Hi Anilist, I read all of I Want To Hold Aono-kun so Badly I Could Die in like a month and wanted to write a review on it with the hopes of exposing more people to the series because, so far (at the time of writing this there are 55 chapters available to be read in English), it is really, really, really, really good.
First though: Aono-kun is a romance, but don’t take the simplistic art style at face value or write off the “horror” aspect of Aono-kun as “oh it’s just a horror because he is a ghost.” I’d argue Aono-kun is a horror before it is a romance. Don’t get me wrong though, I think the shoujo elements of the story are very well-done, but it isn’t something to just write off because you think it’s about a girl with a ghost boyfriend. So here’s some content warnings before you add it to your to-read list because the story can get quite heavy and it’d suck if someone just jumped into it expecting it to be a silly story about a girl with her ghost boyfriend doing silly shoujo things. Because it's not that. At all.
Body horror, child abuse and neglect, child death, sexual assault, sexual coercion and manipulation, and suicide + suicidal ideation.
Aono-kun is about Yuri and Aono’s relationship and the struggles of navigating dating your ghost boyfriend! It’s also about how much it sucks when your ghost boyfriend sometimes gets possessed by an evil spirit–or maybe he IS the evil spirit?--and loses control over his ghostly body to do evil spirit things. It’s also about when your ghost boyfriend is presumably tied to the world because ghosts only haunt things when they can’t let something go and have regrets, right? And you should be probably helping him try to move on so he can rest in peace? But if you help him move on then you will be all alone again, and no one has ever cared for you before, and it’s selfish to think like that or to want him to stay but it’s still painful because he is a ghost and you can’t actually be together, and you want to hold him so badly you could die.
While the story centers on Yuri and Aono’s relationship and the way it’s flavored through unhealthy codependence, eventually we get to see more of the side characters. To understand Aono and his nature as a ghost, especially when he begins lashing out and doing evil spirit things, she ends up befriending an agoraphobic horror junkie named Mio, and Aono’s best friend, Fujimoto. And so Yuri, who was previously friendless, makes her first friends, and slowly opens herself up to the world around her–which happens to be a world that exists both with and without Aono. Slowly, Yuri comes to terms that she cannot exist only for Aono’s sake–but the story is very real when approaching these topics, and often Yuri will have an epiphany and then cycle back around to acting on codependent impulses anyways. Aono isn’t safe from this either; he appears much more independent and realistic about their relationship, but since Yuri is the only person with whom he can really interact with, inevitably the problems and complexes he secretly has begin coming out to play.
Without trying to give too much away, Yuri and Aono’s respective character arcs thus far are really, really good. Yuri begins the story as a bit of an airhead, a lonely girl with no friends, someone who puts such a heavy emphasis on love as escapism, and projects this onto Aono. Over the course of the manga she begins to learn she can’t place these expectations on people, that she has to be able to stand up for herself, and letting people hurt her or hurting herself isn’t love. Aono, in the beginning, as the deceased popular boy from school, seems to be the supportive, gentle type, but also as a ghost he’s a perfect embodiment of the “He’s sweet, he just goes into a dissociative state and commits atrocities,” tumblr post. His personality is much more complex than it initially appears; he is someone who intentionally waters himself down to be more palatable and liked by others. Yuri eventually comments that he smiles when he is sad and frowns when he is happy. It’s been very interesting to read the story and watch it slowly shift overtime; Yuri begins as a girl who is extremely codependent on Aono with whom he is really only dating because he liked the attention and felt sort of bad for to Aono now being the one who is extremely reliant on Yuri as he finds himself grow increasingly jealous in the face of her discovering friends and making new relationships and being able to exist in a world that can go on without him.
Something that Aono-kun does really well is horror, which probably goes without saying since this is a horror shoujo, but still. The art style is a little simplistic in flavor, but I don’t think this is a problem at all when the visual storytelling is as strong as it is (a la Houseki no Kuni, in my opinion). Shiina gives Yuri shoujo-style shimmering eyes very often, which is a fun juxtaposition with the body horror. Also, the way Umi Shiina draws expressions is really good, most notably when she’s contrasting Aono’s facial expressions when he’s “normal” vs when he’s in “evil spirit mode”. I’ll never forget that first panel I read where he went a little crazy and thought to myself, “oh, it’s THIS sort of manga.” Contrast and negative space are used very efficiently here especially to delineate the difference between something going on that’s more supernatural in flavor, whether that’s a room that someone can’t leave, or a black void when evil spirit Aono is talking with Yuri, et cetera.
I cannot begin to tell you how often I was having to stop and silently scream to myself, whisper “I fucking hate it here,” under my breath over a new character reveal or story note, put my head in my hands, or audibly mutter “oh my god,” as I was reading. Rereading the story (yes that’s right, there are only 55 chapters and I am already rereading the whole thing after like a month) is another treat on its own because the foreshadowing is extremely satisfying. It’ll be even more fun to go back through the whole thing once the story is actually done because it’s already been a very rewarding revisit and I’m sure Shiina has quite a lot left in the story to tell.
Again, it’s hard to say much without letting the reader experience the slow shift for themself, but Aono-kun uses ghosts and hauntings as a vehicle to discuss very real, very tangible everyday things, and it’s really satisfying to watch that all come together. Aono-kun’s supernatural world is real and tangible and interacted with by people who have spiritual inclinations, but it is also often a metaphor for something that isn’t supernatural in flavor at all, creating a really fun interaction between these two things that don’t feel like they should intersect.
Overall, I’m very excited to see where Aono-kun goes with its story, and I really think this is a story more people should be checking out, especially considering the attention The Summer Hikaru Died is getting right now! As someone who’s been following both stories, I think Aono-kun blows Hikaru out of the water, so I’m giving the story what I think is its due justice and writing a review here about it. If you like Hikaru, I can thoroughly recommend Aono-kun. Also, Tatsuki Fujimoto (Chainsaw Man) and Shuzo Oshimi (Blood on the Tracks, Flowers of Evil) are both readers and have even drawn fan art for the story, so if you've read any of those and you like what the story does with its themes, check it out. Otherwise, heed the content warnings, and consider giving it a read if you like horror and stories about weird relationships.
Giving the story a score feels weird when it's not done, so I'm just giving it a 90/100 because there's still room for it to fall flat on its face, but what the story has so far is amazing and it's easily a new favorite of mine! 
