Forget whatever I said about being over shoujo and moving on towards josei. I've come to realize that I might never grow out of shoujo. Is this a bad thing? Should I be concerned for my stunted maturity? I don't know. All I know is that when I drop my younger sister off at camp or swimming I always 100% of the time get mistaken by at least one teacher as her mother. So I must in fact look like a 38 year old soccer mom when in fact I'll only be 20 years old. How lovely. But that's another story.
{Spoilers}
The reason I say that I'll never get over shoujo is not just a gross blanket statement to cover up my lack of romantic maturity. In actuality, it was because I was so charmed by this manga. It's not like it wasn't anything I had never seen before...actually that's a lie. The story revolves around the constant mystery of what Nekota's face actually looks like. To everyone besides Mikiko, Nekota looks like a perfectly normal kid, but for some reason Mikiko can't see it? They never really explain why she wasn't able to see his head, which leaves you to wonder if it was fantasy or perhaps her coping with her mental state.
It was an incredibly touching manga. It wasn't anything ground-breaking, but there's just something about the innocence of childhood romance that really ticks all the boxes for me. The story itself starts when our main characters are all in sixth grade. They're all super small and really just children that have yet to experience growing up yet. And there's something really nostalgic about that feeling of being in elementary school and just having fun playing with your friends. It's especially heartwarming when you realize that it's Mikiko's first time making friends since she's constantly had to move and thus voluntarily(?) isolates herself from the other kids. So, at this school with friendly people and a cat-faced classmate, Mikiko is able to have fun playing dodgeball with everyone, giving out Valentines, and going on class trips together. Again, I know it's nothing revolutionary, but the way the story is told and the whole persona of Mikiko makes you fall just a little bit in love.
Lowkey though I read this so fast because I just wanted to see Nekota's face.
The most frustrating part of reading this manga was how close Mikiko always got to seeing Nekota's face. I mean we met his little sister who apparently looks like him, but it's not exactly the same thing. And it's not exactly crystal clear how Mikiko is able to see his face in the end, maybe it's because she realizes that Nekota was her childhood friend? Maybe it's because she realized her romantic feelings for him? In any case it's really pure when she realizes that she's loved him for so long without realizing it.
I think if you were their age and transitioning from sixth grade to middle school alongside them, it would be a really relatable experience. Like when Mikiko is going to middle school and she realizes how everyone's growing up and becoming different than when they were children and how she had to cope with that realization that nothing was stagnant. I think that's the thought we all have when we experience puberty and adolescence. There's this sense of inexplicable loss for something you didn't know that you had. But this opens up new avenues in their lives for each of the characters to discover a little bit more about themselves and to unpack their new-found feelings. Especially Nekota and Mikiko.
Honestly this manga really brought me back to how pure young love is. They're so cute with how they treat one another and the whole dynamic of their romance. It's hard to explain, so you should just read the manga yourself and develop the uwu's as well hehe.
Would I recommend this manga? For sure. It's got a really well-developed story with an energetic cast that you can watch grow up throughout the volumes. It's not solely about romance like some shoujo, but also has solid explorations of themes like friendship as well.
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