{"id":29328,"date":"2024-02-02T09:00:38","date_gmt":"2024-02-02T09:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=29328"},"modified":"2024-01-31T16:37:07","modified_gmt":"2024-01-31T16:37:07","slug":"my-little-monster-volume-1-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2024\/02\/02\/my-little-monster-volume-1-2\/","title":{"rendered":"My Little Monster volume 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nBy Robico<\/strong>, translated by Joshua Weeks<\/strong> (Kodansha Comics USA)
\nISBN: 978-1-61262-597-3 (Tank?bon PB\/Digital edition)<\/p>\n

Solidly appealing to lovers of traditional Shoujo<\/em> (\u201cgirls\u2019 comics\u201d) 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\u2026<\/p>\n

Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun<\/em><\/strong> or \u2018The Monster Sitting Beside Me\u2019 <\/em>debuted in Dessert Magazine<\/strong> in 2008 with the first of a dozen volumes released a year later. The serial ran until June 2013 and spawned a highly successful anime adaptation.<\/p>\n

Shizuku Mizutani<\/em> is a schoolgirl determined to succeed. Throughout her entire scholastic career only one person has ever gotten higher grades than her – and she\u2019s still obsessively burned up about it – but otherwise she\u2019s solidly, comfortably set her sights on exceptional achievement and a great job. Absolutely nothing\u2019s going to force her off her well-planned, carefully projected course. Her teen travails begin in \u2018My Classmate Yoshida-kun\u2019<\/em> where she explains how she\u2019s never seen the boy who sits next to her. He got into a fight on his first day and hasn\u2019t come to school since. That was three years ago\u2026<\/p>\n

Now, for some incomprehensible reason, the ideal student is stuck delivering printouts to the epic absconder as a \u201cfavour\u201d (you can say \u201cbribe\u201d) to teacher Saeko-Sensei<\/em>. Shizuku finds him in a sleazy games arcade where he regularly hangs out. She wasn\u2019t expecting much, but Haru Yoshida<\/em> fails to live up to even her lowest expectations.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s 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 those school rumours must be true: how he hospitalised three upperclassmen and was suspended\u2026<\/p>\n

Ice satisfactorily broken, Saeko-sensei pushes her star pupil to lure the wayward boy back to school (the suspension being long-expired) but when the rebel starts regularly attending, tongues begin to wag. Haru then arbitrarily decides they\u2019re friends and follows Shizuku everywhere\u2026<\/p>\n

She\u2019s never been more angry or frustrated. He\u2019s always there, distracting her, getting in the way of her ideal future. She can\u2019t stop thinking about him\u2026<\/p>\n

Following a brace of humorous of mini-strips – \u2018I was Running as Fast as I Could!\u2019<\/em> and \u2018Spot-Billed Duck\u2019<\/em> – the School Daze resume with \u2018I Don\u2019t Hate You\u2019<\/em> as the apparently imprinted malcontent continues appearing everywhere she goes and captivatingly showing his softer, fragile side. Sadly, he\u2019s painfully gullible and falls for many embarrassing pranks from his classmates \u2026which he responds to with devastating violence. Soon Haru has gained an enticing, irresistibly dangerous bad boy reputation\u2026<\/p>\n

He also starts noticing other girls, but why should Shizuku care about that? She\u2019s far more upset to learn that he was the mystery student who beat her test scores and that even after three years of lapsed education, he\u2019s (probably!) still smarter than her!! Now for some reason, she\u2019s finding it impossible to bear down and study, the only thing she used to be good at\u2026 And then Haru kisses her\u2026 but decides they can still be friends anyway\u2026<\/p>\n

Micro strips \u2018Because She\u2019s a Lady\u2019<\/em> and \u2018It\u2019s Hard Not to Say It\u2019<\/em>, precedes the main event which resumes with \u2018Weird\u2019<\/em>, wherein the wild boy displays the attention span of a mayfly. Adopting and then palming off a chicken on his newfound friends or tutoring vacuous Asako Natsune<\/em> so she can avoid going to Afterschool Classes instead of partying are bad enough, but most significantly Haru utterly ignores this major change in their own relationship, and even that they have one at all\u2026<\/p>\n

Two small interludes with \u2018Natsume and Haru\u2019<\/em> 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\u2019s not a \u2018Nuisance\u2019<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n

To Be Continued\u2026<\/p>\n

Wrapping things up are two final cartoon vignettes \u2018Just as Short\u2019<\/em> and \u2018That Guy\u2019<\/em>, plus a Comment<\/em> from the author and a section of handy Translation <\/em>notes.<\/p>\n

Sweet, cruel and silly by turns, this delightful coming of age comedy brims with those crucial, critical moments that stay with you for decades after high school ends, smartly leavened with charming characters and situations superbly illustrated by a master of her genre. Not everyone\u2019s cup of tea but sheer poetry for we who remember love can – and should – be fun.
\n\u00a9 2009 Robico. English translation \u00a9 2014 Robico. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Robico, translated by Joshua Weeks (Kodansha Comics USA) ISBN: 978-1-61262-597-3 (Tank?bon PB\/Digital edition) Solidly appealing to lovers of traditional Shoujo (\u201cgirls\u2019 comics\u201d) 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\u2026 Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun or \u2018The … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “My Little Monster volume 1”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[113,25,148,296],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy","category-japanese-comics","category-romance","category-school-stories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-7D2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29331,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29328\/revisions\/29331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}