The Fall 2024 Manga Guide

Spoil Me Plzzz, Hinamori-san!

What's It About? 

Known throughout the school for her selflessness and perfect grades, Yaya Suo has won the admiration of every single underclassman--including Ichigo Hinamori. Turned down by her crush because of her childish image, Ichigo wishes nothing more than to be as mature and elegant as her senpai. But Ichigo's perfect image of Yaya is shattered when she comes across her wallowing in self-pity one day. The real Yaya is clumsy, clingy, and selfish--not at all like the perfect act she puts on. What's more, she's desperately starved for attention and now she won't leave Ichigo alone!

Spoil Me Plzzz, Hinamori-san! has a story and art by tsuke, with English translation by Diana Taylor. This volume was lettered by Jamil Stewart. Published by Kodansha Comics (September 17, 2024).

Is It Worth Reading?

If this goofy-cute yuri manga were adapted into an anime, it would be broken into short, three-minute episodes. While it can be funny and sweet at times, it has only one joke which it delivers with varying levels of enthusiasm while the relationship between our romantic leads remains mainly unchanged. The shocking discovery that the class “princess” is secretly clingy and babyish is barely a surprise when paired with an aged-down art style that makes our girls look more like elementary school kids than the high schoolers they are.

Yaya Suo is a model student known for being cool, calm, and caring toward her fellow students. Ichigo Hinamori is average in every way, but she aspires to be like Yaya thanks to a bad experience in her past: when she asked another girl out, the girl replied “I'm not into kiddie types.” Only, one day Ichigo discovers Yaya's secret—the put-together princess is even more of a “kiddie type” than Ichigo herself. Now Ichigo must find herself keeping Yaya's secret, and as the only person Yaya can be her true self with, suddenly responsible for praising, soothing, and motivating Yaya into keeping up her act as the school's most reliable inspiration. Not only is Yaya secretly needy and babyish, but she's also harboring a huge crush on Ichigo and she isn't shy about it. For example, when Ichigo tells Yaya to practice her handwriting with a word she likes, Yaya writes Ichigo's name over and over! This is a love story about two keyboard-smashing bottoms getting together—they're both craving a dependable older sister type to dote on them. Based on her past impression of Yaya, Ichigo never thought that would be her role.

The humor comes from how both characters aspire toward a “prince” type girlfriend and end up with a childish one instead. That also means it's hard to see them as a compatible couple. Both ask the other to become something she's not, which undercuts this story's initial message about accepting Yaya for who she is, her babyish side and all. The story's one joke is funny at first, but it needs serious character growth in volume two for this couple to become evenly matched.

As a self-described enjoyer of terrible girls in manga and anime, I will admit my faith is…tested, from time to time. Sure, we all love a little toxic yuri, but there's a difference between compelling unhealthy dynamics and two people just being kinda annoying at each other. The obnoxiously titled Spoil Me Plzzz Hinamori-San largely falls into the latter column. The titular Ichigo Hinamori actually has a decently interesting cocktail of complexes, recovering from a mild, if understandably affecting, rejection and projecting that onto her senior, Suo. Suo, on the other hand, has the decidedly un-fun kind of issues. The pressure to perform as an honor student has done a number on her ego, which ends up manifesting in an aggressively coerced praise kink from Hinamori, and a whole lot of inelegant tantrums if she doesn't get her way.

The result is less a "romance" and more akin to one of those Spongebob Squarepants episodes where Squidward or Mister Krabs is petulantly bothering a beleaguered Spongebob with problems that aren't his. It's repetitive, which is part and parcel to the kind of comedy series this is, to be sure. But when the repeated bit, Suo throwing a fit because she can't perform a basic task and demands that Himawari coax her through it, is so grating, it can't mine even repeated passes for comic beats. It's a pony desperately in need of another trick, since the first one was just sad.

I'm sure there are some yuri and/or rom-com fans out there for whom this is the exact dynamic they've been looking for. But on my reading, Suo's failing flailings went way past the cutely pathetic or entertainingly terrible—there's no potential romance here with her would-be soft mommy GF, she probably just needs professional help with her issues. Hinamori, for her part, can't really carry the sympathetic straight-woman part of the pair. There are a couple whiffs of the idea that she's still attracted to Suo's competent cool-girl facade, and that's the only reason she goes along with this absurdity. But neither that nor her potential to embrace that mommy GF role are interrogated enough, and she just comes off like a sucker. As I said, I'm sure this is somebody's ideal yuri dynamic, so if this description sounds like your bag, come pick up your kids. For everyone else, make like Hinamori should have when she first saw what Suo was like, and just choose not to get involved.

Life can be pretty stressful, especially when you need to keep up appearances. Whether you need to be a perfect student or a model employee, sometimes you have to keep a smile on your face for the sake of making everybody else happy. That can build up a lot of stress and sometimes, you just want to drop the façade in front of somebody you trust. Sometimes you just wanna get spoiled and that idea is at the heart of this cute little yuri comedy.

I relate a lot to the senpai character and her desire to be babied by her fellow students. I know it takes a lot to be open enough around somebody to allow that to happen. The problem with the story itself is that despite the setup, the relationship dynamic between our two leads isn't as strong as the story wants. There's a lot of reluctance from our main character to be the one to engage in this spoiling behavior. It never comes off as something she enjoys, and you could argue that this is supposed to be a source of comedy. But it's not really funny.

There are some good slapstick moments and great expressions here, especially when the needy senpai goes full baby mode. But there are also moments where it seems like the story is trying to build up or establish a strong foundation for a legitimate romance between these two and I just don't see it. I think this is a case where the comedy and drama of the story are a bit at odds with each other. I don't think my time is wasted reading this as I did find the premise very relatable, but I do wish the premise was better used and hope that I come across better stories with it in the future.