Not exactly the most apt comparison, but as I was reading Shut-In Shoutarou Kominami Takes on the World, I began to think of Worst Cooks in America. I’ve probably watched one or two episodes of that show, and occasionally flick over to see how truly awful some people can cook. But while maybe the intentions are good, it just comes across as a little hokey to me.
Instead of coming across like that, for most of this massive tome, this manga feels pretty mean-spirited. You combine that with the jokes being pretty lame, this is a hard one to even recommend.
Now, I’m not kidding when I say it’s pretty massive. At 576 pages in paperback form, good luck placing this properly on your shelf! Well, if you have a bookshelf, it likely won’t be an issue. Anyways, Yen Press released Dan Ichikawa’s Shut-in Shoutarou Kominami Takes on the World digitally in 2015. Either the metrics were telling them that it was fine to release this in print or they could finally release it in this form, who knows. After getting just about 2/3 of the way into the manga, I just started wondering if there was something wrong with their process.
Shoutarou Kominami is a schlocken. It is a term made up by the author that combines shy (Sh), lonely (lo), and chicken (cken), and we get shlocken. All of this describes Shoutarou, who has not left his cheap apartment for months. He’s been surviving simply thanks to his mom, who’s been sending him food, money, and clothes. However, this time his mom sent him his usual provisions and a letter that reads:
I’m not sending you any more money after this.
Get a job.
So now he has to finally leave his apartment and get a part-time job. As he meekly trudges along to a job center, he runs into a seemingly sweet young lady named Katou. Katou immediately recognizes the tell-tale signs of a shlocken and asks if he might be interested in an interview for a position. Desperate as he is, he takes it. He is then interviewed by a man named Kitazono. This interview seems to be simple enough, but for someone who’s as socially incapable as Shoutarou is right now, it might as well be the hardest test in the world. By the way, if it was a test, he would’ve failed ingloriously.
But him failing is exactly what Kitazono and Katou were looking for in a shlocken. Kitazono is a manga artist who’s looking for ways to create his manga series in Banban (definitely no relation to Gangan, not at all), and Katou is his editor. And they definitely find a subject for their research! Shotarou thinks, however, Kitazono’s a psychologist. When he says this aloud, Kitazono decides to play along. So now Shoutarou will be writing about his daily experiences doing completely different things — from going to a mixer, the hairdresser, a “literary-themed” amusement park, and even taking cooking lessons to…nursing Kitazono’s health at one point!
Obviously, this manga is talking about a NEET, though just in a bit of a different term. It’s unclear (or maybe I missed it) if Shoutarou actually went to college. Hard to know since when he was in grade school, he got a called a Martian for speaking like Osamu Dazai. Since then, he’s been embarrassed to really make friends or even interact with anyone at large.
So maybe Shoutarou believes Katou and Kitazono will help him erase his shlockenness. But it just comes across as them just picking on him and also using him. They aren’t looking to help him, but instead get help for their own needs. Maybe that can be funny, but for at least most of this volume, it was pretty dumb. You put Shotarou in a mixer and attempt to get him to open up, it doesn’t work. You have him try and help Kitazono get better, but he manages to make a nice, red soup that he spills all over himself and Kitazono…didn’t make me smile. I’m reading and hoping for something, anything, to make me laugh, but I can only just go, “Am I supposed to laugh at Shoutarou being unable to distinguish white wine from vinegar in a cooking class…?”
However, Shut-In Shoutarou Kominami begins to change once they flashback to his time as a child. Shoutarou fell asleep on a bench, and the chapter went back to him as a young child who could mostly interact with people, specifically his mom, grandpa, grandma, and Tama, his uncle. Tama desired to become a manga artist, but it wasn’t quite going too well. It was through that experience, however, that he was able to connect with Shoutarou. However, the one encounter led to a series of misunderstandings that ended with Shoutarou:
- Having Tama cut his hair
- Getting sunglasses
- Buying a spring shirt that looked exactly like something the yakuza would wear (or have tattooed).
This was the funniest part of the manga, but this takes place about 2/3 of the way into this 576 page book. It takes until this long, where this uncle mistakenly buys Shoutarou a bazooka for good kids that ultimately confuses and scars him for a while, for the manga to finally have some sense. This moment segues nicely to Shoutarou becoming an editor for a day, and where he finally gets to meet Tama, who is now the editor in chief of the company that Katou and Kitazono work for. It was great, and it was funny.
It also is one of the few arcs that was funny in this manga. Another actual funny moment was when Shoutarou had to take a haiku class, and take one with a serious practitioner of it. Let’s just say frappuccino is very popular with the teacher, but he’s too tsundere to admit it until the end. Another one is when Shoutarou meets Konoha, the little sister of one of Kitazono’s assistants, Nishida. This actually wasn’t a funny one — it was a cool moment. It involved Konoha finding out her boyfriend is cheating on her, and she’s not sure what to do. She tries to get answers from Kitazono, but he’s wondering why she doesn’t just ask her brother. So he sends her to Shoutarou and Katou, and Konoha…has many doubts. And while the usual joking around happens (it involved fish kisses…and Konoha somehow thought that meant Shoutarou and Katou kissed a lot), it has a moment where Konoha and Shoutarou find out that the man was cheating on her and the other girl he’s dating!
So what does happen? The schlocken actually steps in and tells him off the only way he can!…And it was awesome.
Awesome is about as much as I can say about the second half of this manga, and it makes perfect sense as to why it’s better — because Shoutarou’s speaking more. He’s coming around. He’s also put in situations that allow him to be more comfortable. For example, he goes back to see his family with Tama, and while it was nice to see him speak with his mom, it’s him interacting again with the people he knows that makes this manga good.
That’s why it’s surprising that the start of this is so bad. Maybe if the characters he interacted with were better, this might have been fine. In each chapter Shoutarou meets with someone new, ranging from Katou’s friends at the mixer, to stylist Aonuma (who acts as professional as she possibly can as she does Shoutarou’s hair), to nursery school teacher Mei Yamada, and a host of characters that do different things, including a manga artist who’s also a shlocken. One that manages to stick around is a chef named Saionji, who teamed up with his school friend and became a popular TV chef thanks to his big sister like personality (which is fake). Saionji managed to fall for whatever charm Shoutarou has, and this leads to situations where he fell more and more for him as time went on. And also situations where Saionji found himself trapped in an abandoned building with Kitazono.
…What can I say? Love makes you do weird things.
But for most of the volume, between the jokes and how the characters acted, it was hard to get into. So it’s likely your tolerance of the manga will be if you can deal with how Shoutarou interacts with anyone. The art is fine (I think the girls are drawn cute), and the last third of the manga is good, though the ending feels too convenient (and also what Kitazono does towards the end to show character growth needed a few more hints for me to buy it). But the first to second part of this was thoroughly unfunny. Maybe give it a shot digitally as the first volume is cheap before thinking about buying it in print. Maybe this manga will come across better for others than me.
At of this moment though, I can say Shut-in Shoutarou Kominami Takes on the World was a read…and I’m fine reading it only once.