The narrator of this story isn’t the romantic lead. That’s probably the most interesting aspect of the book – it’s narrated by a mostly nameless girl (we learn her name in the author’s afterword, but never in the story proper) as she observes the boys on either side of her in class. It works fairly well as a framing device, particularly since she never comes across as an overeager fujoshi intent on shipping two readily available guys. She’s instead genuinely curious about, and later invested in, these two lovable idiots who can’t quite seem to figure it out.
One of the boys is, of course, the eponymous Ren-kun, and he is scary. Ren opens the book by borrowing a pencil from the narrator and biting his finger to write in blood. He hands the note across the girl’s desk to her neighbor on the other side, a stoic-looking boy named Tadaomi. While her mind immediately jumps to challenge letters and threats, Tadaomi takes it a different way, and before she quite knows what’s happening, her desk has become the postal waystation for the boys’ correspondence. And really, can you blame her for becoming fascinated by their relationship after that?
Told in a series of short chapters interspersed with bonus chapters (explained to be extras not included in the series’ original serialization), the book’s plot follows both the growth of Ren and Tadaomi’s relationship and the narrator’s growing understanding of it. In a welcome development, she interacts with both boys. It would have felt ridiculously artificial for them not to acknowledge her, but that’s never stopped manga before, so that creator kusege opts instead to give them a relationship somewhere between friends and acquaintances helps to ground the plot. At one point towards the middle of the volume, she has separate conversations with each boy about how the two of them met and became friends, and it’s no surprise that both Ren and Tadaomi offer answers that vary just enough to make it clear why their relationship is so awkward now. According to Ren, they started as a leader (him) and henchman (Tadaomi), but eventually, that changed into a more equal relationship. From Tadaomi’s perspective, he’s still Ren’s henchman and is willing to do a lot to maintain that. Why? He never explicitly says but the implication seems to be that it’s a way for him to feel close to Ren without crossing a line.
The thing is, they’ve very clearly already crossed that line, and are de facto dating. They’re the only two who don’t see it, and our narrator makes no secret that she’s miffed by this. It’s so obvious that they like each other and are acting like boyfriends that she can’t wrap her head around the fact that they can’t grasp this very basic fact. Ultimately, as the book goes on, we see it come down to Ren’s awkwardness. He’s not nearly as scary as he (wants to) look, and the “scary” parts of his persona – the piercings, the refusal to wear his uniform properly, the writing in blood – are just affectations adopted to make himself look stronger. He wants Tadaomi to look up to him but also wants them to be equal and more; he just can’t figure out how to get there.
Fortunately for him, Tadaomi is less encumbered by appearances. He hides his super strength not to make Ren feel bad, but for the most part, Tadaomi acts on what he wants. It’s thanks to him that they ever get to dating at all, and kusege does a nice job of showing how the two boys approach the same situation from different angles. Are either of them the best angle? Absolutely not, but that’s the fun of the story.
My Classmate Ren-kun is Kinda Scary is, in a word, frothy. It lacks substance, but that’s part of its charm, and while elements of it make it unsurprising when kusege reveals that this is their first series, it is fun enough to make up for choppy plot transitions and jokes we’ve seen a thousand times before. The art is clean, the short chapters make it easily digestible, and the narrative frame manages not to get in the way of the story, but instead to highlight what the story is. It’s a cute little book, perfect for a day when you just need to escape from reality.
