Overall Review: Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun

Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away... I read a manga called "Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun" and I loved every moment of it.

Geeky Star Wars references aside, Tonari (known as "My Little Monster" in English) was the anime I was looking forward to the most this Fall, and I was not disappointed by the adaptation. There's something nice about going back to simple shoujo manga after spending all your time reading and watching edgier series like Immortal Rain, Code Geass, Fullmetal Alchemist, Please Save my Earth, etc. When I picked up Tonari, I was looking forward to something sweet and conventional, something I could predict and understand from my years of reading the shoujo genre (which lasted up until I realized I was bored and could see a misunderstanding coming a mile off) and which could sate my need for simplicity after drowning myself in complex works for far too long.

It seems I chose the wrong manga.

Make no mistake, Tonari is as shoujo as they come, but to call it conventional or simple is a huge understatement. Robico succeeded at doing something few shoujo mangaka can boast to have even considered; she (or he; I never managed to find out) wrote her story around great characters, rather than a story with simple characters to inhabit its world.

Unlike a series which boasts an interesting premise right off the bat, Tonari sounds very much like a run-of-the-mill shoujo: a studious girl is brought in contact with a delinquent boy, who happens to sit next to her in class, and he helps her realize that studying isn't the only thing there is. It's a premise right out of the shoujo handbook, and normally I could tell you immediately what sorts of development the couple and their relationship would take and in what order. Normally, that is. Fortunately, Tonari's cast is anything but normal.

Dysfunctionality isn't by any means a new concept in anime; you can find it anywhere and some of the very best series are centered around the idea. However, rarely have I ever found dysfunctional characters to be as fun and engrossing as they are in Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun. It's fitting that the title translates to "Sitting Next to a Monster" because you'll have a hard time finding a better set of monsters than here, at least outside the fantasy genre. Everyone in this series is messed up; the heroine, Shizuku Mizutani is a study freak, cold and blunt to the point of ineptitude. The hero is a nutcase (an adorable nutcase, but a nutcase nonetheless), who threatens to rape his love interest within the first episode, beats people to bloody pulps, and who adopts a pet rooster because he's Haru Yoshida, and that's the kind of thing he does. Their first friend, Asako Natsume, is a girl who believes that true friends are only found online and hates men because she's convinced they'll all fall in love with her, and their second friend, Souhei Sasahara, is a highly observant character who shows up almost at random, offering the only socially acceptable sensibility to be found within a mile radius of Haru. Quirky? Yes. Ridiculous? Also yes. Fun? Definitely.

That in itself doesn't say much about this series however. Plenty of series begin with quirky characters, but these are special: they don't necessarily follow shoujo conventions. Shizuku learns through Haru that human relationships are important, but that doesn't stop her from being her old self; she's still a "study-bug" obsessed with getting first place in every test. When she discovers that crazy, naive Haru is the best in the school, she strikes up a rivalry at the expense of their budding relationship (begun when Haru stalks her around, insisting that he loves her after she sent the people exploiting him packing) and constantly places studying above him. Haru is his own set of issues, a socially inept but kind soul who has no clue how to make the friends he desperately craves, and thus ends up scaring everyone away. Meeting Shizuku makes him happy, because she accepts him, but it also throws him deeper into confusion because Shizuku is everything he ever wanted to be himself, confident and perceptive, and the closer he gets to her the more he feels he's clinging on to her for his own sake. Natsume is a little strange herself, (having no qualms at throwing up in public, for example) and only slightly loosens her guard around men because she knows that Haru is after Shizuku. She becomes obsessed with getting Haru and Shizuku together, but she also becomes obsessed with Shizuku (whom she nicknames "Mitty") because she's her first female friend, constantly following her around and disrupting her studies. Sasahara (aka Sasayan) is the most normal of the group, a quieter but average addition who has plenty of friends elsewhere and seems to have an eye out for Natsume, though he doesn't act on it openly. He's the neutral member, the one who realizes the obvious things about everyone else's relationships and problems and supports the others. Yet despite being constantly overshadowed, Sasayan is one of the most intriguing characters in the cast, and it's near impossible to explain why. Perhaps it's because we all expect him to have some sort of weirdness to match him up to the others, or because he's already weird enough to want to hang out with Haru's gang when he's capable of friendships with others.

The characters are compelling and loveable, and attention is given almost equally to all of them, including the inevitable love rivals and side characters. No one in this series is meant to be hated, as often happens when rivals appear; everyone is simply an outcast of some sort, a loner, and they're all weird kids just looking to fit in but unable to be "normal" and thus drawn to each other. It's a refreshing story, filled with refreshing characters in a believable setting, and the manga excels at entertainment. The anime, a Brain's Base production, is even better.

Despite being something of a "will they or won't they" sort of romance, both anime and manga paint the situations in an entertaining and fresh way, with the anime doing an even better job through the use of amazing production values. The art is great, the music is wonderful, the voice acting amazing (Haruka Tomatsu shines again as Shizuku, and Atsumi Tanezaki played a nearly perfect Natsume), and the direction just as good. Overall the series was a pleasant, fun, and hilarious experience (My Little Gangbanger anyone?) which definitely rates among the best anime of the year. If there is something negative to be said about it, it's that it ended far too early and that was inevitable, seeing as the manga is ongoing. We can only hope to see a second season sometime in the future, if sales for the manga and anime go well.

Episode 13 Screencaps:"Spring is Here"