My Senpai is Annoying stars a small but determined woman, Igarashi Futuba, and her big but dense senpai, Takeda Harumi, at a normal office job. We see these two interact for 97% of this first volume, and the range of tales told in short bursts goes from:
- Futuba remarking on how annoying Harumi acts, but acknowledges how helpful he’s been at her new job.
- Events where these two hang out at a bar, care for each other when they each get sick at one point, or get each other’s backs (moreso Harumi in this volume) on any work projects behind schedule.
- Futuba becoming increasingly embarrassed at any romantic implications that arise, either when she says something while drunk or when a fellow co-worker takes what looks to be an adorable picture of the two — Futuba worn out and sleeping on Harumi while on the train — and then adjusts it so Futuba has cat ears and a tail while Harumi has teddy ears so it can be even more adorable, only for Futuba to become terror personified and probably wreck her co-worker’s life when she sees it.
Until, eventually, we see Futuba increasingly fall more and more for senpai, but she can’t admit it.
It also doesn’t help that her senpai can, indeed, be annoying.
The manga’s biggest feature is its full-color nature. It’s not like the full-color you see from a comic book, but whether the background page is green with the panels and characters in black and white or we’ll have a couple characters with color but the rest in black and white, it’s fairly creative and something rarely seen before. That said, more full-color manga — ranging from Galko-chan to Sue & Tai-chan — are becoming more prevalent over the past couple years in the West, and that’s great. Shiromanta makes great use of it, where we can see Futuba’s intimate emotions clearly because of the varieties of color or we can see her annihilate a man for saying something embarrassing about her on local TV.
But while the drawings and coloring is appealing, the manga’s not all that hilarious. Once you get past the general setups of Harumi occasionally treating Futuba like a kid, there’s nothing really laugh out loud funny. There are great moments: there’s one chapter where Harumi grabs a pervert taking an upskirt shot of Futuba and throws him hard to the ground, and while the pervert says he’s sorry (obviously not), Harumi basically says screw you, I’m taking you to the authorities. There are also a couple chapters that have the pair accidentally meeting up, Harumi reacting to Futuba as Santa, the two getting a smartphone since Harumi — for whatever reason — doesn’t have one, and an extra chapter that explains how they first met, and why they interact the way they do to each other to this point. But overall, it’s more that’s neat and fine than funny.
The few times there were genuine laughs ends up involving other people. There’s Futuba’s friend Natsumi, who doesn’t appear often but maybe should, and co-workers Souta and Touko. The way they interact with the leads is some of the moments where their routine is shaken up, either through natural working relations (Souta helps Harumi send a text as Touko watches Futuba wait impatiently for it) or a complete understanding of their actions (see what happens Natsumi meets Harumi for the first time and spots Futuba’s frantic reaction). Outside of that, My Senpai is Annoying is certainly not boring, but there’s not enough to get me to grab any future volumes anytime soon.