Title: Shino Can’t Say Her Name
Author: Shuzo Oshimi
Publisher: Denpa
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 216
Genre: Slice-of-Life, Drama
Publication Date: June 15, 2021
The Story
In Shino Can’t Say Her Name, Shino Oshima has a bit of a speaking problem. She has a difficult time pronouncing words that begin with vowels and, therefore, she has a difficult time pronouncing her last name. Her speech impediment breeds and cultivates anxiety and rather than confronting the problem, she runs each and every time, thinking that the world won’t take her seriously and will just make fun of her.
This is evident when she starts her first day of high school and has to introduce herself to the class. She stumbles over every word and is getting more and more embarrassed with each passing second. Eventually, the teacher tells her to forget about it as the whole class laughs at her. After school, she hears one of her classmates making fun of her and begins to think that there’s no going back. This is until she runs into another girl in her class by the name of Kayo.
At first, Kayo seems agitated that Shino is there; however, things change when Shino overhears Kayo talking to some of her friends. Things seem normal but get ugly when they invite Kayo out to karaoke and begin to make fun of her because she’s tone-deaf. Despite being able to play the guitar, Kayo can’t sing worth a damn but there is someone who can… Shino. Because of this unique pairing of talents, the two of them begin to bond with one another, even going so far as to make a band named Shinokayo.
Kayo wants the two of them to perform at the school festival and just when Shino is almost convinced, here enters the kid who made fun of her, Kikuchi. Kikuchi wants to join the band but has an ulterior motive. Shino, remembering that he made fun of her, loses all of her confidence. This brings us to the ending of the book where we find out how things click and if Shino can overcome her fears, as well as a simple, one-page epilogue of how things turned out.
Characters
To me, Shino is an adorable character. You get to feel her tension, her anxiety, and you get to feel that gravity of peer pressure and wanting to be normal. Although it was short-lived, you did see peaks and valleys with her ailment which is a signature of any series that tackles problems like this. You have breakthrough moments that build your confidence only to have something come along and disrupt that harmony from reaching its crescendo with a striking chord of dissonance, thus sending you back to where it all started. That’s when you really get to feel for Shino because, after all of that progress, she was back at square one. She was an interesting character but I just wish the series was longer to explore her even more.
Kayo had a quick turnaround. After the first day of class, you could definitely tell that she found Shino very annoying and didn’t want anything to do with her but after Shino is given a pen and paper by Kayo to communicate, something changed in her. She gave Shino a chance and discovered that she was the answer to her own problem of not being able to sing. You see that bond between them form and deepen and then, one day, shatter because of Kikuchi but Shino took it out on Kayo instead. Here, you could indirectly feel Kayo’s pain through Kikuchi when he explained to Shino what happened afterward. Kayo thought of Shino so highly that she was willing to do something wonderful for her but you could tell through Kikuchi’s words that Kayo had deep regret that Shino wouldn’t want anything to do with what she was creating for her.
This makes Kayo a character you also feel for but on a different level. She was made to be some sort of antagonist for Shino but she turned out to be a caring friend who thought of her highly. If only Shino could have told her about Kikuchi, how much different would the situation have been? Still, in the end, what Kayo did took a ton of courage and it also helped Shino have her breakthrough!
Lastly, we have Kikuchi who is, for lack of a better description, a blithering idiot. He’s loud, obnoxious, but is aware of his own faults. He even admits those faults to Shino when he tries to make things right from the time he made fun of her. I was getting A Silent Voice vibes from his character development but on a much lesser scale. When that situation happened, you would think that Kikuchi would have something to prove; however, things get rushed to a conclusion to a point where we don’t even get a chance to see that ‘something.’ Although the ending strongly hinted at what happened, the length of the series truly stopped us from giving him a proper redemption arc.
Final Thoughts
The ending kind of rushed the journey for Shino which did hurt her character development. I am not sure why this series only lasted 11 volumes but if I had to place my finger on it, it would boil down to the artwork. It felt like this series was starting to set a decent pace but the early artwork possibly caused the series to get canceled so Shuzo Oshimi had to kick it into high gear to get to the finish line.
What I mean by that was the way Shino was drawn and depicted during moments of anxiety. These were supposed to be serious moments and instead of drawing her in a more serious tone, perhaps with looks of inner turmoil and angst, she was depicted in almost a cartoonish way. Honestly, it was a bit embarrassing to look at her during these scenes and even if the dialogue was meant to invoke emotions such as pity or empathy, the artwork destroyed all of that. You would expect someone that had anxiety to be shy, bashful, nervous, to have an expression of them feeling their heart wrench because they know that they’re not going to be accepted no matter what they did, and yet, here, Shino is drawn in a way where it is way overexaggerated to the point of comedy.
I already had a HUGE issue with Komi Can’t Communicate because while I understand that series is a comedy, I didn’t care for the fact that it was seemingly making fun of people who had social anxiety. In fact, as someone who does suffer from anxiety, it almost felt like a slap in the face. While Shino Can’t Say Her Name tries to take a more serious approach to it, the art is the antithesis to that approach and, like Komi, kind of feels like a slap in the face to those who have anxiety.
We do not look like that!
That is this book’s biggest and singular issue. All other issues from the pacing, to the rushed conclusion, are all products of the terrible depiction of a young girl who is struggling with a real problem. Had the author taken the time to use the artwork to invoke emotions outside of unfunny comedy and pure embarrassment for having to read it, we might have read a masterpiece. But since we didn’t get that, I will have to continue to seek out a series that can do issues like this justice.
Overall, It was a phenomenal premise to tackle and the character development for what we were given was quite good. This is, of course, overlooking the rushed nature of the series. You can see strides being hit that had all the makings of a good story being told but it all falls apart for only having 11 total chapters and, of course, the art which I have already outlined. So much potential could have been had here and it’s a shame because I could see the greatness this series could have been.
Overall Score: 4/10.
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