The Woman I Like Forgot Her Glasses GN 3-4
Most of the time, there isn’t much to say about The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses since “what you see is what you get.” The story is a sequence of charming and occasionally funny encounters between two students, one of whom helps the other get through the day due to their extreme short-sightedness. The basis for these humor and plot beats is an extremely shaky assumption. I’m not going to mince words when I say that writing a character who constantly forgets their glasses while simultaneously making them comedically blind to the point where they need to go up close to their love interest for the sake of enabling specific scenes is really stupid. I’m not sure why Mie doesn’t realize she’s forgotten her spectacles until she’s already at school, because even if you accept the story’s explanation that she lives extremely close by, I don’t see why she wouldn’t realize she forgot her glasses the moment she walks out her front door.
So, that is a very bitter and huge pill to take, but is it worth it after you do? There isn’t anything here that you couldn’t discover more naturally or organically in other romantic comedies. In terms of rhythm and execution, the chapters are fairly simple, if not inconsistent. Each book comprises about ten chapters, and their lengths vary greatly with minimal buildup. There have been moments when a chapter appears to finish suddenly and jumps to the next one without a firm feeling of flow. Except for one instance near the end of volume four, which I’ll discuss later because it is one of the few instances of true character advancement in these novels, this series is episodic. The character designs are adorable, and an attempt is made to build on the character’s expressions beyond what was shown in volumes one and two. There are more exaggerated face characteristics, as well as one or two instances of abrupt panel framing to highlight a certain narrative beat. The presentation appears to have a bit more rhyme and rationale than before. It’s not a huge leap, but it’s a leap nonetheless.
This is also an accurate description of the plot and comedy. There were a few moments that had me laugh out loud at their execution, and when the plot wants to sit down and move forward, it does so in a shockingly honest way. We don’t get to these moments until the fourth and final volume. The circumstances that allow those moments to occur are among the most manufactured in the entire series thus far. At this point, I’ll take everything I can get. There is an underlying notion of being a burden to another person as opposed to that person enjoying being a pillar of support. Mei increasingly becomes more anxious about how much she must rely on Komura, while Komura finds that he enjoys caring for her. It’s grown so frequent that their peers expect them to be matched up together, which is amusing.
I appreciate this direction, and it would be enough to forgive many of the story’s other contrivances if it didn’t come so late. To be honest, if I wasn’t reviewing this manga, I wouldn’t have gotten this far to get to those more meaningful moments because there isn’t much to chew on until we get there. The series isn’t horrible, and the simplest way to characterize it is that it’s generally unoffensive, but it makes it difficult to discuss or recommend to others. Even if a series is poor, you can recommend it because of the curiosity that comes with wanting to see something break apart or look at art as a learning experience that can be disassembled. But there’s nothing to break down or think about when it comes to The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses. It’s just a simple story with a simple idea, and while there’s nothing wrong with that, there’s also nothing extraordinary about it.
