Title: The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses Vol. 5
Author: Koume Fujichika
Publisher: Square Enix
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 128
Genre: Slice-of-Life, Romance, Comedy
Publication Date: August 15, 2023
The Story
The fifth volume of The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses sees Mie wanting to continuously look at Komura’s face. In addition to that, the school festival is coming up so Komura and Mie team up to tackle some of the prep work that they need to do. This allows them to spend more time with one another, much to Mie’s delight.
To be quite honest, outside of this, nothing much really happened. Someya did pester Komura about if he and Mie kissed after witnessing Mie (without glasses) look at Komura’s face close up and during the prep work, Komura disappeared so Mie went home by herself and couldn’t locate her shoes. Aside from the school festival, it was rather uneventful with the main focus on Mie wanting to see Komura’s face but that also meant that we did get a nice dose of character development.
Characters
Komura is really starting to take notice of Mie. The fact that she wants to keep looking at his face puts him in some pretty embarrassing situations. Plus, ever since Someya asked if they kissed, it has been weighing heavily on his mind. So much so that almost everything he does with Mie throughout the volume is compared to that very same question. Like when they were doing prep work and Mie wanted to take a break, she wanted to see Komura’s face but Komura wanted it to be in private just so nobody (like Someya) would get the wrong idea. Through these up-close encounters, Komura starts to realize his feelings and those feelings almost caused him to act upon them but he did pull back. It’s a case of him inching closer and closer.
Mie, on the other hand, was a bit more confusing. When we left off with volume four, Mie was very cognizant of Komura’s feelings for her. She was pretty aware that he was making the same faces as someone in love. I would have thought that she would test the waters in this volume and, perhaps, she did. Maybe by constantly wanting to see Komura’s face, this was her way of confirming whether or not he was still making those facial expressions. I was just expecting a more direct follow-up to the last volume’s ending but what we got was a little less direct if you read between the lines, you could tell the real meaning behind her actions.
Final Thoughts
The funny thing is… I my last review, I stated that the running gag of Mie forgetting her glasses had run its course. That’s evident because in this volume, Mie both forgot and remembered her glasses on several occasions and not a single explanation was given this time. It’s just assumed that she’ll never remember them so the excuses kind of just stopped. Even when she remembers her glasses, it’s not really a big deal. I don’t know how I feel about that. I would have thought that we would have progressed the series in a different way. Instead, we just got the same running gag but now the reasons are just being ignored.
It doesn’t make the manga any less cute or enjoyable but it does give a sense that Koume Fujichika just kind of gave up a bit. Almost as if to say “Well, they know she forgets her glasses so why give a reason anymore? If she doesn’t have them they’ll just say ‘Oh, there’s forgetful Mie forgetting her glasses again.’ To me, that’s kind of lazy. Why come up with a gimmick like this if you can’t creatively prop it up and/or maintain it? Wasn’t that supposed to be part of the comedic aspect of this series?
I know that’s kind of the antithesis of what I wanted to see out of this series but it’s not. I still wanted to see the series move on in a different way that keeps the gag fresh but instead, it’s just ignored and expected of the readers to just expect Mie to not always have her glasses. Sorry, but, it’s just plain lazy.
That would be my only complaint about this volume. Outside of that, it was still a fun read that didn’t really end on a cliffhanger. The bonus chapter switched things up though. Usually, bonus chapters are standalone but it would be nice to include the things that happened in there on a more regular basis. Just looking at Komura’s face is going to get as old as a running gag about forgetting glasses all the time.
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This item was purchased for review.
