Truthfully, this is a slightly strange story. Caterpillar Girl and Bad Texter Boy by Sanzo revolves around these two teenagers, childhood friends, Kikuo Suzume and Kuchinashi Akane. Suzume was in love with Akane or "Aa-chan" is how he is known in the manga. She confessed her feelings to him one day and he rejected her due to his own low self esteem. Then, Suzume goes missing...
This manga is strange for sure and it definitely makes you a little sad, I know I was when I read it. There's not much else to say about it, it's a very straightforward story, only a single volume long. So without further ado, let's get on with it!
(SPOILER WARNING! START)
So, Suzume has been missing for about a month now. Akane is pretty worried that it's his fault that she ran away because he rejected her. Suddenly he hears her voice, looks around and then looks down, only to see a giant fluffy caterpillar thing with Suzume's voice!
He ends up taking it home, and officially confirming that it is Suzume he starts the interrogation, you know, all the typical questions. Most importantly: "where was she during the month? What happened?" She then proceeds to explain that an underclassman had told her about this spell that happens at a shrine. If you write your wish on a piece of paper, fold it into a crane and hand it to the shrine, the god of the shrine will grant your wish.
Akane ends up finding the underclassman to ask about the shrine and it turns out that she flat out hates him and doesn't want to help. Suzume and Akane try to find the shrine themselves and can't until he puts her down and goes off himself. He encounters another caterpillar monster and gives chase. Akane ends up at the shrine and runs into Ouga-san, the underclassman who hates his guts. She invites him into the shrine, it being bigger on the inside than the outside, and explains to him that she was the god of the shrine. They talk for a bit and he continually puts himself down, asking "why would someone like Suzume ever be in love with someone like him?" Ouga-san gets super annoyed with this and forces him to read all the cranes that Suzume left for her.
With each passing crane, Akane starts to feel worse and worse. "Why would she go to such lengths for me, even becoming a monster?" Ouga-san urges him to make a wish but tells him that she can't change Suzume back, she doesn't reverse wishes. Finding it to be moot point if he can't change her back, leaves and finds Suzume, soon going home.
As the days go by, Ouga-san wants to see Suzume, even going to the extent of disguising herself as Akane's mother through magic. That visit doesn't go well, Akane's older sister grabbing her by the hair and going to call the cops. She just barely escapes. The next day, Ouga-san confronts Akane about it, and he explains his story about his mom, which in hindsight, isn't a happy story despite him acting all happy and loving towards his "mom" the day before.
Ouga-san feels guilty for the cruelty she had done him. She tries again to see Suzume but witnesses her acting more monstrous than before and Akane explains that she won't eat. Ouga-san brings them to the shrine and fixes this, the remedy being that the food must be beaten and dirtied to seem appealing to Suzume. Suzume ends up staying at the shrine due to the fact she is getting too big to hide in Akane's bedroom.
Eventually, Ouga-san dies and Suzume gains the magic ribbon to change her form, allowing her to go back to school, but she is completely different now. Akane has gotten over himself and is now more affectionate with Suzume, kind of, and the self-loathing is over. Suzume becomes a big ball of resentment and other negative things. She can't read or write anymore and the only language she can read are in the books left behind in the shrine. Even after all of this though, deep down she still loves Akane, she discovers. And they live happily ever after?
(SPOILER WARNING! END)
To be completely honest, this is a cute-ish story, but I don't understand the rime or reason for it. I don't get the point of the story. Akane went around hating the world, thinking so lowly of himself, that he wasn't worthy of being with someone like Suzume. That dating Suzume would give him more problems than not.
It wasn't a healthy kind of relationship at all. Suzume devoted herself to him, having written a wish everyday to try and get Akanes' attention on her, all with a different wish: I wish I could cook better for Aa-chan or I wish I was cuter so that Aa-chan would notice me, things of that nature. She was completely and utterly obsessed with him to the point where the ending just wasn't satisfying to me.
She had a good life, but her love and obsession with one boy ruined it all, and what's worse is that because of what she becomes, she starts to resent everything and isn't herself anymore, completely changing her personality. She loses all her friends, the only one to stand by her now being Akane.
This is a manga I would recommend if you like strange, and somewhat spooky, romances. I liked it for what it was, but I'm not crazy about it. This is one I may reread again in many years, and not due to fondness, but due to the fact that I can't remember the story.
Thank you all so much for reading! Hope you guys somewhat enjoyed this one! Really though, this manga is pretty strange and I don't see myself reading it again unless I've forgotten the story. It just isn't that amazing and it doesn't really stand out in comparison to other manga that is out right now. Please comment down below your thoughts! Do you see yourself reading this title? Or is it too weird for you? Hope to see you guys come back for next week's review!
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