Otona ni Nuts
Instant Teen - Just Add Nuts

Edit

What would you like to edit?

SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links  

I have no business reading this, and if you are over thirteen or even just have a little sense of critical analysis neither does you. But since we are here, how about I tell you why.

Tokyopop is was a weird company with a habit of releasing everything they could get their filthy paws on. Then after years on decline they went under because of bad management. They had some good stuff and some that was frankly horribly bland and generic crap. Otona ni Nuts(Instant Teen) is one of the latter ones.

Premise: a cute little fifth grader who have a big crush on a barber steals ... a bunch of nuts from a lady on the street and eats them. Apparently the genius who made them somehow got them mixed up in a basket of freebie nuts. When she wakes up the next day she is an adult and by accident meets the barber-guy who instantly falls in love with her, of course kids are not illogical creatures that are easy to distinguish in this universe. Add her neighbor/best friend who has a crush on her into the mix and you have a totally unoriginal story to look forward to. Genius.

If you haven't caught my drift yet, the story is quite predictable. For a work aimed at kids, who would have thought? Next.

Characters are unlikeable and not acting their age. The main character is swaying on the the dangerous "this could get really dark"-line. And by that I mean romantic relations with an older man. For something with such an innocent premise it sure likes to titillate which is odd since it's a work obviously for young girl. Maybe I just don't get it

The art is pretty basic and often go “extremely shojo” meaning bubbles, flowers and other nasty fluff elements. As per usual with these works the fluff tries to cover up the total lack of backgrounds and it will get tiresome in the long run to just look at characters with a white background. Sometimes there may some shadow-effects, if we are lucky that is. The blandness of the character-designs are not contributing but at this point who really cares. It's perfectly serviceable for the story it accompanies.

Enjoyment equals none. At least not on when trying to take the story serious. Otherwise there will something to make fun of on every page, which will probably be as enjoyable as this will ever be but even this get tiresome since the sheer quantity of things to ridicule will be just too much to juggle. And that is when the premise is not even taken into account.

Unless you really want to waste an hour or two away there is no reason at all to read this. If you had plans to, just forget it ever existed. It's one of the worst thing to come from the manga boom and I promise it's way better to not have had this pathetic experience that is Otona Ni Nuts. Especially if you are an owner of a pair yourself.

Otona Ni Nuts. A hell of a ride reading that. I remember first coming across it around a decade ago in my neighbourhood bookstore that had a huge wall of Tokyopop manga and I was debating between getting the first volume of it or finishing up Natsumi Ando's Zodiac P.I. (and ultimately I chose the latter option.) So fast-forward to quarantine 2020 and me being bored out of my mind and trying to remember the Tokyopop titles I found in that bookstore so I could read them online. Instant Teen: Just Add Nuts (Tokyopop's title) was one of 'em. So I read it. And quite ... frankly, I regret it.

Otona Ni Nuts is, in itself, a cute, funny story idea; you've got a dumb kid who, like so many other dumb kids, wants nothing more than to grow up with haste. She's got her childhood friend who holds complicated feelings towards her and her stance, and wants her to just enjoy being a kid alongside him while they still can. But, since she's both dumb and a kid, she just can't seem to realize how much of a blessing childhood really is and ends up eating these odd genetically engineered nuts to turn her into a "sexy adult" at the most random of times and for the most absurd of reasons, from trying to seduce an older college man on a cruise ship to competing with a older masculine lady on who can be the sexiest. It's downright bonkers but that's part of it's charm.

That being said, however, the execution of the story itself in the manga was poor. It was super, SUPER rushed and all the gags and gimmicks were more fetish-y than anything. There were way too many confusing moments that came out of the blue and left me going "huh?" much too frequently for a manga of it's type and length. Also, the amount of illogical nonsense in this manga is UNBELIEVABLE (how is Natsumi's mother not questioning where the heck her daughter is skipping off to for such large periods of time? How's she letting her hang out with some wacko scientist all the damn time? If she's at public events or doing modelling while using her real name, wouldn't her parents see her? My brain hurts from all the "duhhhh")

A big chunk of the confusion came from the unfortunately sloppy art. I took a look at some of Fukushima's more recent works and it looks like that's just how her art is, but honestly the art in Otona Ni Nuts is just...not good. Even though I adore the early 00's shoujo art style generally, this simply wasn't up to par with me at all. I couldn't understand half of what was going because I literally couldn't SEE what was going on. Art that is: crowded + sloppy = recipe for a manga disaster. If I can't follow through with a story because of its art, that automatically ruins the story for me, no matter how good the story is. And I can say for sure now that I won't be checking out any of Fukushima's other work because of this.

The characters were fine. Bland, unfunny, and not much else to them other than that they're all airheaded, rude, and shameless (especially Natsumi, flashing her rack for all to see without much thought or reprimand.) The adult characters bothered me the most, like the scientist and his tomboy lover. Why a fully grown adult would constantly go head-to-head with a literal child in a competition of sexiness is completely beyond me. But hey, manga right?

I'm a bit confused on how this was serialized as a manga for younger girls, since a lot of the moments were akin to the ecchi fanservice you get in shounen manga and anime. But I guess maybe that was supposed to be the deal-maker here? Showing that young girls can enjoy gross humour in a coming-of-age (if you could even call this "coming-of-age") story too? If that's the case, then I'm pretty sure there are better manga out there that fit the bill. This manga also never garnered any kind of notable attention contrary to most Nakayoshi-serialized manga, but I think anyone else who read it can tell why.

In conclusion, Otona Ni Nuts is a hilariously dumb attempt at a potentially good story concept, and it's one manga I'm putting on my invisible "Store-away-in-the-dark-abyss-of-your-mind-and-never-think-about-again" list.