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The Fall 2019 Manga Guide
Uzaki-Chan Wants To Hang Out

What's It About? 

Sakurai doesn't quite know what to do with his bouncy, boisterous, self-proclaimed friend Uzaki. She's got a limited concept of his desire to be left alone, the ability to charge in at the exact wrong moment, and she just drives him a little crazy. But underneath it all, she really is trying to be a good friend, and when push comes to shove, Sakurai finds that even if Uzaki can be a bit much to take, hanging out with her might not be so bad after all. Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! is written and illustrated by Take. It was released in September by Seven Seas and is available in print ($13.99) and digitally ($9.99).







Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Some stories take a little bit to grow on you, and Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! is absolutely one of them. In its specific case, it feels like creator Take just needed a chance to settle on the tone for the story and to understand his own protagonist; Sakurai is a fairly classic introvert, meaning that he recharges his energy by being alone. That's not always easy for people to understand, and that's the crux of the problem with the first third or so of the volume – Uzaki emphatically does not get it.

Fortunately once both Take and Uzaki come to realize that flinging Uzaki at Sakurai like a bomb of frenetic energy, the story becomes a lot of fun. Uzaki truly does just like Sakurai (definitely as a friend, possibly as more) and does want to hang out with him, and once he comes to accept that and to see that she's not deliberately tormenting him, they develop a nice relationship. They help each other when they need it, get into ridiculous scrapes (that scene with the hedge is still one of my favorites), and just generally begin to build a friendship that's nice to see and entertaining to read about. That Take doesn't do much with the fanservice element is something of a draw as well, not because it's an inherently bad thing, but rather because Uzaki is more than just a large pair of breasts bouncing through the story. She's an actual character who happens to be busty rather than a busty woman who happens to be a person, and that helps the story immeasurably while still allowing for Take to draw her as he likes, even if he can't settle on an actual size, which is a little distracting.

There's not much more I can say here than I already said in my full-length review, but the summation is thus: Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out!, once it gets its feet under it, is a much more delightful story than I expected from either the back copy or the first few chapters. It's the kind of pleasant surprise that makes reading titles you wouldn't normally worth it.


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