隣のお姉さんが好き

TONARI NO ONEE-SAN GA SUKI

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
4
RELEASE
October 4, 2023
CHAPTERS
51

DESCRIPTION

Tasuku is in love with his “cool and mysterious” neighbor, Shia. She’s three years older than him, a big film buff, and doesn’t like him back. The two get together to watch movies every Wednesday, but no matter how many times Tasuku attempts to use these meetups to profess his love for her, Shia sends him right back into the friend zone. Can Tasuku prove himself a mature and capable boyfriend? And what secrets is Shia hiding behind her smiley demeanor?

(Source: Seven Seas Entertainment)

Note: Includes four extra chapters.

CAST

Shia Hoshino
Tasuku
Shizuku Tsugihara
Tsumugu
Kano
Asora
Urarara
Rina

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

moooodie
90/100
A Radiating Chemical Reaction
Excuse me but, in typical fashion (I say with only one review under my belt) this will be a more emotional and personal review of this work.

A few years ago, I read Suki na Ko ga Megane wo Wasureta/The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses by Koume Fujichika, and I found it to be very good, but there was something particularly interesting about it. Sure it had the bits of a typical "cookie-cutter" middle/high school Japanese romcom manga, but there was something else there, this "tinge" or even noticeable blot of melancholy that pervaded the manga. I chalked it up to not being in a happy headspace at the time and simply projecting my feelings of yearn and heartbreak onto the characters, but it still stuck with me despite years passing,I never really could shake it off whenever I'd recall the story.

Tonari no Oneesan ga Suki or I'm in Love with the Older Girl Next Door (which i will be referring to as NegaSuki from here on for convenience) at first glance, is a manga about a straightforward middle-school boy Tasuku, with feelings for his older high-school, emotionally reserved neighbor Shia. She happens to be a film buff, thus Tasuku initially watches movies purely as a means of connecting with her; the manga prominently using real-world films and actors like Summer Wars or Tom Holland.

The two leads are backed by a very fluffy cast that add an atmosphere of comfort and familiarity to this manga. Tasuku's family do a good job in making Tasuku himself feel grounded while also being incredibly entertaining in their own way, and Shia's dynamic with her high school friends adds a new side to both Shia and to the manga overall.

Reading NegaSuki feels similar to seeing a chemical reaction at the atomic level with your bare eyes (or at least what I imagine seeing such a thing would feel like :P). These two characters possess very different mindsets and approaches to life not just due to the age gap but how their past experiences have transformed them (or in Tasuku's case, a lack of such a transformation). The "love" (if you could call it that at the beginning of the story) that exists in the space between them incites a change in their fundamental identity; Tasuku tries to learn how to understand feelings and people and their thoughts better as a byproduct of trying to decipher the very emotionally-evasive Shia, and Shia forces herself to confront her feelings and "put them on display" so to speak in order to make sense of the love and affection that is being given to her.

It really means a whole lot to me because I have not really seen such a pretty and clear "chemical reaction" between two people(and how it's reflected in their environment) conveyed in manga in a very long time. At the risk of repeating myself to convey what NegaSuki is in the simplest manner I can: It is the story of a boy that likes this girl and reflects to understand why, and a story of a girl who cannot understand why she is liked by a boy and similarly reflects to understand why. The manga is the story how he changes himself and his perspective and gains a deeper understanding of people because of this girl, and it is also how this girl comes out of her shell in an attempt to chase something she's dearly wanted to for a long time, because of the love this boy shows her, despite her not knowing how to react to it.

(It is also still a very damn good comfy romcom, and the real-world movies usage personally made me feel so much more connected to the duo, as You Know, I'm Something Of A Movie Fan Myself)

The melancholy I had seen traces of in Wasureta were dazzling me in all colors of the spectrum here, and I just couldn't help but be mesmerized by all those colors.

Maybe, just like the previous manga of hers I read, I projected my feelings of romantic despair onto these characters, and I read too deeply into it. But for her to be 2-for-2 in that regard is surely not a coincidence and marks the trait of a special writer to me. Whether intentional or not, Fujichika-sensei keeps the moody feelings close to her works, and I'm very glad for that, because otherwise I wouldn't have adored Wasureta or this manga as much as I did <3

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