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REVIEW: My Clueless First Friend GN 1




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K.o.R



Joined: 31 Mar 2005
Posts: 221
PostPosted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 11:55 am Reply with quote
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no adults do anything about the bullying


So, 100% accurate to real life then.
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danpmss



Joined: 30 May 2015
Posts: 761
PostPosted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 12:56 pm Reply with quote
K.o.R wrote:
Quote:
no adults do anything about the bullying


So, 100% accurate to real life then.


I came here to say this precise thing. And particularly in Japanese schools, it almost seem like they don't even try, it's a rather well known social issue.
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 16 Dec 2008
Posts: 2597
Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City
PostPosted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 1:37 pm Reply with quote
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So, 100% accurate to real life then.


Regretfully, yes.
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Vaisaga



Joined: 07 Oct 2011
Posts: 13223
PostPosted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 2:15 pm Reply with quote
To be fair, the bullying is fairly tame, especially by anime/manga standards. Just some childish name calling and excluding behavior. Could easily be written off as kids being kids.

But yeah, Taiyo is a Giga Chad. The Japanese title of the manga is actually "The Transfer Student is Assertive."

Didn't realize that scene was in volume one. Taiyo's reaction when he learns about Nishimura's mom hits hard but thankfully she handled it well.
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ScruffyKiwi



Joined: 25 Oct 2010
Posts: 669
Location: New Zealand
PostPosted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 5:30 pm Reply with quote
Vaisaga wrote:
To be fair, the bullying is fairly tame, especially by anime/manga standards. Just some childish name calling and excluding behavior. Could easily be written off as kids being kids.


The bullying is NOT mild. Her classmates isolated her, refused to call her by her real name and instead used an incredibly hurtful nickname, as Grim Reaper relates to spoiler[the fact that her mother died soon after she was born, so the nickname implies she killed her mother], and made sure to try and perpetuate this treatment for any new child arriving at the school.

While there is no physical bullying taking place they made her life hell. This is NOT “kids being kids”. It is abuse.
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Vaisaga



Joined: 07 Oct 2011
Posts: 13223
PostPosted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 6:58 pm Reply with quote
I'm pretty sure the kids didn't know about that, and just based it on her appearance.
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Northlander



Joined: 10 Feb 2009
Posts: 900
PostPosted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 7:58 am Reply with quote
Well, whether they meant for the reaper nickname to apply to her deceased mother or not, I also gathered that they tried stealing away her very first friend as well, just to reinforce the whole isolation aspect. So no, this is NOT just tame bullying that you could (or should) easily just "write off" in any form or context.
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Swissman



Joined: 11 May 2006
Posts: 764
Location: Switzerland
PostPosted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 2:21 pm Reply with quote
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The art for this series could be better. It's not terrible and gets the point across, but this isn't one of those books you pick up for the artwork.

I think the art is good. It's one if not the main reasons I picked the manga up in the first place. Taku Kawamura's art style is simple & stylized yet effective and cute. It looks like run of the mill but is still easily recognizeable as the artist's own style. I wish there was an artbook of the artist's work.
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ErikaD.D



Joined: 09 Jun 2019
Posts: 658
PostPosted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 3:50 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
she's still struggling with the emotions engendered by her mother's death. Although her mom died shortly after her birth, she tells Takara that she sometimes still feels like she replaced her, as if the two of them couldn't exist together.


And another manga/anime mom got momicide'd for just being mom while the FMC's dad is another widowed manga/anime dad. As usual, it's never the other way around.
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danpmss



Joined: 30 May 2015
Posts: 761
PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2023 7:05 pm Reply with quote
ErikaD.D wrote:
Quote:
she's still struggling with the emotions engendered by her mother's death. Although her mom died shortly after her birth, she tells Takara that she sometimes still feels like she replaced her, as if the two of them couldn't exist together.


And another manga/anime mom got momicide'd for just being mom while the FMC's dad is another widowed manga/anime dad. As usual, it's never the other way around.


I mean, there are a whole lot of other works with the rather overused Disappeared/Deceased Dad trope with single moms taking care of the kiddo in anime/manga/games, particularly in the last few decades, both with female main characters (for a very recent example, Hakari from 100-nin no Kanojo) and male ones (pick your shounen poison, is a ridiculously popular one there). Sometimes both sexes in the same franchise (Pokemon uses this too much).

It's not like it's never the other way around at all, it's just not as big as a popular tropes preferring to opt for either a single mom with male kids or a single dad with female kids to emphasize further how the other half (maternal or paternal) would make things so much easier given the circumstances.

But there are quite a few examples even recently, even with trans girls (Bokura no Hentai).
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Minos_Kurumada



Joined: 04 Nov 2015
Posts: 975
PostPosted: Tue Mar 21, 2023 1:01 pm Reply with quote
ErikaD.D wrote:
Quote:
she's still struggling with the emotions engendered by her mother's death. Although her mom died shortly after her birth, she tells Takara that she sometimes still feels like she replaced her, as if the two of them couldn't exist together.


And another manga/anime mom got momicide'd for just being mom while the FMC's dad is another widowed manga/anime dad. As usual, it's never the other way around.


That's because most dads work for evil companies who send them abroad so they can never see their children.

I am looking at you, every shounen with an absent dad.
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