Teasing Master Takagi-san, written and illustrated by Soichiro Yamamoto. 11 volumes (ongoing). Yen Press, 2019–2021.
Over the past few months, my social-media feeds have been full of mentions of a manga called Don’t Toy with Me Miss Nagatoro, which recently saw an anime adaptation. There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding that title for various reasons I don’t care to get into in this post; suffice to say, the story is about a strong-willed girl who bullies a timid young man into being her boyfriend.
Today, I want to look at a title that has a similar premise but is considerably gentler in execution. Though less funny than Nagatoro, it’s also more pleasant.
Soichiro Yamamoto’s Teasing Master Takagi-san currently stands at eleven volumes in the English-language version, though the next two volumes are already listed as forthcoming. There is an anime series as well, currently with two seasons and rumors of a third, though it’s slightly difficult to find: The first season currently resides on Amazon Prime, and the second is on Netflix. More weirdly, there is also a virtual-reality anime that puts the viewer in the role of the harried male protagonist. I haven’t seen any of those, so I am here discussing only the manga.
The story is simple. The protagonist is Nishikata, a boy of twelve or thirteen. In class, he sits next to the titular Takagi, a girl he accuses of teasing him relentlessly, though her “teasing” consists mostly of winning the various games and contests that Nishikata proposes. Nishikata is always inventing various tricks to beat Takagi, but she easily sees through them partly because she knows his ways and partly because Nishikata has no poker face. In other words, most of the “teasing” is actually of Nishikata’s own making. Takagi doesn’t actually torment him as much as he thinks she does.
The reader knows from early on—and it’s made explicit on the off-chance we can’t guess—that Takagi picks on Nishikata because she has a crush on him. Nishikata reacts to her needling with a mixture of cofusion, blushing, and exasperation because he hasn’t quite decided whether he still thinks girls are yucky. Meanwhile, because the two spend all their time together, their classmates assume they’re a couple.
The series has a laid-back, nostalgic feel, reinforced by clean line work and watercolored covers. Video games get mentioned occasionally, but computers and cell phones are conspicuous by their absence. Nishikata and Takagi spend their time riding bikes, fishing at the pond, stargazing, or hanging out at the corner store.
The series has no particular plot development and is not linear; it jumps around in time, sometimes switching from one season to another between chapters. Even though the seasons change, the story has the feel of an endless summer, reminiscent of Yotsubato. In her roundabout efforts to win Nishikata’s heart, Takagi is either extremely confident or extremely patient, apparently believing she has all the time in the world—but she apparently does, as time doesn’t appear to move in the world she occupies.
This is a relaxing and undemanding title, often amusing but never laugh-out-loud funny. Its episodes do, after a time, feel repetitive, but never enough to make it entirely dull. If I had to choose between reading Takagi or Nagatoro, though I’ve enjoyed them both, I would certainly choose Takagi since its heroine’s teasing never rises to the level of actual abuse as Nagatoro’s does.
(That virtual-reality thing is freakin’ weird, though.)
