Tonari no Inuyama-kun となりの犬山君

This next oneshot I will be blogging about is called "Tonari no Inuyama-kun" by Tsubasa Sakura. Translated roughly into English, the title would be called something along the lines of "Inuyama-kun next to me". Japanese honorifics come up a lot in manga. Most commonly are "kun", "chan", and "senpai/sempai". For those of you who aren't familiar with what they mean, I will explain. "Kun" is used by people who are a higher status when they are addressing a person of a lower status, but most commonly in manga, it is used by anyone when addressing a boy. "Chan" is usually used for babies, girls, generally for anything cute. Also they can be used between couples or close friends. "Senpai, sempai" is used to address one's senior colleagues in a school, company, sports club, or other group. So at school, the students in higher grades than oneself are senpai/sempai.

Back to the story - the storyline is: Kokoro was involved in a traffic accident when she was small, and there was a hero who risked his life to save her. She can't remember anything about him, except for his back, which was scarred from saving her. Now a high school student, she still can't forget the guy from her memories. Suddenly, she was assigned to take care of the new transfer student, Inuyama Kei, who's always quiet and somewhat of a weirdo. He reminds her of her childhood hero, but she wishes her hero was Shun-senpai, the idol of all the girls in school, and who's been very nice to her lately...

The artwork for this story was nice for the most part. Kokoro's (the main girl character) hair was kind of flat, in my opinion. She wasn't the prettiest manga character I've ever seen before, but she seemed more like a normal girl (not one of those girls who's hair is always perfect no matter what kind of situation they're in) - which was refreshing, and pretty nice, actually.

I really liked this story, it was a cute, yet a little awkward romance. The awkward part? The guy was a little weird at first and he was different from most other lead male characters. But don't get me wrong - he's a great character.

Overall, I would rate this oneshot a nice solid A. Its only 45 pages or so, so its a nice short read. If you're looking for a romantic story with a cute ending, I suggest you go to
http://www.onemanga.com/Tonari_no_Inuyama-kun/
to read it!

Thanks for reading! If you know of any good oneshot mangas please let me know!