Ah, shoujo romance manga and anime. The genre does seem to love pairing up nerdy, serious, bookworm schoolgirls with eccentric, socially inept, violent, domineering and jealous bishounen. Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun is certainly one of these!
It is the story about a young girl who wilfully rejects social interaction in favour of studying and succeeding, and how she falls in love with the charmingly goofy and unpredictably violent boy after he threatens to rape her.
Wait, that sounds bad.
It is the story of a girl who chooses to be alone, and the jealous, possessive and aggressive boy who falls for her oh god damn it.
Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun is a romantic comedy that can be pretty damn entertaining and fun when it isn’t idealising a relationship that’s kind of unhealthy.
The premise of this series is a pretty standard one as far as shoujo romance goes. Mizutani Shizuku is an antisocial bookworm, concerned only for her grades and performance in school, not even bothering with friends. Not that she minds this: it’s very much her own choice. Her teachers like her as she’s responsible and dependable, which is basically the only reason they give for asking her to deliver some handouts to her classmate who’s frequently absent, Yoshida Haru. Why have Shizuku deliver them when she doesn’t even really know him? Because the teacher is too scared to do so herself. Turns out that Haru is known to be quite aggressive, violent and easily provoked to the point that he stayed out of school for a long while after getting in a fight. She does so, finds out that he’s actually just pretty naïve and innocent, and he takes this gesture of hers to mean that they’re friends, especially after Shizuku convinces him to come back to school. From there, Shizuku makes some friends, falls for Haru, and love and hilarity ensues.
One thing I must discuss as soon as possible: the relationship between Haru and Shizuku is really concerning. Taking just the first episode, it seems unlikely that Shizuku would even want to see Haru again after everything that happens, let alone let herself get into a position to fall in love with him. The first thing she finds out is that he’s violent and aggressive – to the point that even their teacher is afraid to deliver handouts to him. Let’s put aside the ridiculousness of purposefully putting a student into a situation that you believe is genuinely dangerous to the point of risking your own safety for now. This is basically the first impression she would get of Haru. Surely that would make you pretty wary, right? Would she even be willing to deliver the handouts in the first place in a more realistic scenario? Well anyway, she delivers them and meets Haru for the first time. He’s angry and yelling at someone. FIRST IMPRESSIONS WOO. Next, after leaving the building in which Haru resides (he promptly fled shortly after realising why Shizuku’s there), Shizuku is ambushed by Haru, dragged behind some bushes out of sight, and pinned to the ground. If you were Shizuku in this situation, would you not be fucking terrified? You’ve been pinned to the ground by a strong, violent stranger, who’s now loudly accusing you of being a spy and out to get him. And this is the first impression! But it’s get worse: the following day, after school, Shizuku is grabbed while walking him and pulled into an alley. Haru’s hand is clamped over her mouth. He says that if she makes any sound – if she tries to call for help – he’ll rape her.
Let’s add this all up. She knows that Haru is violent, aggressive and easily angered, has no qualms with physically overpowering her out of sight of anybody else, has basically been stalking her, and has threatened to rape her.
A normal person at this point would call the police. Surely her impression of him at this point would be that he is a violent, dangerous and psychotic man? There’s no way that in the real world she would EVER give him a second chance, to become friends with him. Fuck, it’d be unlikely that she wouldn’t just mace him as soon as she sees him. But unfortunately, that’s not what happens here – this is genuinely how their relationship starts. And what with being a shoujo romance, it holds this up as an ideal relationship, and that is a pretty big issue. It’s unsettling and unpleasant to watch.
It is somewhat mitigated by the fact that Haru’s is meant to be incredibly asocial, and therefore doesn’t actually understand that what he’s doing is wrong, but that still doesn’t explain why Shizuku wasn’t scared of him enough to avoid all contact with him. And it could be given a small pass if it were just in this episode that this kind of treatment of Shizuku occurred, but it’s not. It is never as bad as it is in the first episode, but over the course of the series he accidentally hits her several times, is shown to be incredibly possessive and (attempts to be) controlling of her, acts quite self-absorbed, and even nearly pushes a guy off a tall building because he was hitting on (and failing, not that Haru noticed/cared) Shizuku. That’s right, Haru is basically murderously jealous.
This is not a healthy relationship.
If it weren’t for this though, Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun would actually be a lot of fun. It has a bright, vibrant, colourful style, a fantastic sense of humour and comedic delivery, and a great cast of supporting characters. How could you not like characters such as Misawa, the game shop owner who’s cool as all hell? Or the idiotic gang of troublemakers who constantly do stupid shit? Or the glorious, beautiful, not-particularly bright, internet addict Natsume, who is amazing in just about every single way? Hell, even Shizuku and Haru are both entertaining as hell (when shit ain’t skeevy between them), with conflicting personalities that bounce off each other for some really funny scenes. Haru isn’t as entertaining by himself, but we only really ever see him when he’s with Shizuku – who is surprisingly great no matter who she’s with, if she’s with anyone. You wouldn’t expect it considering how much of an antisocial bookworm she is, but the straight-faced, deadpan delivery to everything she does often works in her comedic favour.
The story takes the well-worn path of shoujo romance tropes and clichés – misunderstandings, jealousy, moments together where they get to know each other better, etc. etc. The selection of characters helps to avoid it becoming altogether too familiar, as Haru’s unpredictably feeds into the events, but by and large you’ll know what’s coming and how it’ll all probably resolve. Not that this means the story is bad or anything – it works, it’s entertaining and is largely well told – but it is predictable, and some originality would have been very welcome. The only actual negative about the story is that it artificially extends itself too much, contriving situations to avoid ruining the status quo and keep Shizuku and Haru not actually going out. This got pretty bad when it happened after they had both already told each other they love them. It didn’t make a lot of sense, and ruined any sense of real progression that the characters were going through. Had they actually started dating proper there could have been some really interesting dynamics explored, given Haru’s and Shizuku’s conflicting personalities.
Really, the only problems I had with this show were its active refusal to progress the romance, and Haru’s personality making for what appears to be an unhealthy, borderline abusive relationship that is not only left unaddressed, but possibly even glorified. But the beyond the first episode, that latter complaint isn’t actually ever that much of an issue – it crops up every now and then, they’re all quite isolated, and if it weren’t Haru’s actions in the first episode the examples later on wouldn’t really raise that much of an eyebrow. At worst, you’d say “Oh come on, really?”, and then forget about it pretty quickly. However, your mileage may vary on how much of a detriment to your enjoyment this may prove, and if you can look past it you’ll find that Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun is quite the enjoyable, if somewhat unremarkable, romantic comedy.
7/10
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