Kubo-san wa Mob wo Yurusanai Chapter 1 Discussion

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Jan 28, 2023 4:45 PM

d2rkest

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Mar 2018

1415

I really like how Kubo looks in this one-shot, especially the blushing panel.

Jan 29, 2023 10:23 PM

d2rkest

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Mar 2018

1415

MahoShojoEnjoyer said:
yeah, same.
I read it raw, damn i wish i could understand what they were saying.

There was a translated ver. released a few days ago if you still want to read it.

Jan 31, 2023 7:16 PM

waalex11

Offline

Dec 2009

9653

Unsurprisingly this helped me decide to never read the manga for how mediocre and boring it seems.
Cliche plain ugly male protagonist with a bland kind personality with a beautiful heroine who has an interest (clear crush in this case) in the male who's an outcast in school.

A heroine who entices the male in romance is always intriguing in idea, but here with the actions chosen, it comes off as creepy and weird.
The girl purposely sits in the guy's chair, asking him to guess why, which he gets wrong, which then leads her to invite him to guess if she's wearing shorts or panties underneath her skirt as a game with a reward to do whatever the winner asks, whether he's right or wrong.

She boldly lifts her skirt to reveal shorts, which makes him the winner, while he turns away to not look.
Later in the day, because he forgot to take notes, he simply asks for hers as the reward, and when she asks why he never changes expression, he admits that he only does with her, which then shows us her embarassement and love for him.

... It's all stupid. 3/10.
A heroine mysteriously flirting or enticing the male she likes can be very alluring, but not like this.
Cliche plain and/or ugly males are boring, but if they're kinda and interesting enough, or the heroine can takeover the story for her charm, then the story can be a fine romance.
Unfortunately in this case, he's ugly, and she comes off as weird and creepy for being in an odd balance of cute and sexy instead of being full sexy by teasing with her skirt or just cute if she were to do something else, but regardless, weak introduction.

Jun 19, 2023 6:16 PM

Shark5Sharky

Offline

Jun 2023

waalex11 said:
Unsurprisingly this helped me decide to never read the manga for how mediocre and boring it seems.
Cliche plain ugly male protagonist with a bland kind personality with a beautiful heroine who has an interest (clear crush in this case) in the male who's an outcast in school.

A heroine who entices the male in romance is always intriguing in idea, but here with the actions chosen, it comes off as creepy and weird.
The girl purposely sits in the guy's chair, asking him to guess why, which he gets wrong, which then leads her to invite him to guess if she's wearing shorts or panties underneath her skirt as a game with a reward to do whatever the winner asks, whether he's right or wrong.

She boldly lifts her skirt to reveal shorts, which makes him the winner, while he turns away to not look.
Later in the day, because he forgot to take notes, he simply asks for hers as the reward, and when she asks why he never changes expression, he admits that he only does with her, which then shows us her embarassement and love for him.

... It's all stupid. 3/10.
A heroine mysteriously flirting or enticing the male she likes can be very alluring, but not like this.
Cliche plain and/or ugly males are boring, but if they're kinda and interesting enough, or the heroine can takeover the story for her charm, then the story can be a fine romance.
Unfortunately in this case, he's ugly, and she comes off as weird and creepy for being in an odd balance of cute and sexy instead of being full sexy by teasing with her skirt or just cute if she were to do something else, but regardless, weak introduction.

I get where you are coming from, but believe me when I say that as someone who has read the entire manga, I was quite shocked by those scenes too. The thing is that neither the manga nor the anime ever depict her being THIS lewd or provocative. I'm not sure just how much of that was something that the author was forced to change or tone down, or how much the author willingly chose to change, but the end product never reached such levels of provocativeness.

Jun 19, 2023 7:05 PM

Shark5Sharky

Offline

Jun 2023

Ah, the "pilot" of this series, and I gotta say, it ain't that great. It's fascinating for its importance as a blueprint for the series, but it's pretty clear that the author, Nene Yukimori, had to iron out a lot of things in order to strike the ideal cuteness and romantic feel of the final product. Essentially, for newcomers to the manga or anime, this will at best leave an inaccurate impression of the series.

The most noticeable change is the shift in tone. Unlike the final product, there seems to a bit more self-referential humor in this. Shiraishi seems to be aware that he is in a manga, and that he has been assigned the role of a "background character" or "mob." The official manga does away with this more meta self-awareness and replaces it with silly, but effective cartoon logic. Shiraishi is simply someone so normal that to his peers, that the poor guy blends into the background.

Another aspect that was dramatically changed was Kubo's personality. Here, Yukimori seems to heavily lean towards her teasing personality, to such a degree that Kubo lifts her skirt in front of Shiraishi just to get a reaction out of him. This is something that gets severely toned down in the manga and anime, where Kubo is still a bit of a tease, but she never once dares to do something so obscene. If anything, the Kubo of the final product seems to be more or less a stickler for standards, as she is against attempting anything lewd or out-right offensive to Shiraishi.

Aside from that, the character designs for the two protagonist is pretty much spot-on from how they would look in the official manga. There seems to be a slight number of modifications, though they are minor at best. They closely resemble Yukimori's character designs in the only other notable work the author has so far made: Ningen ni Koi shita Oni wa Warau, a 29 chapters-long manga released back in 2017.
Some of the panels here are reused under a different context, such the panel where Kubo comments on how cute Shiraishi is, which is used in Chapter 10.5 of the manga. The same applies to some of the character designs that appear throughout the pilot, such as the random girl in the train, which is an exact replica of Saki, Kubo's little cousin in the official manga.

Conclusion: For people who have read the manga, this would be a curiosity at best, but for anyone who might be interested to jump into series, this will probably leave a poor and inaccurate first impression, so it preferable to steer away from it until you have read the manga or watched the anime.

Jun 19, 2023 8:26 PM

waalex11

Offline

Dec 2009

9653

@Shark5Sharky
Interesting... It's funny how a manga compared to a pre-serialized version of it can be so different in either being good or worse than the manga.
I still don't plan on ever reading it anymore, even though I wasn't incredibly attracted to it from the lame ugly male protagonist trope since the beginning,
but I appreciate your insight.

Maybe it's decent or ok, but, yeah... I'd rather read better romcom.

Jun 20, 2023 11:29 AM

Shark5Sharky

Offline

Jun 2023

waalex11 said:
@Shark5Sharky
Interesting... It's funny how a manga compared to a pre-serialized version of it can be so different in either being good or worse than the manga.
I still don't plan on ever reading it anymore, even though I wasn't incredibly attracted to it from the lame ugly male protagonist trope since the beginning,
but I appreciate your insight.

Maybe it's decent or ok, but, yeah... I'd rather read better romcom.

Understood. They don't really make him ugly per say, nor does Shiraishi ever bemoan his looks either. The whole point is that he is quite literally invisible to people around him. They do this recurring gag where he is constantly overlooked by a store clerk, even when he is standing in front of her. It was occasionally overdone, but never really felt all too mean-spirited. Another benefit from the manga is that it quickly does away with the loosely strung vignettes after the first 40 or so chapters and instead allows for much more serialized, story-driven narrative. There plenty of little details that are set up and paid off in later chapters, which gives it a sense of continuity. The events of the manga roughly take place over the course of a year, but a good chunk of them canonically take place over the course of 6 months, so there a steady pace to the slow burn that keeps the narrative fresh and dynamic.

Something that took me by surprise during my first read was just how solid the supporting cast was. One might not get the impression of there being many other interesting characters during the first several chapters, but they are nicely set up and most of them have their own mini-arcs or side plots that are nicely paid off without detracting from the main romantic pair. In fact, it can be argued that the supporting cast of characters is what actually kept hooked on the series after the first 1/3 of the manga, which while fluffy and cute, simply lacked a bit of substance that made the latter 2/3rds as great as they were.

Last of all, the manga is no more than 144 chapters, which means that it could be read in one or two lengthy sittings. So, it doesn't suffer from the dragged-out romance plots that something like Komi-san or Takagi-san often devolve into.

It also never once devolved into pointless drama or problematic love triangles either, instead engaging the reader with the personal insecurities of the two mains, and how through their developing relationship they were able to help each other overcome them.

Jun 20, 2023 12:03 PM

waalex11

Offline

Dec 2009

9653

@Shark5Sharky
Oh ok. Sounds fairly good then... I might give it another chance one day.

Kubo-san wa Mob wo Yurusanai Chapter 1 Discussion

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