Manga Review: My Little Monster (volume 3)

Man it's getting tough to do reviews of each volume in a manga series, I think part of my problem with this series is that 1. I remember a lot of the anime so I've got a few volumes to go before anything makes a real impact on me and 2. There's just not a lot changing in these books volume-to-volume since it's a rom-com, not a plot-heavy story. So bear with me with these shorter reviews, I am still enjoying the series for sure but there's just not as much to say unless I go page by page!

My Little Monster (volume 3) by Robico

It's that time of the school year for Shizuka, Haru, and the rest of the gang, school festival season. After an amusing mess-up their class is in a less than prime spot but that's the last thing on Shizuka's mind right now. She's still confused about how she feels about Haru and how she even feels about her now-friends, what are you supposed to do when you've never had friends before and yet it seems like everyone else already knows how to act?

As the cover shows the story's love triangles are in full force now and not just the Shizuka-Haru-Oshima one, Sasayan is finding out that his crush on Natsume has competition since she's crushing on Haru's older uncle Mitchan. While I'm not that fond of love triangles, especially given that it's usually obvious who the characters will end up with, the way the story is continuing to hold my attention so far is with how it flips back and forth between Shizuka and Haru trying to figure out not only what they want out of a relationship with each other but with their friends as well. This time the focus is more on Shizuka and how she's slowly realizing that even though she likes the benefits from her studies (first place in the class, money and, at least the hope of, more attention from her mother) that she does in fact like being with people as well and finding this balance is hard. She's giving it another shot in this volume, after making Natsume think their relationship was completely over with how harsh she was, and I like seeing her stumble around, stoic characters usually aren't the leads in stories so it's nice to her actual thought process here. Plus, to an extent I can empathize, I was never as focused on my studies as Shizuka and always liked hanging out with friends but it wasn't until I got to college and actually had opportunities to do so that I realized that I was much less introverted than I had thought, since I'd never had a chance to do a lot of things the mere idea of doing so wouldn't even present itself. So even if the story has been all slow-burning character drama so far I still like it, plus it's humor is truly strange and it brings out the best reactions in the cast, I did say this was a romantic comedy after all!