Don't Mess With Me Nagatoro- One of my Favorite Romances

reviewmangaanime

Aug 21

Written by Rei Caldombra 8/21/2023 Video: https://youtu.be/A02FU_sg3M4

I’m here today to talk about one of my favorite romances ever, Please Don’t Mess with Me Nagatoro. There will be heavy spoilers and I will be focusing on the manga, just briefly touching on the anime at the end. Short version without spoilers is that it becomes a super sweet and wholesome show that does not rely entirely on its fetishy and fanservicy aspects to be enjoyable. That stuff is there and works well if it’s your thing, but that is not all it has to offer. The relationship between Nagatoro and Senpai (aka Naoto, the main character, but I like calling him Senpai) grows into a very positive and healthy relationship that feels very natural and unique. I’d love it if you gave the show a chance and if you can, give it up to the second volume rather than just the first.

My main focus will be the characters and romance.

I do not have much defense for the very early parts, especially the first chapter. She is genuinely very harsh and that was legit bullying, not just teasing. I completely understand people being uncomfortable with the first few chapters. The beginning is not very indicative of the series as a whole. The tone and pacing drastically changes after the first volume. For example, they make it explicitly clear that she comes to realize she was being way too harsh. We see her apologize when she realizes she has gone too far and does those things less. Over time we get clearly shown that he does genuinely enjoy his interactions with her. Especially when she does get less harsh.

There is a good amount of character development, especially for Senpai. You see how Nagatoro has done a lot to help him, primarily in making him stand up for himself and others. You could absolutely make the argument that in a relationship like theirs, especially considering the harsh foundation in which you could argue there is abuse, he feels forced to change. But I don’t feel that way. We see from the beginning that Senpai wants to stand up for himself. He wants to be more talkative and direct in communicating with people. Nagatoro helps him to go about those changes, by both being someone he needs to stand up to at times, but also how to best go about it. Their daily art room shenanigans do a lot to build towards Senpai’s growth, as well as be funny and cute. Then the moments outside of the school move away a bit from the routine shenanigans and offer nice dates between the two that generally progresses the characters. While there is a lot of content that can be seen as not dramatically progressing their relationship, I think it's important to stick to the fun casual interactions that are the basis of what makes the manga so good. Without those the very good comedy of the manga would largely be lost. These goofy interactions are core to their relationship and dynamic.

Over time their relationship blossoms into a very well-done romance. They learn to respect each other’s boundaries. They start to learn the finer things that make up each other and do things to make each other happy. They both learn to bring down the walls and move away from the routine. While Nagatoro primarily pushes the relationship in the beginning, later they are roughly on equal footing. Seeing them both pursue their passion and see how those pursuits affect their relationship. It’s very sweet seeing them learn how to support each other. This is seriously one of my favorite romances. You will see as you get further on how wholesome and endearing their relationship becomes. It consistently gets me smiling ear to ear. I am not saying people need to put aside their issues with bullying/teasing or any other content that they take issue with being portrayed in media. But if you can stomach the very beginning, I can tell you this relationship is worth getting through it for. At first their dynamic is just dom/sub but as it goes on their genuinely good chemistry together becomes apparent. And from there as they get more directly romantic, we spend a lot of time seeing how their chemistry develops and changes. At their absolute best Nagatoro and Senpai have an extremely sweet and supportive relationship.

This will include spoilers for very late in the manga, hitting on stuff going on in the most recent chapters as of writing this. In my opinion people get too hung up over them not “officially” dating. In terms of their actual relationship with each other, they are in a romantic relationship in pretty much every sense. By where the manga is now, they have directly expressed their romantic interest in each other and have done many of the things people in relationships do. I actually really like that the writing does not get hung up on the firm status of dating and embraces them, taking things as they go and letting their relationship happen in whatever way they feel comfortable. They both end up having clear goals that they are using as part of their motivation concerning their relationship. They are waiting until the right moment to move forward, and both of them recognize that that is the state of their relationship. And that’s completely valid. They do not need to have traditional progression as they are not traditional people in a traditional relationship. It makes it more interesting as a story and promotes the idea that there is no exact way a relationship should go. I feel this aspect of their relationship fits their personalities and dynamic while also portraying a uniquely functioning relationship that is just as valid as any other.

The amazing Nagatoro faces. If you’ve seen anything from Nagatoro without reading/watching it, its people using those faces as reaction images. That’s how I came across it. The author is great at drawing expressive faces. Many people who have never seen or read it know exactly what Nagatoro’s personality is just from seeing her expressions.

There is quite a bit of fanservicey stuff, and obviously their dynamic is very much a dom sub intense teasing relationship. If you strongly dislike fanservice or don’t have interest in that dynamic, you will likely struggle to enjoy it. But the legit fanservice is not as common as every chapter or even every few chapters. And some scenes I genuinely do think there is some tastefulness to it and shows how their relationship has progressed (such as the nude modeling and their conversation in the hot spring). It sounds like trying to justify horny stuff, but I promise those two scenes are both incredibly important for the points I brought up previously.

I’ll briefly touch on the anime adaptation and say that it's good. Both Nagatoro and Senpai have very good voice acting and for the most part the art does a solid job mimicking the more detailed expressions. These two points are honestly the most important to me. The presentation is not great, with a lot of still shots and lower detail. Some people may also be bothered by how the studio changed for season 2 but I did not think these are major issues. The style of the manga, with how much emphasis it puts on dynamic frames, makes sense to not be adapted to be super fluid. It’s a bit of an excuse, but it kind of works. Personally, I would recommend the manga over the anime due to the art quality. I don’t think the coloring that the anime offers adds a lot in this case.

I truly love this series. It's one of my favorite romances. I admit I started largely because the dynamic fit my tastes, but I have stayed with it for the wonderful relationship that came out of those initial interactions. (Note from future Rei in April of 2024. Not gonna spoil anything, but it is still super good and sweet. We are getting exactly what we want. It’s fantastic). Thank you for reading! I hope reading this has encouraged someone to give the manga or anime a shot.