My Senpai Is Annoying, written and illustrated by Shiromanta. Seven Seas Entertainment, –. 4 volumes (ongoing). Full color.
There’s a change happening in manga, and I suspect most of us on this side of the Pacific are oblivious to it. I was, at least, until quite recently, though I’ve been out of the loop while working on my books and getting married and buying a house and stuff. But in any case, manga is becoming more social media-driven: Many artists are now getting discovered on Twitter or using it to promote their work.
We may also be seeing the rise of internet manga magazines: The title before us is published digitally in the online Comic POOL, and because it is online, it is published in color; although the coloring is fitful at first, My Senpai Is Annoying becomes a legitimate full-color comic as it develops.
It has also grown popular enough to earn an anime adaptation, which is set to debut in October of this year. At the time of writing, four volumes are available in English, and the fifth is set to release later this month.
Plot
The story is a simple, formulaic romantic comedy, probably popular for its leisurely feel and undemanding cutesiness. Our protagonist is Futaba Igarashi, an office lady who appears, implausibly, to have stopped aging when she was eight. Like most diminutive girls in anime or manga, she is the tsundere type, embarrassed to express affection or gratitude. Her coworker is the large, muscular, and boisterous Harumi Takeda, who is somehow built like the hero from an action manga even though he works a sedentary job, guzzles beer, and only practices judo occasionally.
These two characters start off on the wrong foot but quickly spend most of their time together, going to restaurants and bars after work or playing video games on weekends. Their affection for each other is obvious to everyone but themselves.
And that’s it. That’s the plot. There are other characters, of course, some of whom have their own subplots, but the main story consists of little more than what I’ve just described.
Discussion
The artwork is clean and competent though unremarkable, but the color is, for the habitual manga reader, a nice addition—even though it makes these volumes more expensive than usual.
Since stories about teenagers dominate manga, the office setting of My Senpai arguably offers a change of pace, but it does not, in the end, have much bearing on the story: The characters’ jobs are so nondescript that we never learn what they are, and the plot could have as easily been set in a high school. A high-school setting might have also made Igarashi’s immature appearance and Takeda’s obliviousness more believable.
Indeed, in one sense, My Senpai Is Annoying is depressing: Being exactly like a teen rom-com except with adults, it suggests that the awkward bumblings of high school stretch on forever without hope of relief. The unintentional message of this title is that the future is bleak.
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