となりの怪物くん

TONARI NO KAIBUTSU-KUN

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
13
RELEASE
November 22, 2013
CHAPTERS
69

DESCRIPTION

Mizutani is a self-absorbed overachiever, concerned only with maintaining the highest grades in school. Haru is an impulsive short tempered brute, who scares everyone with his explosive bursts of violence. Haru gets suspended on the first day of school when he encounters some bullies harassing a student and dispatches the bullies with great bloody violence. Mizutani is tasked with delivering school materials to Haru who interprets this as an act of friendship and latches on to Mizutani, much to her dismay. And so begins a strange and potentially combustible relationship!

(Source: Kodansha USA)

Note: Includes 17 bonus stories.

CAST

Haru Yoshida
Shizuku Mizutani
Asako Natsume
Kenji Yamaguchi
Mitsuyoshi Misawa
Souhei Sasahara
Yuuzan Yoshida
Chizuru Ooshima
Yuu Miyama
Masahiro Ayanokouji
Ryuuji Tomioka
Takaya Mizutani
Kyouko Misawa
Takashi Mizutani
Saeko Ninomiya
Iyo Yamaguchi
Issei Joujima
Shimoyanagi
Andou
Nagoya

CHAPTERS

RELATED TO TONARI NO KAIBUTSU-KUN

ANIME ComedyTonari no Kaibutsu-kun

REVIEWS

CGE
100/100
An emotional rollercoaster of laughter, tears, and more
My Little Monster does not have the most original plot or the most creative setting. The artstyle is beautiful, but nothing that special to blow my mind. In fact, the cast is just as cliche as any high school romcom manga or anime. Yet, Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun is the best manga I have ever read. Every single character has become to be such a unique and vivid individual, shaped by their interactions which each other and an extensive backstory. None of them were perfect in the beginning and you can argue that none of them were in the end either. But it was a beautiful experience to see them grow, watching them to understand the motive behind their own actions, and learning how to resolve them.

I have seen a lot of shoujo manga/anime and I have indeed gotten accustomed to cute kissing scenes and have generally tempered my heart to withstand a sudden sugar spike in my bloodstream.
Still, I was not prepared for this...

But aside from the cute interactions between Haru und Shizuku and my usual inability to resist the irrational emotions that I have for every MakeInu, it is the actual character drama that finally drove me to the decision to declare My Little Monster as my favorite manga of all time. It is not until very late in the manga, that we finally came to see that it was not only Haru who was making this decision difficult. We learned about the inner struggles of Shizuku that neither her nor the reader had discovered until Yuzan's birthday party (At this point, I want to briefly mention the goldfish problem which already revealed a part of her inner conflict early in the manga. Though the goldfish arc was not as momentous as the birthday party, it deserves to be mentioned nonetheless).

I like Sasahara's patience and restraint regarding his feelings for Natsume. I feel for Kenji's vain efforts to court Shizuku (This was some godly character-creation! How seamlessly Rubico combined Kenji's lazy/tsundere character with him gradually realizing how he felt for Shizuku. The reader gets the picture of the same cold Kenji who is madly in love with Shizuku without him showing these feelings! The inner conflict of being in love with a girl who has a boyfriend was depicted SOOO well! Love it!). Coming to think of it, Sasahara can still consider himself lucky to be in love with a girl who - even though does not love him back at the beginning - did not reject him. I don't think I have to mention how great Shizuku's directness is (and yet I did). Or Haru being the one undergoing the greatest character development in the manga (which is also one of the most interesting plotlines of the manga! He turns from this dependent humanoid appendage of Shizuku who beats up anything and everything elsa [fucking psychopath, the romance scenes were still cute though] to the more confident gentleman [being socially acceptable while maintaining his craziness] who in turn offers comfort to the initially strong and independent Shizuku).

The way how Rubico handled the creation, the solution, and the message of all the conflicts she included in her manga was perfect. In Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun, we only see the peak of certain conflicts while the clues that lead to them were sprinkled across the previous or even later chapters. As readers, only see the conflict itself and its solutions. Rubico made sure, that these plot-points were made likely enough that one could have foreseen them, if connecting the dots. However, she arranged them so brilliantly that everything makes sense after every arc without forcing the reader to work for his/her understanding, but also not patronizing him/her by directly giving all the clues away.

I really love how Rubico told this relationship-lesson through a manga. I normally don't like it when I find "lessons" placed in my entertainment, especially when they are as obvious as in My Little Monster. However, Rubico delivered her messages in a way that is both clear and ... digestible (? I apologize for poor word-choice, but this is the closest I came up with). I gladly stopped multiple times mid-chapter to think about mutuality in relationships, the various purposes and effects of 告白 (and how it does not have to end in the extremes of success or failure), the pace in relationships regarding physical intimacy, how seriously the self-concept of one could affect a relationship (and how wrong that self-concept often is), and how one's family could burden one's romantic relationships without one's noticing. I can go on and on. In fear of repeating myself, I want to emphasize how brilliantly this manga encourages self-reflection and what a pity it is that I haven't read it sooner.

My Little Monster is the most beautiful and relatable love story I have ever read. The story-telling is impeccable, having the most radical and smooth character development I have ever seen in manga/anime. I loved the emotional rollercoaster it put me on, making me burst into laughter at some times, and into tears at others. It was almost physically painful for me to part with all those people I have come to know over the 48 chapters.
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Phebe
75/100
A lovely romance, but one all the more confusing.
My Little Monster has a very unique side to it's development in romance. But not always in such a good way. I constantly caught myself asking, "how did this series even manage to release 51 chapters?" reading in as early as chapter 10. The series had developed SO much just in the first chapter, I felt like I had already read almost half the series in itself.

The series revolves around Shizuku and Haru, two characters who would eventually develop a love interest for each other. Eventually. Haru was seen as a scary delinquent inside of their school, making him reluctant to attend school and refused to return after being suspended for school violence. Shizuku was asked by her teacher to drop off their homework to Haru's house, which left Shizuku to being tied up into Haru's view of becoming friends. At first Shizuku was extremely against it, as she just wanted to study (which pretty much was the case for the whole series...) and never really bothered making friends with others. However, Haru viewed her as a new friend, and Shizuku had gave him courage to start attending school again, constantly being up against her hip and never leaving her alone. Before he even began finally going to school, Haru is convinced that he is definitely in love with Shizuku, and confesses to her. Might I remind you just a few panels before the confession he spilt his drink all over her because she tried explaining to him that his "friends" were using him, and he burst out of the diner they were in. ALL of this happens in the first chapter.

The romance development between Shizuku and Haru is... interesting. There was obvious mutual interest for almost half the series before they finally decided to make it official. They had kissed 2-3 times, had many romantic moments, and even confessed to each other twice. Yet somehow, in their brains, it never occurred to actually try "dating" until Haru started to get jealous that other guys were interested in Shizuku. Honestly, the series to me was just so all over the place with the different forms of love triangles, I felt myself just skimming all content that wasn't regarding Shizuku and Haru's romance. It wasn't interesting to me and really didn't give much of development towards their relationship other than Yamaguchi. Yamaguchi. YAMAGUCHI. He annoyed me so much I just skipped scenes every time I saw him. He was fully aware that Haru and Shizuku had a developing relationship, yet kept trying to push himself onto Shizuku thinking he had a chance. Eventually when Haru started to notice this and stepped in, that's when he got extremely self conscious and all "I'm never going to have a chance, am I?" type of self-rant. He was extremely full of himself and just made the series even more drama-filled and complicated than it needed to be.

These two.... I literally just cannot describe how confused I was with Natsume and Sasahara's development and relationship. It goes "I hate all men", "I'm a man but I'm different", and now they're in love. Huh? He tried helping her develop a relationship with Micchan (who couldn't accept her feelings since he was an adult and she was a teen), and Natsume just constantly got angry at him for whatever reason, but it just suddenly changed and I still don't understand how or why it happened. Suddenly they were just walking down the road holding hands. She would get angry at him every time he flirted or confessed his feelings to her, and at that point it seemed to be like some kind of joke to the two of them.

Compared to the anime, the manga is much more depressing and has a lot more drama. TOO much drama. It's like there's multiple things going on once while another one gets introduced, yet the main topic, Haru and Shizuku's relationship, keeps bouncing around almost every chapter. I was honestly extremely disappointed with how everything formed together.
Regarding the last chapter, I really wasn't happy with most of it. A new relationship formed, Shizuku's little brother and Chizuru, a fellow classmate of Shizuku and Haru who was first introduced as a love rival and had a crush on Haru. I thought it was cute to see Shizuku's little brother Takaya still have a small crush remaining from elementary school on Chizuru, but... I can't really describe it. Takaya knew Chizuru was dating someone for two years, she was his TEACHER, and he still kissed her without her consent. It put me the wrong way, very badly. He was 16-17 at the time and she was 5 years older than him, you'd think he would be more mature... Also, apparently Haru's older brother and Yamaguchi's younger sister became a couple too...? Honestly to me there was really no point in the wedding ceremony of Shizuku and Haru, it basically did nothing for us other than say "THEY EVENTUALLY GOT MARRIED", we don't see how their relationship changed/developed within those past 5 years or anything.... it's just a wedding with a couple of panels.

I'm upset with how quick the ending approached, to me there was loophole after loophole and sudden emotion/feelings conveyed that just didn't make sense to me. I wish they focused more on Shizuku and Haru instead of topping new love interests and new formed romances because to me it got way too hard to follow along.
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JadenAnimeMan2
65/100
A rare gem in some aspects but lacking in others
This review is a hard one to write. I say this because my experience with the series can best be described as a rollercoaster. To begin my review I should start from the top.

This manga started out really solid, establishing the foundations for our main leads, Haru and Shizuku. I must say from start to finish these two are easily the best written. Haru is a teenager who seems to have Asperger syndrome, a form of autism that makes social interaction difficult. The show makes this clear through his irrational actions, inability to read the mood, lack of social understanding, and eccentric actions and decision making when related to social interaction. Up until this point in his life, his way of expressing himself ended up being some form of violence. This how the story sets him up and he gets fleshed very well and in a progressive fashion. Next is Shizuku who is characterized as a loner who chose to isolate herself. She didn't feel like dealing with friends or basically any other people because she wanted to immerse herself in studying. Her family experiences caused her to develop a deep desire for financial stability. Similar to Haru, we learn a lot more about Shizuku progressively and see how big an impact the absence of her mother had on her. These two end up getting some great development that's spurred on by their dynamic with each other; Haru opened up Shizuku's world, while Shizuku broadened Haru's horizons. When they become an actual couple they were extremely cute and had good chemistry together.
The side cast was pretty solid too, Sasayan is an interesting case of the observant friend who takes a step back and looks at situations from an outside lens. Other than him we have Yuuzhan, one of the most well-written side characters in romance shoujo. In his limited time on screen, he becomes a great depiction of jealousy, envy, pressure, and how it can ruin your relationships and mental well-being. The rest of the side cast fits well besides Yamaken, who I will get to eventually.

Other than that there were some really nicely implemented themes pertaining to social ineptitude, unrequited love, personal mental struggles, self-worth, overcoming your past, and many smaller-scale themes too.

Now I will get into what drags this otherwise good manga: the love triangle, love rivals, Yamaken, and everything leading to the ending.

Let's get into Yamaken first; characterized as a narcissist with an elitist mindset. Nothing is particularly wrong with that portion(despite him already starting relatively unlikable) but how he gets implemented into this long-winded and useless love triangle is the biggest annoyance. The love triangle dragged this series by a lot; it always brought out the worst in Haru's character and some of the most infuriating dense Shizuku moments. We would waste chapters on end with Haru and Yamaken uselessly fighting for Shizuku, or waste chapters with Shizuku and Yamaken interactions that led to nothing but his ultimate rejection, TWICE. It was even more annoying the second time around because, with around only 9 chapters left, THEY BROUGHT THE LOVE TRIANGLE BACK FOR SOME USELESS DRAMA. And when I call it unnecessary, I don't mean it did nothing, I mean whatever it did could have been accomplished in a different and more efficient way. Let's just say, this love triangle almost made me drop the manga at times or bang my head against a wall.

The next big issue is the last four chapters excluding the ending. One chapter is a flash-through of their entire 3rd year, and the next three are events I really could care less about, maybe besides the Sasayan chapter but even that one didn't do much. It kind of felt like we wasted time despite Haru's character and the main romance needing a cleaner conclusion before the final chapter. The final chapter is half, a side romance I couldn't care about since it was fleshed out in 25 pages, and half the wedding. The wedding was cool and cutely wrapped up the story.

In conclusion, this was a very good manga, some of the best I've seen in the shoujo genre; a genre that is oversaturated with mediocre and generic reads. It tries to tackle several meaningful themes, give an interesting take on autism, a good romance plotline(excluding the love triangles), and a very solidly constructed cast.
Could this manga have wasted less time? Yes.
Could this manga have ended better? Yes
But did this manga accomplish and do things a lot of shoujo manga can't? Yes
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