inverarity (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
inverarity) wrote2025-01-16 10:31 pm
inverarity) wrote2025-01-16 10:31 pm
Book Review: Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie, Vol. 1, by Keigo Maki
Izumi is an accident-prone dork, Shikimori is way out of his league.
Kodansha Comics, 2019, 160 pages
可愛いだけじゃない式守さん (Kawaii dake jya nai Shikimori-san) - literally "Miss Shikimori is Not Just Cute" - is a popular Japanese manga which like most manga has been made into an anime series. I watched the first episode on YouTube, and had the same experience as the manga: it's cute, and boring.
I picked up this book because I am learning Japanese and it was recommended as an easy manga for beginners.
Well, it started promising; I could read all of this!
My Japanese ability is still very low, so I was somewhat able to read it, with difficulty. The manga is clearly aimed at a young (middle to high school) target audience, so all the kanji have furigana notes to help children (and non-native Japanese readers) read them. I actually bought a physical copy of the English version, and a digital version of the Japanese version. I could generally get the gist of what was happening without looking up words or reading the English pages, but I didn't know a lot of the vocabulary, and since this is a manga about a teenage couple, they used very casual and idiomatic Japanese, which means the sentences aren't the formal Japanese grammar I have been learning from textbooks.
I was particularly interested in how the dialog was translated into English. It's usually not translated literally.
As for the story - it's a high school romcom, basically just sweet little episodic stories about Yuu Izumi and Miyaki Shikimori. Yuu is a hapless, dweeby kind of guy of the sort who is very popular in Japanese fiction. (I have noticed this in a lot of Japanese literature, from Abe Kobe to Haruki Murakami — the male protagonist is just sort of a passive Everyman to whom things happen and beautiful girls are inexplicably attracted.) Yuu has terrible luck - things fall on him, cars almost run him over, he gets sick, he gets food-poisoning... and Shikimori, a beautiful, cool girl who's way out of his league, is somehow totally in love with him and constantly acting as his protector, snatching things out of mid-air before they hit him, blushing and embarrassed when he compliments her.
Clearly it's meant to be cute and endearing, but I'm old and cynical and just wondered what Shikomori sees in him (he's nice, I guess). The stories, meant for kids dreaming of their own cool girlfriend, were pretty boring. Izumi and Shikimori go on a date! Izumi and Shikimori have to study! Izumi and Shikimori eat lunch together!
It was okay for Japanese reading practice, but I am not interested in reading another ten volumes of this. Unfortunately, Bookwalker is the only place I've found to easily buy digital manga in Japanese, and their recommendations look like this:
Approximately 10% "Demons and Vampires," 80% "Waifus and schoolgirls," and 10% "Demon and vampire waifus and schoolgirls." If my Japanese improves, maybe I can get better recommendations.
My complete list of book reviews.
Kodansha Comics, 2019, 160 pages
Shikimori seems like the perfect girlfriend: cute, fun to be around, sweet when she wants to be... but she has a cool dark side that comes out under the right circumstances. And her boyfriend Izumi loves to be around when that happens! A fun and funny high school romance with a sassy twist perfect for fans of Nagatoro-san and Komi Can't Communicate!
可愛いだけじゃない式守さん (Kawaii dake jya nai Shikimori-san) - literally "Miss Shikimori is Not Just Cute" - is a popular Japanese manga which like most manga has been made into an anime series. I watched the first episode on YouTube, and had the same experience as the manga: it's cute, and boring.
I picked up this book because I am learning Japanese and it was recommended as an easy manga for beginners.
Well, it started promising; I could read all of this!
My Japanese ability is still very low, so I was somewhat able to read it, with difficulty. The manga is clearly aimed at a young (middle to high school) target audience, so all the kanji have furigana notes to help children (and non-native Japanese readers) read them. I actually bought a physical copy of the English version, and a digital version of the Japanese version. I could generally get the gist of what was happening without looking up words or reading the English pages, but I didn't know a lot of the vocabulary, and since this is a manga about a teenage couple, they used very casual and idiomatic Japanese, which means the sentences aren't the formal Japanese grammar I have been learning from textbooks.
I was particularly interested in how the dialog was translated into English. It's usually not translated literally.
As for the story - it's a high school romcom, basically just sweet little episodic stories about Yuu Izumi and Miyaki Shikimori. Yuu is a hapless, dweeby kind of guy of the sort who is very popular in Japanese fiction. (I have noticed this in a lot of Japanese literature, from Abe Kobe to Haruki Murakami — the male protagonist is just sort of a passive Everyman to whom things happen and beautiful girls are inexplicably attracted.) Yuu has terrible luck - things fall on him, cars almost run him over, he gets sick, he gets food-poisoning... and Shikimori, a beautiful, cool girl who's way out of his league, is somehow totally in love with him and constantly acting as his protector, snatching things out of mid-air before they hit him, blushing and embarrassed when he compliments her.
Clearly it's meant to be cute and endearing, but I'm old and cynical and just wondered what Shikomori sees in him (he's nice, I guess). The stories, meant for kids dreaming of their own cool girlfriend, were pretty boring. Izumi and Shikimori go on a date! Izumi and Shikimori have to study! Izumi and Shikimori eat lunch together!
It was okay for Japanese reading practice, but I am not interested in reading another ten volumes of this. Unfortunately, Bookwalker is the only place I've found to easily buy digital manga in Japanese, and their recommendations look like this:
Approximately 10% "Demons and Vampires," 80% "Waifus and schoolgirls," and 10% "Demon and vampire waifus and schoolgirls." If my Japanese improves, maybe I can get better recommendations.
My complete list of book reviews.