Sensitive Boy

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This is a deconstruction of the typical romance manga, exploring the darker side of romantic relationship. What if someone has baggage? What if there are misunderstandings that are more dangerous than they appear at first glance? Do men and women even need to date in the first place?

These questions and many more are answered in this alt-romance blowout. It can make you cringe with how uncomfortable you will feel, but that's part of its charm. Unlike most romcoms, this story is unafraid to showcase just how ugly interpersonal relationships can get. However, this difficult material is handled with patience and grace, giving every character the ... chance to give their point of view. The characters themselves are multifaceted and easy to root for. There isn't a villain perse, rather people are just the victim of unfortunate and very real circumstances, and are trying to move on in spite of them.

Overall, 8/10. The art is nice, characters don't feel forced, situations don't happen for the sake of driving the main leads together. This is a more realistic and grounded take on romance and trauma, and it is told through the lens of compassion and understanding. Underneath its admittedly scary exterior is a very wholesome and compassionate story.

At the time of my reading this, I am 54 chapters deep. Therefore, this is not a true "review," in the conventional sense, so much as a recommendation to read something outside of your usual comfort zone. In order not to spoil your reading experience, I am going to keep things spoiler-free (in the literal sense) in all but the final paragraph of this review, as well as speak about the meta-narrative surrounding this type of story in a roundabout way.

This manga is not about surviving an incident, or experiencing something difficult, in the exact moment that it happens. "Sensitive Boy" opts to focus on ... the fallout, rather than the blast. It is about the matter of what it's like to ""live with yourself"" after having experienced something truly awful, and the day-to-day requirements for doing so. Due to the inherent difficulty of this subject matter, "Sensitive Boy" is also a story which is ultimately about showcasing how challenging that process can be... How ordinary things suddenly become hard; the matter of navigating this increased difficulty in ones relationships and within one's own mind, etc... Having read that, I understand you-- the one reading this recommendation-- might find yourself turned off to reading this story, if for no other reason than that trauma is one of the single most difficult writing concepts for an author to execute upon in a way that will satisfy everybody. If you are feeling that way right now, please keep reading, as I believe I will be able to satisfy some of your immediate concerns.

Here are the straight facts: Successful authors & authoresses know that trauma and the mental illness it breeds are concepts which have a limited lifespan with readers, in terms of how long it can maintain their interest for. When you decide to write a story which entirely revolves around this concept, you are operating on borrowed time. Once you, the author, have established a connection between yourself and the reader, it's not tough to keep them invested in the character's life... The reader will want to empathize with your characters, and to see them grow and thrive in spite of their challenged lives. What is extremely hard, however, is to also keep them interested in your story, while maintaining their suspension of disbelief. Your reader must constantly believe that the story being told is ""realistic"" and that the depiction of trauma in your story is ""true to life,"" or else your story has just lost all of its appeal. It's too common for readers to fall off the moment that they feel that just one of those two conditions-- realism and reader interest-- is no longer being satisfied. But it gets even worse: It may very well be that your story is both interesting and realistic. But because people don't perceive that it is, they fall off anyway. This is an especially big problem when writing manga about teenagers, because it is an all-too-common tendency for authors to insert adult-like dialogue and rhetoric into teenage mouths when writing manga stories. In other words, readers are going to be extremely hardened against

Because of the high level of challenge in writing an ""realistic"" trauma story, manga about trauma very often tend to lean into one of two peculiar subgenres: "Yandere stories" or "Sensitivity porn." The former, "yandere stories," is by far the most common of the two subgenres in manga today. This is a subgenre wherein mental illness is deliberately misrepresented, and often hyperbolized in a very specific type of way, in order to satisfy an authorial agenda (ie: making the story interesting, appealing to a sex fetish crowd, etc...) The characters in this genre can be relatable to some people, who have lived through bizarre experiences with women but I digress. For the most part, however, they are unrelatable to the general public and this is entirely by design. This approach to character writing completely subverts the need for realism, and "writes around" the sensitive subjects, while maintaining high reader interest and a kind of niche fetish appeal. This is precisely why the subgenre has become so popular in recent years, despite being so easy for anybody to write, and so trashy. That being said, I would argue that it's actually the lesser of two evils.

On the other hand, you have the "sensitivity porn" subgenre, which is as bad as it sounds. This approach to trauma writing does the exact opposite of "yandere," by attempting to be authentic to the "feeling" of living with some kind of trauma, but doing so in a way which is completely detrimental to the story. Typically, this is accomplished by reducing the very idea of trauma to the level of uninteresting shojo schlock... As nothing more than an afterthought in a greater drama, where every other panel is two characters hugging, crying, and talking about their feelings. Of course, do not let me mischaracterize this subgenre; it's not all white backgrounds, giant hands, men with artificial baggage, and happy endings. Nowadays, it is also very popular for these sorts of manga to take a ""dark"" sort of approach, in attempt to gain the label of a "trauma drama." Authors do this by leaning into the "realism" of the trauma, make it even weirder, and then write a completely unrealistic drama around the story that these poor characters have to navigate through. Stories like this naturally also tend to introduce LGBT elements midway through the story, because that is a trendy thing to do nowadays, and because it tends to catch people by surprise. This is not any kind of political comment, but rather a commentary on the low-quality of today's manga.

So then, having discussed the state of the landmine-field (pun intended,) where does this story land?

For one thing, if you are somebody who has experienced something truly difficult in your life, and you find yourself fighting against the memories of a past experience on a near-daily basis, you are definitely going to be able to relate to these characters better than the average reader. What really stood out to me, with respect to realism, was the author's depiction of trauma in the main character of the first arc. I found the victim's struggle to warm himself up to others, and to discover for himself-- and fit into-- a definition of "normalcy" that is compatible with his lived experiences to be highly compelling, as well as extremely true to life. Credit where it's due, this was brilliant, and I personally could relate to this. The writer does an exceptional job of writing this out, without making it "too weird to be believable." This is the main reason as to why I am taking the time to write this ""review."" I don't know how the rest of the story will come along, but the first arc is worth reading for this alone.

The author also does a much better job than most of writing an organic-feeling teen cast. As I have said before, this is so important in these kinds of stories. A story like this is simply is not worth reading, in my opinion, if the feelings are one dimensional, or if the teen characters feel like a proxy for the author in any kind of a significant way. Notably, the author accomplishes this without needlessly inserting LGBT elements into the story, and does not waste your time on the usual tropes that cause these sorts of stories to be relegated to the trash bin. For example: This is not a manga where some character get bullied for their past, and then a close friend or love interest stands up to the bullies, in front of the whole class, causing everyone to change their perspective while the world applauds. This is a manga where 99% of the story's focus is on the main character, and his struggles in life, and I think that's a beautiful thing. The first arc also closes out in what I feel is a clean, and delightfully realistic way.

I do want to stress, the writing is not perfect. There are times when the discussion seems too nuanced, too preachy, or too timely, to have come from a highschool-aged mouth. There are times where the main character's friends are just a little too understanding. There is also one male character who comes out to the main character as an asexual, and this happens seemingly for no other reason than pure coincidence. While I found this particular moment in the story to be peculiar, it did not bother me as much as the aforementioned issues, because it happens in what I felt was a somewhat organic way. It served a purpose in the main character's journey of self-discovery, and was not deliberately overdramatized in order to obtain reader interest. It was a peculiar moment, to be certain, but not so much that you should skip a great story altogether. I see these little issues as speedbumps, which can subjectively appear to be unrealistic when viewed from the perspective of an in-the-moment reader, but which become invisible from a bird's eye perspective.

In conclusion: The first arc is worth reading, if you like tense reading. Give it a read.

8.0/10


Psychologically broken lead characters and the romance genre aren’t commonly mixed when it comes to mangas, but when it is, it’s a fresh change of pace from the usual “silly” and light-hearted rom-coms. That being said, it’s much more difficult to pull off without offending an audience or two, because of such sensitive topics being discussed throughout the manga, and in this case, predatory sexual assault is the heliocentric topic. I’m not one to be bothered or dramatic oversensitive topics, but if you are, then I would stop while you are ahead as the plot revolves around that while the mc tries to seek closure. ...

The characters in this manga are no less than great, with each one of them being understanding, absurd, realistic, or idiotic while given ample amount of screen time to really understand them. Their introductions aren’t forced or unnatural nor is their personality, while still possessing the high school kid mentality that authors tend to forget.

The plot is where it gets chaotic as it’s wholesome at one point, but as the reader, you know something will go wrong at one point, but you just don’t know when. It’s not bad per se because it delves down into the psyche of the characters and adds a mysterious lore to the storyline, but a slower approach to develop relationships and to further flesh out the plot points before the twist would’ve created an even greater cathartic moment.

This manga is splendidly done by the author by being able to balance out the amount of wholesomeness and psychological drama that comes with the trope. At times, it may get out of hand, but the well-developed characters keep the manga from spiraling down an inescapable rabbit hole.


Reading Rankings (Portnoy inspired & A Huang Teizan Original)
10 – God’s penmanship
9 – Must-read. Drop everything else.
8 – Instant bookmark
7 – Entertaining
6 – Good to pass time
5 – Why are you reading this?
4 – Bad.
3 – Typical garbage.
2 – My head hurts.
1 – Retirement is a thought.
0 – “Did they even give you a story?!”