Get a Grip - Semisonic

Midori Days

Author: Kazurou Inoue
Volumes: 8
Publisher: VIZ Media

Description from Goodreads:
One day lonely, tough-guy Seiji wakes up to discover his "devil's right hand" has turned into a miniature gal named Midori, a real girl who has always had a crush on him.

Review:
From the summary, it should be pretty evident that this is both a humorous manga and a very, very strange one. Manga in general has a reputation of being quite strange, and that's certainly a deserved reputation, although I wonder if it's really that much weirder than anything else, but whatever. Of the manga I've read, Midori Days is definitely one of the weirdest.

This is not to say that I didn't enjoy it, because I did. However, I also had some serious issues with it. The first couple volumes I really liked, because they were just so funny. As volumes went on, though, I was increasingly bothered by the things that didn't make sense, even though I knew I shouldn't try to imply logic. To be fair, though, I was willing to accept the girl appearing on his hand, just not all of what happened while she was there.

If you do not appreciate a lot of sex humor and violence, this definitely won't be for you. The whole premise is that this guy wants a girlfriend really badly and finally meets a girl who has a crush him, but she's doll-sized and in place of his right hand. There are a lot of jokes made about how he has to learn to do things with his left hand, like pee...and other things.

The first thing that I just could not accept about the series was the fact that only like four people ever figured out that he had a freaking tiny girl instead of a hand. Come on! He talked to her like all the time and she was constantly peeking out of his sleeve, and yet even a girl with a crush on him never noticed. Bull!

Sometimes to keep her from being seen, because, as mentioned above, a person hand is really obvious, he sometimes wrapped her up in bandages or stuffed her in his uniform pocket. This is all well and good, until you consider the fact that she still needed to breathe. She would have died. True facts.

Even worse is the fact that Midori apparently had super strength despite being his doll hand. While he was sleeping, she regularly did the household chores like the laundry. How did she do this with him immobile? She moved him. That's right. In one scene he passes out on his way somewhere (to watch porn with his friends incidentally...seriously, do guys do that?) and she runs him (not just drags by the strength of that one hand/arm across town to meet with them. He bumps into things and people and does not wake up.

Although this manga has its merits, I really was not impressed with its execution. It was an odd blend of sentimentality, crudeness, humor and violence. But if you're still sniggering about the fact that his girlfriend literally was his right hand, you should probably read this series.

Rating: 2.5/5

"And meanwhile all of you lonely ones
Here's what to do while you wait for the sun
To rise above
The loneliest kind of love"