Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible Review

This review contains mild spoilers

Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible is a romance manga written by Nene Yukimori with a fairly typical setup- an antisocial guy that sits at the back of the class that, for one reason or another, finds himself regularly interacting with a cute girl. The twist for this story is that our male lead, Junta Shiraishi, is “invisible” to the world at large; he can be standing directly in front of someone and they won’t see him until he starts talking, he needs to run back and forth in front of automatic doors to get them to open, and phone cameras don’t register his face. However, a new seating plan places him next to Nagisa Kubo, a girl that is somehow completely immune to his invisibility. She finds his status as “the invisible man” amusing, so she starts talking to him every morning. What begins as friendly teasing and pushing the boundaries of his “invisibility”, develops into friendship, and eventually romance.

As one would expect of an invisible character, Shiraishi is generally awkward and often doesn’t know how to act around others. His dialogue is straightforward, and despite his lack of expression, he is very easy to read (as Kubo frequently comments). I mostly found him to be a boring, garden variety romance manga protagonist- I understand that he is intentionally designed to be unremarkable, but not enough attention is paid to his inner thoughts to give him any amount of depth that could have made him more interesting to the reader. He didn’t have any notable character flaws aside from standard teenage awkwardness, which prevented me from getting fully invested in his romance with Kubo.

Fortunately, Shiraishi’s female co-star provides enough intrigue to carry their romance throughout the series. Kubo is a smart, sociable girl with a playfully sadistic streak that works to initiate shenanigans and interactions that bring the two closer together. Yukimori does an excellent job characterising Kubo- at times she feels confident and intelligent as she messes with Shiraishi, but she occasionally goes too far and gets herself flustered. She is far and away the most interesting character, as we get to see different sides of her depending on who she’s interacting with; she acts like a mature big sister with her cousin Saki, an immature teenager with her older sister Akina, and somewhere in between with her school friends. These dimensions of her character come together to make Kubo an endearing protagonist that I couldn’t help but root for, even if I didn’t really understand her attraction to the unremarkable Shiraishi.
On that note, I found the side characters mostly one dimensional and uninteresting. Kubo and Shiraishi’s three friends seemingly only existed to provide commentary on their relationship, and I found Kubo’s cousin Saki and Shiraishi’s brother Saeki more annoying than endearing. That said, I enjoyed Kubo’s sister Akina- it was fun to see her tease Shiraishi and Kubo, as she provides a more mature viewpoint on their budding romance. I also thought Shiraishi’s mother was sweet and well characterised despite her limited panel time; she’s a mother clearly concerned for her son that doesn’t want to pry for fear of upsetting him, and she becomes elated as his social life develops.

Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible has consistently excellent art, and the aspects that Yukimori gives the most artistic detail to work well to capture the emotions she is trying to convey. In the manga’s final stretch, Kubo monologues about how at first she was simply curious about Shiraishi, but at some point over the course of the story she fell for him. I loved this detail, as it perfectly captured my feelings while I was reading- I can’t point to a specific moment or incident when I think Kubo fell for him, it just slowly became clearer over time. I attribute much of this success to Yukimori’s exceptional expression work- she is excellent at drawing just enough detail to provide the reader with sufficient enough information to understand how Kubo is feeling, without revealing the full extent of her inner thoughts.
Yukimori channels the bulk of her artistic ability into drawing Kubo, while backgrounds are often drawn simply or not at all. Some may criticise this approach, but I think it works well to put the reader in the shoes of Shiraishi; most of his life is mundane and colourless so he and his surroundings are drawn with minimal detail, aside from Kubo, the one person that won’t let him be invisible. Throughout the course of the series, Shiraishi’s reactions to Kubo’s antics were low-key and generally non expressive, mostly limited to blushing as he turned away from Kubo and the audience. This felt appropriate for his self proclaimed status as a “background character”, and I assumed that it was setting up for a defining character moment at some point where Shiraishi comes into his own as a “main character” in his own mind, which Yukimori would represent by drawing him in the same manner she draws Kubo. However, I don’t feel that this was ever paid off, which is an unfortunate missed opportunity. Aside from the main characters, the rest of the art is fine- the panelling is straightforward and effective, and the chibi style Yukimori uses for gags is cute. In general, I rate the artwork of this series very highly, and would consider it one of the main draws of the manga.

I found the premise of this series difficult to get into at first. Kubo’s treatment of Shiraishi in early chapters felt mean spirited, and Shiraishi essentially had to put up with it as his only alternative was having no interaction with anyone at all. This was only brief however, as Kubo’s teasing quickly felt much more playful than malicious. I found Shiraishi’s “invisibility” gimmick to be fairly contrived a lot of the time- there were occasions where it felt so arbitrarily forced that no-one could see him, and the joke quickly wore thin for me. So often he would be standing in front of someone, they’d say “where’s Shiraishi?”, he’d respond, and they would act surprised to see him.
Repetition in general is the main problem I had with this manga. Aside from the aforementioned invisibility jokes, a lot of Kubo’s flirting would involve her initiating an innocuous way to get Shiraishi to touch her in some manner, whether that be her hair, her bicep, the inside of her skirt pocket, etc. She would then run away to act flustered in private as she realises what she’s done, while Shiraishi barely reacts. I think this series would have benefitted from being around 20-30 chapters shorter than it was, because as it stands, Kubo and Shiraishi’s relationship progressed too slowly to keep me consistently engaged. A slower romance isn’t inherently a problem- some of my favourite romance manga lean into the slow burn, slice of life style romance very well (Call of the Night, Kaguya-Sama: Love Is War, Smoking Behind the Supermarket With You). However, each of those series places its characters in interesting situations that allow the protagonists to reveal new sides of themselves to one another, developing their characters and romance while endearing them to the reader. Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible tends to fall back on a lot of interactions that we have already seen play out with slight alterations, such as Kubo and Shiraishi unintentionally getting physically close to one another, or Kubo making mistakes with her uniform and accidentally flashing Shiraishi in some way.

Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible takes place primarily at a school, though this mostly feels like an unimportant backdrop as Yukimori fails to create a fun or interesting environment with this setup. The most memorable chapters of this manga occurred outside of the school- the school camping expedition, working with Kubo’s family at the beach, and the trip to Kyoto. These settings provided different opportunities for character interaction, but they didn’t necessarily have to leave the school for this to be the case. Not every romance manga to have an over the top, absurdist setting ala Kaguya-Sama to be memorable, but series such as Smoking Behind the Supermarket With You are able to take a seemingly mundane, mostly static environment and create a world that feels intimate and vibrant through endearing interactions and an interesting cast of regularly rotating side characters.

Despite the criticisms I have of this manga, I enjoyed the story it had to tell. There are a lot of heartwarming moments, and the artwork is captivating. Unfortunately, I don’t feel that it ever took the final step to become exceptional, as its over reliance on mostly unfunny invisibility jokes and repetitive interactions between the protagonists blurred together a lot of the chapters between its strongest moments.