My Little Monster

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.