One time, I kneed myself in the eye trying to do a push-up. Specifically an aztec push-up.

I’ve always been comically clumsy. In highschool, some dudes tried to bully me by nicknaming me ‘Goofy,’ which didn’t really work out because I liked it and it made my otherwise shitheaded smart-aleckiness endearing to some very pretty girls. It was a real doofus moe gap type thing that I didn’t know how to take advantage of because I was an eggy little queer who aspired for some weird frat bro-y aesthetic that was completely outside of my reach. This clumsy, bitter goblin schtick is no doubt part of what I hope is the more sincere presentation of myself I put forward today. There was a lot to regret about my teenage years, like anyone else, but I have the distance now to appreciate how much of a doofus I was.

“Itai Onee-san wa Suki desu ka?” is about loving doofuses. The manga is full of people who can't help but watch Itai Shiori, a grown-ass woman, fuck up constantly.

When it comes to someone who is comically pathetic, the pity you feel can sometimes warp into this almost paternalistic sadism. You see a kitten run into a wall too hard and you might find it precious instead of sad. You, of course, don’t necessarily want the kitten to suffer, but there is a perverse affection in your reaction to the accident. You can’t help it. You love them, so it rules when they fuck up.

This certainly isn’t unheard of in manga. It's the backbone of a certain type of Slice of Life. What Itai-san does particularly well is showing the people pulled into this loser’s orbit. It reveals how her constant failures don’t make her life any smaller than the lives of those around her. People’s lives are small. Ambitious people are small in ways the unambitious aren’t. Successful people find themselves lonely because they misunderstand how big a life can become. This isn’t to say that lives can’t improve, but rather that the idea of a good life, or even an interesting one, is murky.

Itai Shiori is not happy with her constant disheveling, and it would be dishonest of me to say that she’s happier than those around her. Neither I, nor the manga, is so flippant as to say the constant, often hilarious, mishaps in her life don’t cause her genuine moments of despair. I was struck by the occasional tonal whiplash of being reminded that she is a human being, that she wants to be loved and respected. There are moments of sadness that help build the framework of a more honest joy. The actual premise, discussed at the beginning of the series, is that Itai-san is frustrated with her complete inexperience with romance. She just wants to be an OL who falls in love with a young co–worker or something or other. She’s just too much or a weirdo to figure out what she’s doing wrong. It's a classic story about confidence and building it through friendships and mutual embarrassment. In that sense, the story is especially sweet, allowing its side characters to have brief moments of lucidity before defaulting back to their cartoonish preoccupation with our heroine.

With their relapse, we also get to flatten our heart to the simple joy of watching her be the biggest loser in the universe.