Asahi Sato’s your typical 16-year-old high schooler who…ends up getting hit by truck. Thankfully, he’s still alive but now he’s cut off from his body. As in, he sees his body and his family distraught over his state at the hospital, but he can’t touch them because he’s just a wandering soul! What’s a guy to when faced with that?
Apparently you wander the city until somebody notices you — or in his case, when he finds a mysterious shrine. There, he meets Iori Usui, the priestess who then takes him to see The Land God. The Land God — who loves drinking — gives him a choice: wander the world alone, or stay with Usui as she handles spirits.
The cost for being with Usui while they each try to figure out if Sato can return to his body? Live being a stuffed animal and, according to The Land God, be Usui’s “rock”.
Me, Myself, & Incomplete is telling a story regarding two characters who are indeed incomplete in their own ways. Obviously former ordinary high schooler Sato is now a stuffed fox animal, but our main female lead, Usui, is smart and independent but is cold and unapproachable to Sato. Later on we learn it’s not just him, it’s also her classmates. From the backstory we get, she’s part of a family that deals with spirits and now she’s handling that task. Which is why she lives alone and helps out The Land God. But aside from a few times of seeing her exorcise spirits, the manga focuses on Sato and Usui’s attempt at getting along.
Which is the central problem, since their interactions are pretty stale. This manga does advertise itself as a comedy, but there was very little to laugh about after seven chapters. The jokes are just not very original or well timed. You then combine Sato’s blandness with Usui’s frostiness, and that merely exacerbates the issue. It’s unknown if Usui’s just really shy or her past made her like this, and Sato’s not sure how he can become her “rock” in any fashion. But rather than give us a strong hook that can provide more motivation for reading, let’s have Sato in a chapter:
- Try to push Usui’s lunch into her bag — remember, he’s a stuffed animal so he can’t push it in normally
- Fall into said bag alongside lunch
- Get stuck in bag as Usui, not noticing, zips it up and heads to school.
You can probably guess what wackiness occurs when she sees him in his bag.
Me, Myself & Incomplete has things I do want to know — like the manner of Usui’s life dealing with spirits and why her personality is like this. And as new characters appear, including a class rep who wants to know Usui but is half-tsundere and also half-waffling since Usui’s normally unapproachable, that might help change how she, and also Sato, act around each other. The art is also pretty appealing at points. So it’s certainly possible I’d like to return to reading this manga.
Just not anytime soon. There’s no real hook that sets it apart from other supernatural works, and the humor’s pretty poor. If you’re looking for something hilarious, this isn’t the manga to check out.