Apr 15, 2023
Being a slice of life fan is difficult. On one hand, as a high school student, I adore the genre for its relatable themes, cozy setting and low stakes, feel good vibes, but on the other hand, there's just too much soulless repetitive trash out there that it's difficult to filter out the gems from the trash.
Shuukan Shounen Girl isn't the greatest slice of life manga I've read, hell as you can tell from the score I struggle to call it good. But what it definitely delivers on, and hence why I'm recommending this, is that of its memorability.
A collection of episodic, disconnected romance-focused stories
...
situated in the mundane confines of an ordinary high school, but with a twist: every chapter depicts either our new female lead or male lead being stricken with some bizarre supernatural oddity. How bizarre, you may ask? One chapter revolves around a girl who has manga mysteriously printed on her stomach every week. Another revolves around a girl who encounters a guy with the exact same name and similar physical appearance as her, only to be notified by God himself that there is a glitch in reality that brought two alternate realities of her together.
If you're craving for something weird, this is the manga for you.
As expected from an episodic series, most chapters are hit or miss. Some will leave you awed and in amazement, while some will leave you cold and underwhelmed. Not all the ideas stick here; some don't really go anywhere, and some are just plain...weird. But the chapters that do actually stick? They're wonderful.
Even if not every chapter hits though, there is a consistent effort to experiment in the manga that I adore. The best chapters in the series are the ones where the mangaka messes around with the medium of manga itself: playing with art style, paneling and hell with even one chapter allowing two pages to overlap each other when you shine light on it to further highlight the emotional poignancy of the scene.
My biggest gripe with the series however, is how it weighs itself down by only ever tackling the theme of high school love. It gets stale really quickly, and while the ways it communicates the theme is usually fresh and inspired, the theme itself isn't. If the mangaka expanded his horizons and tackled other themes related to adolescence, this manga truly could have been something even more special.
Overall, I really really like this manga, and I recommend it to just about every slice of life enjoyer out there, but it's definitely no masterpiece.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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