The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses

Alt title: Suki na Ko ga Megane wo Wasureta

Vol: 11+; Ch: 109+
2018 - ?
4.003 out of 5 from 377 votes
Rank #3,827
The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses

With the new school year comes a new homeroom, new classmates, and a new desk for the timid Komura. But any trepidation he might've felt quickly dissipates when he catches sight of Mie, his new seat neighbor. Apt to quietly blurt out the most random things, the quirky Mie wears thick glasses that accentuate her lovely eyes, making Komura’s heart skip a beat! Unfortunately, Mie is pathologically forgetful and can never seem to remember to bring her glasses to class. It's not all bad, though! Her resulting squinty, mean-girl face sends Komura’s heart into overdrive too! While Komura is keen to help out and share his textbooks with Mie, will his heart give out from the almost daily strain of being up close and personal with his crush?!

Source: Square Enix

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Reviews

jmaeshawn
9

I'll start off by saying that I don't normally write reviews, let alone reviews for a series that is still ongoing. But considering the wildly varying scores that other reviewers have given the series, along with the fact that the series will be ending soon (the final volume 12 is scheduled to be released in “Spring 2024” - which is 1 to 3 months from the time I'm writing this), I felt compelled to contribute my thoughts about it.  I also need to mention that while I'll try my best to keep spoilers to a minimum, there will be some, so consider this a warning.  The basic premise of the series is that Kaede Komura, a 13 year old in middle school, has developed feelings for Ai Mie, the beautiful girl who sits next to him but has a tendency to frequently forget to wear her glasses despite having terrible eyesight. Because of Komura's good nature, combined with his deep crush on Mie, he offers to help her out whenever she forgets her glasses.  Now despite the fact that I really like the series, find the characters rather endearing, and find the story both heartwarming and more down to earth than other romance series, I can't help but feel that the author started the series with nothing more than that basic premise and didn't really have a clear plan of where the story would be going: “Middle school boy with little personality develops his first crush on a girl who's beautiful but pathologically forgetful”.  To me it seems like the kind of plot that was intended as a one shot, but when the author brought in a manuscript, one of the editors saw a lot more potential in it and decided to greenlight it for a whole series - leading to the author having to figure out how to take those two-dimensional characters and that basic premise and expand it into a full story as the author went along.  This leads to a large chunk of the beginning of the series being basically the same scenario: Mie manages to wake up, do her morning routine, leave her house, and come all the way to school before she realizes that she left her glasses at home and can barely see anything. Komura offers to help her while fawning over her to himself. Rinse and repeat.  As someone who needs to wear glasses in order to be able to do anything, and who knows how it feels to not have glasses for an extended time due to a real life run-in with Truck-kun, this led me to seriously question what was going on with this girl.  1) Is her forgetfulness a recent thing, perhaps caused by her starting to go through puberty? 2) Is she REALLY forgetful enough to forget her glasses almost everyday, or does she just leave them at home on purpose because she likes the attention she gets from Komura? 3) If this happens to her so often, why doesn't she just wear contacts?  Considering that all of these questions and more were answered as the series went along, I can only assume that other readers must have been wondering the same things and the author worked explanations into the story as a response to reader feedback: It's eventually shown to the reader that she has forgotten her glasses since at least elementary school, and that she often had a boy in her class pick on her because of it - the exact opposite of how Komura treats her. So it's definitely not a recent thing, and also not an intentional act in order to get Komura's attention because she herself doesn't realize her feelings for him until much later on.  And even later in the series, she goes through an entire arch where she has one of her female friends do “special training” with her to help her be able to wear contacts, so it's not as if she never thought of it.  Everything I mentioned above is why, if you're going to start reading this series, I suggest that you prepare to suspend your disbelief about the extent of her forgetfulness and just think of it as a comedic setup for the rest of the story.  Now as much as I've talked about what I found odd about the series, I also need to point out that the characters being rather two-dimensional at the beginning kind of works to the series’ advantage because of their age and the middle school setting that they're in. Regardless of whether or not it was the author's intention, the fact that the two main characters start out as nearly-blank slates gives them both infinite potential for growth, which makes reading through the story of them figuring out who they really are, who they want to be, and how they handle the new and confusing feelings that blossom up inside of them during adolescence all the more real and satisfying.  Another thing that the series does really well is its supporting characters. Komura having feelings for Mie is made clear right from the very start, but Mie is oblivious to that fact. And even once Mie realizes that she has developed feelings for him, Komura starts out rather oblivious to that as well. Meanwhile, pretty much all of their friends and classmates seem to figure out what's going on right away, and are supportive of the relationship that develops between the two (to the point where one girl assumes that Komura and Mie are already dating and have kissed before they've even told each other how they feel.) I think this is rather refreshing, because so often in romance-related shonen manga a nice relationship develops between two characters, only to have a new girl be introduced to cause some drama between the two for the sake of adding some variety and getting a few extra laughs from the resulting humorous situations, but at the expense of transforming the story from that of a happy romance into a competition between the members of a love triangle. This series has enough humorous situations just as a result of the ridiculous extent of Mie's forgetfulness, so I'm glad that the author didn't try to force any more into it by adding a third wheel.  I feel that the parents of the two main characters are also a strong suit of the series. Komura lives with his mother in a single parent home as a result of his mother and father getting a divorce. When his mother meets Mie for the first time, she immediately takes a liking to her and makes sure Mie understands the difference between her son and her ex-husband when she tells Mie, “my son is the type who will stay faithfully married for his entire life, unlike his father.” Although Mie comes from a more traditional two-parent home, her parents are portrayed in a similar way. The situations that happen between Komura and Mie often result in Komura having a mental image of Mie's father being an extremely stern man that he needs to prostate himself in front of and ask for forgiveness, but in reality, her father is a incredibly thoughtful man who understands what Komura is going through and supports the two as much as he can - even going as far as giving the yukata he wore when he was in middle school to Komura so that he and Mie (who was also wearing a yukata) could better enjoy going to a summer festival together. In addition to this, both Mie's mother and father happily accept Komura when (late in the series) they announce that the two of them are officially dating, which left a smile on my face because of how much it contrasted with my own not-so-good experience with the parents of my wife-to-be.  My one big disappointment with the series, though, is the fact that it seems to be following the path of so many other shonen series by ending before we get to see them move from one stage of their life to the next. In this case, the series started with Komura and Mie in middle school, and is going to end just as they are getting ready to make the transition from middle to high school. I would have loved to have been able to follow these two through their years of high school and young adulthood to see how their relationship develops or changes during their time of attending two different high schools, whether they end up getting married afterward, and if Mie ever outgrows her tendency to forget her glasses, or if that's just something that Komura will have to accept and learn to live with. So I guess this series isn't going to make it into my “Life Stages” list, but I'll try to hold out hope that it's popular enough to warrant a spinoff or sequel that shows them in their later years, similar to “Karakai Jouzu no (Moto) Takagi-san”.  So in conclusion, I think that the overall story, character progression, and great supporting characters overpower the rocky start that the series has and makes it a must-read if you like romance or coming-of-age stories. 

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