The Fall 2022 Manga Guide

Miss Miyazen Would Love to Get Closer to You

What's It About? 

Sakura Miyazen and Shota Matsubayashi are two classmates that are polar opposites: Miyazen, the high-class pretty girl, and Matsubayashi, the scary-looking delinquent guy. Oblivious to each other's feelings, they actually want to get to know each other but can't seem to communicate properly.

Miss Miyazen Would Love to Get Closer to You has story and art by Akitaka, with English translation by Jenny McKeon, and Kodansha Comics will release its first volume both digitally and physically on September 27.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

There may not be much to Miss Miyazen Would Love to Get Closer to You, but by God, what's there is adorable. This slim volume follows the fits and starts of Miyazen and her classmate Matsubayashi as they struggle to form a friendship despite the fact that they, on paper, are total opposites: Miyazen is a gently-bred young lady from a wealthy family while Matsubayashi is a thug from a rough-and-tumble middle school. They can't possibly have anything in common, right?

If you guessed “wrong,” congratulations. In some ways, this book is about how judging by appearances can keep you from meeting someone you may really like. Despite their obvious attraction to one another, both Miyazen and Matsubayashi are convinced that they must live completely disparate lives and therefore have nothing that they could possibly talk about. But Miyazen has been watching the yakuza movies Matsubayashi loves in a bid to start a conversation and Matsubayashi has been desperately searching for an opening to talk to Miyazen. The only thing keeping them apart is themselves and their preconceived notions, and something about that rings very true.

Fortunately for the readers, this entire thing is handled with a lot of humor. The two keep working at cross-purposes, stumbling over every interaction as they overthink things as much as possible, and neither of them is quite aware that they're dealing with a mutual crush; in fact, they're barely aware that they might want to be more than just friends at this point. Matsubayashi may be a bit closer to that realization, but Miyazen isn't far behind, with one wonderful moment where she realizes that she's comparing him to her beloved Golden Retriever coming the closest to her figuring out that he's her type. The story largely runs on their misunderstandings, but it's gentle and kindly told, and the simple art helps to keep the story floating along easily. It's sweet and soft, and if that sounds like what you need to unwind and you don't need a ton of variation and plot, I'd definitely recommend picking it up.

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Jean-Karlo Lemus

Rating:

You want fluff? You got fluff. We got fluff the likes of which you'd never seen here. Miyazen and Matsubayashi's interactions are the sugar-sweet stuff of dumb teenager dreams. The two fret and wring their wrists over how mismatched they are, even though they're desperately trying to bond with each other over yakuza movies and cute animals. It would be nice if there were more jokes: it seems every chapter is an attempt from Miyazen to quote a movie that Matsubayashi somehow convinces himself couldn't have been a reference. It's a cute concept and the story does a phenomenal job of staying short and punchy, so it's a testament to its writing that they can actually use the joke over and over and still get a nice chortle. But I'd definitely hope later volumes set up better scenes for these two dorks.

The artwork is cute and simple, as befits such a fluffy series. There isn't anything terribly ambitious, but then again the series has its sights set fairly low. This wants to be a cute, fluffy manga about two twice-shy twits trying to get closer and somehow achieving it (slowly) in spite of themselves. But it works, and I'm rooting for these morons. Mildly recommended, this is a must-have if it ever goes on sale.

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MrAJCosplay

Rating:

Miss Miyazen is cute, but I don't think it has anything more going for it than just that. I love my romances based on misunderstandings as much as the next guy, but even I was a bit surprised by how quickly the story ran its handful of jokes into the ground halfway through the volume. Credit where it's due, there is actual, noticeable progression in the relationship between our two leads – from barely saying hi to each other to regularly conversing by the end – and there is genuine chemistry there. However, looking back, it does feel like the story sort of told all of its best jokes too soon and didn't really have any other jokes to fill in a lot of the moments in-between, so the same joke ends up getting used over and over again. This definitely made some sections drag on longer than they should have, and at times even muddied the impact of other rather sweet scenes. Not to mention that the art style and panel layout are definitely a bit more on the generic side, with very little visual creativity to help it stand out from the rest. It's far from a bad story and you could definitely do worse with your spare time, but I don't see myself remembering Miss Miyazen a week after finishing it.