The Spring 2023 Manga Guide

My Clueless First Friend

What's It About? 

One lonely, gloomy fifth-grade girl is the target of her classmates' relentless bullying and teasing—that is, until a new kid arrives on the scene. Friendly Takada is as clueless as he is well-meaning, but somehow he possesses the magic ability to start drawing "Grim Reaper" Nishimura out of her shell. As the elementary schoolers experience all the fun of a childhood summer together—from going to the pool to picking sunflowers to watching fireworks—an unusual friendship blossoms.

My Clueless First Friend has story and art by Taku Kawamura, with English translation by Ajani Oloye and lettering by Vanessa Satone. Square Enix Manga & Books has released its first volume both digitally and physically for $9.99 and $16.99 respectively.

Is It Worth Reading?

Christopher Farris

Rating:

While crafting strong atmosphere or setting up perfect punchlines are effective methods for making a solid slice-of-life manga, sometimes the best bet for success is just to draw some ridiculously cute crap. That's the route that Taku Kawamura has gone with My Clueless First Friend, and it is absolutely working. We're definitely beginning with something of a one-joke premise at the start, with Takada's foundational misunderstandings of Nishimura's treatment feeling a little repetitious across the first couple chapters. But like Takada, it starts to grow on you.

As central as Nishimura's experiences are to what goes on in My Clueless First Friend, it's Takada who's absolutely the real star. It might be easy to pigeonhole his reactions to Nishimura getting teased as a simple lack or perception, but as the story goes on, it becomes apparent there's more to it. Takada seemingly doesn't have a mean bone in his body, and is always driving himself to be overly aware of what he presumes must be the best possible intentions from everyone at all times. You can see this manifested later when he holds himself responsible for possibly, however unintentionally, hurting Nishimura with the "Grim Reaper" nickname once he learns about her situation. He's naïve, but in an empathetic way, turning the whole thing into a story that's an inverse of the nascent "teasing romance" genre in several different ways.

The sweetness powers this manga throughout its almost 300-page first volume, making for a compulsively readable presentation. It's probably the most adorable take on the subject of childhood bullying and ostracization you'll ever read! Kawamura's art definitely helps, rendering the characters as the cute, rounded kids in puppy love that they are, making use of big panels with clean contrasts and an occasional beautifully deployed background. If the humor's simple, it still follows the story along at a pleasant beat. I particularly enjoy Takada's other friend Hino, a decent guy who makes a great gag out of adopting tank tops as his whole personality. If you're into the slice-of-life genre or the adjacent childhood romance setups, give this one a look.

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

It's a story that's all too familiar: Akane Nishimura is the focus of bullying in her fifth-grade class. The other kids, led by mean girl Kasahara and her male equivalent Kitagawa, all call Nishimura "the Grim Reaper," ostensibly because of her scary eyes, but probably because she's an easy target – she doesn't fight back, wears black, and is generally isolated. But rather than being a lonely tale of a bullied child, Taku Kawamura's My Clueless First Friend offers a ray of sunshine to break through Nishimura's cloudy life. Everything changes when a boy named Taiyo Takara transfers into Nishimura's class one day.

To call this story “heartwarming” would be selling it short, because Takara's impact on Nishimura's life is a joy to read about. True to his name (“Taiyo” means “sun”), Takara sees everything in a positive light. He thinks "Grim Reaper" is an awesome nickname because it means Nishimura is super powerful. When the rest of the class harasses her by "casting" barrier spells whenever she comes near them, he takes that as a sign of her ability rather than them trying to keep her outside. (He also is awestruck that everyone in the class can cast spells.) If he wasn't eleven years old, you might call him chuuni. Instead, he comes off as just a regular happy kid, using his imagination for good rather than evil.

He's certainly not the most emotionally intelligent human around, but that's part of the story's charm. Some of it could just be that he's eleven, and maybe even a young eleven at that. He loves holding Nishimura's hand (it gives him some of her magic power!) and isn't shy about expressing his affection for her, something that throws her off a bit. His older sister, Yukiko, a first-year in middle school, seems to think that he just doesn't realize he has a crush on Nishimura, and that may be true. But it's not really important in this volume's scope.

Yukiko is a little more perceptive than her brother, and she seems to understand that Nishimura is having a hard time at school, at least on some level. Yukiko giving Nishimura her hand-me-downs, and teaching her to do her hair, could just be her being nice to her brother's friend. But Nishimura blossoms under the positive attention, finally not lying to her dad when he asks if she has any friends at school, and becoming a little better at asking for what she wants. With the addition of Hino, a tank top-obsessed classmate who befriends Takara and has no problems accepting Nishimura as well, you have a winner - a story that doesn't ignore the dark while it pulls its heroine into the light.

Jean-Karlo Lemus

Rating:

Coming off something like a Mysterious Girlfriend X for tykes, My Clueless First Friend has a collection of one-note characters that nevertheless get up to a lot of fun misadventures. Nishimura is a heartbreaking case of how badly kids can bully each other and how much that can scar a kid. Conversely, Taiyo might be an irredeemable chuuni but he's a good friend and just the kind of person Nishimura needs: endlessly optimistic, capable of seeing the good in anything, and constantly supportive of Nishimura. The two don't understand what it means to be in love, but that's okay because they've got the rest of their lives to figure it out. It's also nice that one of Taiyo's other friends joins them as a third-wheel, as not only does it mean Taiyo's got more going on than tailing after Nishimura but also because that's just one more friend for Nishimura. So while there isn't terribly much going on, it's nevertheless cute to see these kids running around and having fun and making sure the ever-put-upon Nishimura feels welcome. There's a surprising bit of pathos involved too, especially with how much concern Taiyo shows for her feelings.

My Clueless First Friend may not be the deepest comedy story, but it's fun and lighthearted and very, very cute—and I think it's a darn good suggestion if you're trying to introduce a romantic comedy manga to younger readers. I'm looking forward to the cute scenarios this series might come up with in later volumes. Recommended.

MrAJCosplay

Rating:

Do you ever read a book that perfectly encapsulates the simple joys of being a child that has not yet been tainted by the really fucked up reality of the world? My Clueless First Friend I think does that perfectly and it brought me back to a time when I didn't have to worry about taxes or meeting deadlines. The most I ever had to worry about when I was a kid was whether or not I got a good score on my spelling test and whether or not my friends watched the latest episode of Digimon or Codename Kids Next Door. Just meeting a bunch of kids on the playground and talking about how cool everything was or looking at everything with wide-eyed excitement is something that I missed desperately.

The clueless first friend in question is exactly that, a boy who attaches himself to a young girl who is nicknamed the Grim Reaper by a lot of his fellow classmates strictly because of how creepy she sometimes looks even though she didn't do anything wrong. However, this young boy not only finds this girl cool, but he ends up making it the basis for why he wants to interact with her more. It becomes this very cute tale about how the cruelty of other kids ended up providing the perfect outlet for this young girl to finally find a friend that sees her as something exciting and cool. Make no mistake, it's not as if he only sees her as a Grim Reaper and nothing more. Rather, it comes off more like he contextualizes everything he already likes about her into this new title and that's a very clever way of going about it. I like watching these two together and definitely want to see more of these interactions grow moving forward.