of Right Girl, Right Time, Wrong Boy from enigmatic mangaka Robico, dealing with the thorny topic of wasteful distractions at school…

Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun or ‘The Monster Sitting Beside Me’ debuted in Dessert Magazine in 2008 with the first volume of a dozen collections appearing a year later. The serial ran until June 2013 and spawned a highly successful anime adaptation.

Shizuku Mizutani is a schoolgirl determined to succeed. Only one person has ever gotten higher grades than her throughout her entire scholastic career – and she’s still burned up about it – but otherwise she’s solidly – comfortably – set her sights on exceptional achievement and a great job and nothing’s going to force her off her well-planned, carefully projected course.

Her teen travails begin in ‘My Classmate Yoshida-kun’ as she explains how she’s never seen the boy who sits next to her. He got into a fight on his first day and hasn’t come to school since. That was three years ago.

Now for some incomprehensible reason the ideal student is stuck delivering printouts to the epic absconder as a “favour” (bribe) to teacher Saeko-Sensei. She finds him in the skeevy games arcade where he hangs out. Shizuku wasn’t expecting much, but Haru Yoshida fails to live up to even those low expectations.

He’s a veritable wild boy: manic, ill-mannered, actively extremely rude and his associates are little better than thugs and gangsters.

He even attacks her, accusing her of spying on him.

All the school rumours must be true; how he hospitalised three upperclassmen and was suspended…

The ice broken, Saeko then pushes her star student to lure the boy back to school (his suspension being long expired) but when he starts regularly attending tongues start wagging. He then arbitrarily decides they’re friends and begins to follow Shizuku everywhere…

She’s never been more angry or frustrated. He’s always there, distracting her, getting in the way of her future. She can’t stop thinking about him…

Following a brace of humorous of mini-strips ‘I was Running as Fast as I Could!’ and ‘Spot-Billed Duck’ the School Daze resume with ‘I Don’t Hate You’ as the apparently imprinted malcontent begins appearing everywhere she goes and captivatingly showing his softer, fragile side.

Unfortunately he’s painfully gullible and falls for many embarrassing pranks from his classmates which he responds to with devastating violence. Soon he has gained an irresistibly dangerous reputation…

He also seems to start noticing other girls, but why should Shizuku care about that? She’s far more upset to learn that he was the student who beat her test scores and that even after three years of skipping education he’s probably still smarter than her…

And now for some reason she’s finding it impossible to bear down and study, the only thing she used to be good at…

And then Haru kisses her… but decides they can still be friends anyway…

After micro strips ‘Because She’s a Lady’ and ‘It’s Hard Not to Say It’, the main event starts again with ‘Weird’, wherein the wild boy starts displaying the attention span of a mayfly.

Adopting and then palming off a chicken on his newfound friends and tutoring vacuous Asako Natsune so she can avoid going to Afterschool Classes instead of partying are bad enough, but most significantly he utterly ignores the change in their own relationship, or even that they have one…

Two small interludes with ‘Natsume and Haru’ then lead into the final chapter as Shizuku is forced to admit to herself how much Haru has changed her life. However when she finally confesses just how much she likes the annoying, confusing oaf, all he can say in response is that she’s not a ‘Nuisance’…

To Be Continued…

Wrapping things up are two final cartoon vignettes ‘Just as Short’ and ‘That Guy’, plus a Comment from the author and a section of handy Translation notes.

Sweet, cruel and silly by turns, this is a delightful coming of age comedy, brimming with those crucial, critical moments that stay with you for decades after high school ends, but cleverly leavened with light charming characters and situations all superbly illustrated by a master of the genre.

Not everybody’s cup of tea but sheer poetry for those of us who remember love can – and should – be fun.
© 2009 Robico. English translation © 2014 Robico. All rights reserved.

This book is printed in ‘read-from-back-to-front’ manga format.