富士山さんは思春期

FUJIYAMA-SAN WA SHISHUNKI

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
8
RELEASE
December 15, 2015
CHAPTERS
67

DESCRIPTION

Fujiyama-san is 181 cm (Approx. 5' 11'') and she is the ace player for her school's volleyball team. Kanba-kun is 160 cm (Approx. 5' 3") and has known Fujiyama since their preschool years. With his prankster friends, Kanba peaks into the girl's locker room right when Fujiyama is undressing. From then on, he could not get the image of Fujiyama out of his mind, so he decides to ask her out. She says yes. Enjoy their naive and secretive relationship as Kanba ogles his tall girlfriend in many different situations.

CAST

Makio Fujiyama
Yuuichi Kanba

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

Gummyfail
100/100
Ojiro Makoto writes a tender story of adolescence that understands that love is, above all, aspirational.
This Review willl contain spoilers and will not mark them

There is a general tendency to define love with terms that gesture towards some type of transcendental experience. Pursuing compelling portraits of this kind of love, a love often elevated as ‘true love,’ is the common mission statement of Romance as a genre. If I were being more argumentative, I would say Ojiro side-steps this altogether with the emotional restraint she shows in Fujiyamasan wa Shishunki. I don’t think that’s quite right. It would be better to say that Ojiro paints a fantasy of the fantasy.

Kanba and Fujiyama are in 9th grade, their last year in middle school, and they are a classic Tall-Girl-Short-Boy pair that have just started to emotionally adjust to the beginnings of puberty. They’re nervous and, like everyone one of their classmates, overly conscious of every physical body within sight. The boys are classically perverse, and the series opens with an eye rolling creepshot heist that ends with Kanba seeing Fujiyama nearly shirtless before he falls off the side of the building about a story off the ground.

This opening poised the narrative to become one of the hornier rom-coms of its kind, however it quickly pivots its approach to something more sincere and vulnerable. Kanba, finding himself suddenly and powerfully attracted to his childhood friend, asks her to be his girlfriend. She agrees and they date in secret.

After this change, the emotional complexity begins to show through as the two navigate school, quietly watching one another and trying to maintain a convincing, polite distance. Specifically, although Kanba would often joke about Fujiyama’s height, watching the boy’s in his class insult her becomes a central point of conflict. Both of them are way too self-conscious to want to admit to anyone that they love anyone. Both of them are, just a little, embarrassed by who they’re in love with.

This kernel of embarrassment is what separates Fujiyamasan wa Shishunki from other nostalgic Coming-of-Age Romances. Its distinction is this embarrassment isn’t signposting the love as false. Ojiro’s writing shows patience in her depiction of these children. They hurt each other by accident, lash out in sudden anger, collapse in anxiety about how cruel they just were. These themes, hit with a slightly different tone, would come across as the central drama of the story, but, like children, they get up and dust their knees off to resume playing.

The childishness of their affection is both the key to the story's charm and the gentle guiding force to their growth as people. Kanba never stops being horny, but his knee jerk ogling takes on a different undertone as his love for Fujiyama builds. His inability to look away from her becomes entangled with his admiration. His understanding of Fujiyama and her own relationship with her body deepens as he clumsily tries to surprise her with gestures that show he understands her discomfort with her height and her inability to really see herself as feminine. The most direct, and perhaps affecting moment shows Kanba climbing onto the guard rail of a bridge just so she can press her face into his chest just like she did sobbing 4 volumes earlier.

Fujiyamasan wa Shishunki has dozens of similar moments created out of delicate layers of character psychology and dynamic compositions. The importance of Ojiro’s subdued style and her love of unflattering, dynamic poses is hard to overstate when it comes to explaining the success of her work. The series has significantly less access to the explicit thoughts of its characters than most manga, especially Romance manga where internal monologues are nearly as common as conversations.

This lack of direct interiority requires the reader to interpret, misinterpret, and balk at Ojiro’s expressive faces and her naturalistic body language:

When you keep both this emotional complexity and the near absence of narration in mind, the insistence on smallness, on fragility, and on the uncertainty of their future shows itself in full. Ojiro writes about a first love with a warmth that understands its inherent cuteness, but she requires the reader to grapple with the narrative under the mutual understanding that, although they are children, childhood does shrink the interior life of a person with inexperience.

When you do that, when you keep the conventions of a First-Love Romance in mind, when you understand that a First-Love Romance is inextricably linked to a Coming-Of-Age narrative, when you loose your grip on compartmentalizing disparate techniques, tropes, and traditions: I think you’ll find Fujiyamasan wa Shishunki attempting to show you a nervous, cowardly love and its enormous value.
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Kysskell
90/100
Review of “Fujiyama-san wa shishunki” and personal experiences
My first AniList review + English isn’t my first language + im nervous.. HELP

I don’t read that many manga (mostly romance stuff), but Fujiyama-san wa Shishunki really caught my eye. At first, it kind of bothered me, but I kept reading. After 33 chapters, I ended up dropping it, and a few good months passed.
Back when I first started it, I was in my second year of high school. I was single, had no crushes, and honestly didn’t believe I’d ever be in a relationship. Then came a little time skip in my life. I decided to get back into reading and pick up my manga list again. At that point, I had just started seeing a girl. We’ve been going out for four months now, and I’m actually planning to ask her to be my girlfriend.
And that changed EVERYTHING.

The manga picks up a lot in the final chapters. Kanba and Fujiyama’s relationship gets way more serious, with them putting their feelings into words and finally putting a label on things. And I couldn’t have related more. I mean... we couldn’t have. I saw so much of myself in the story because of what I’m experiencing with “my Fujiyama.” I even sent her some screenshots, like the one with the New Year’s cards. That moment reminded me so much of her.

The story follows Kanba and Fujiyama, two middle schoolers in their final years. It could’ve been just another cute romance, except Fujiyama is 180 cm tall (5'11") at only 14 years old.
They’re both dealing with all the awkward and emotional chaos of puberty. Kanba’s friends are pretty much your typical bunch of horny middle schoolers trying to peek into the girls' locker room. One day, Kanba accidentally sees Fujiyama changing, which creates this weird tension between them. That’s where everything starts.

The pacing is slow (but not dragging it out for 300 chapters kind of slow), and honestly, it’s just such a chill read. If I had to describe this manga in one word, it’d be cozy. It’s so nice watching their relationship grow while they try to keep it a secret from their friends.
The boys at school always make fun of Fujiyama’s height, and yeah, Kanba joins in at first. BUUUT luckily, he slowly stops doing that. There’s a point where he genuinely starts caring about not hurting Fujiyama’s feelings or making her feel insecure. That’s super clear in the later chapters (where EVERYTHING goes down, lol).

Like when he stands up for her during the Kyoto trip after a classmate mocks her height. From there, they slowly stop hiding their relationship. Later on, they even say “I love you” in front of the whole class. People gossip a bit, but honestly? Who cares? They’re in love and they’re happy.
I think the real charm of this story is how innocent their love is. Their whole relationship feels so pure. Once again, I really saw myself in that. It’s the first relationship for both of them, and you can feel them figuring it out and getting used to each other. It starts off kind of awkward and nervous, but turns into something super calm and comforting.

I love how Ojiro handles all of that. Like the moments when Kanba climbs on something to be taller than Fujiyama whether it’s to joke about her height or so she can rest her head on his chest. It’s such a small thing, but honestly, so sweet and symbolic.
Maybe my love for this story came from the break I took. In that time, I ended up living something so similar to the main couple’s journey, and it honestly COULDN’T HAVE BEEN MORE PERFECT.

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