My Little Monster does not have the most original plot or the most creative setting. The artstyle is beautiful, but nothing that special to blow my mind. In fact, the cast is just as cliche as any high school romcom manga or anime. Yet, Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun is the best manga I have ever read. Every single character has become to be such a unique and vivid individual, shaped by their interactions which each other and an extensive backstory. None of them were perfect in the beginning and you can argue that none of them were in the end either. But it was a beautiful experience to see them grow, watching them to understand the motive behind their own actions, and learning how to resolve them.

I have seen a lot of shoujo manga/anime and I have indeed gotten accustomed to cute kissing scenes and have generally tempered my heart to withstand a sudden sugar spike in my bloodstream.
Still, I was not prepared for this...

But aside from the cute interactions between Haru und Shizuku and my usual inability to resist the irrational emotions that I have for every MakeInu, it is the actual character drama that finally drove me to the decision to declare My Little Monster as my favorite manga of all time. It is not until very late in the manga, that we finally came to see that it was not only Haru who was making this decision difficult. We learned about the inner struggles of Shizuku that neither her nor the reader had discovered until Yuzan's birthday party (At this point, I want to briefly mention the goldfish problem which already revealed a part of her inner conflict early in the manga. Though the goldfish arc was not as momentous as the birthday party, it deserves to be mentioned nonetheless).

I like Sasahara's patience and restraint regarding his feelings for Natsume. I feel for Kenji's vain efforts to court Shizuku (This was some godly character-creation! How seamlessly Rubico combined Kenji's lazy/tsundere character with him gradually realizing how he felt for Shizuku. The reader gets the picture of the same cold Kenji who is madly in love with Shizuku without him showing these feelings! The inner conflict of being in love with a girl who has a boyfriend was depicted SOOO well! Love it!). Coming to think of it, Sasahara can still consider himself lucky to be in love with a girl who - even though does not love him back at the beginning - did not reject him. I don't think I have to mention how great Shizuku's directness is (and yet I did). Or Haru being the one undergoing the greatest character development in the manga (which is also one of the most interesting plotlines of the manga! He turns from this dependent humanoid appendage of Shizuku who beats up anything and everything elsa [fucking psychopath, the romance scenes were still cute though] to the more confident gentleman [being socially acceptable while maintaining his craziness] who in turn offers comfort to the initially strong and independent Shizuku).

The way how Rubico handled the creation, the solution, and the message of all the conflicts she included in her manga was perfect. In Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun, we only see the peak of certain conflicts while the clues that lead to them were sprinkled across the previous or even later chapters. As readers, only see the conflict itself and its solutions. Rubico made sure, that these plot-points were made likely enough that one could have foreseen them, if connecting the dots. However, she arranged them so brilliantly that everything makes sense after every arc without forcing the reader to work for his/her understanding, but also not patronizing him/her by directly giving all the clues away.

I really love how Rubico told this relationship-lesson through a manga. I normally don't like it when I find "lessons" placed in my entertainment, especially when they are as obvious as in My Little Monster. However, Rubico delivered her messages in a way that is both clear and ... digestible (? I apologize for poor word-choice, but this is the closest I came up with). I gladly stopped multiple times mid-chapter to think about mutuality in relationships, the various purposes and effects of 告白 (and how it does not have to end in the extremes of success or failure), the pace in relationships regarding physical intimacy, how seriously the self-concept of one could affect a relationship (and how wrong that self-concept often is), and how one's family could burden one's romantic relationships without one's noticing. I can go on and on. In fear of repeating myself, I want to emphasize how brilliantly this manga encourages self-reflection and what a pity it is that I haven't read it sooner.

My Little Monster is the most beautiful and relatable love story I have ever read. The story-telling is impeccable, having the most radical and smooth character development I have ever seen in manga/anime. I loved the emotional rollercoaster it put me on, making me burst into laughter at some times, and into tears at others. It was almost physically painful for me to part with all those people I have come to know over the 48 chapters.