となりの関くん じゅにあ 1

I've finally delved into the uncharted, territory of Seki-kun, this spinoff is the one part of the manga that hasn't been officially translated, and finding obscure parts of franchises you like is a satisfying aspect of learning Japanese.

Morishige's greatest strength with the original series was finding ways to keep it fresh, and he indeed stopped the original run when he felt like it was too hard to come up with new ideas, and in the afterword to this volume he says that doing the story 10 years in the future made it easy for fresh ideas to flow, and I think that really shows in this volume. The scenario is different, Rumi and Seki are grown up and have a kid, but the characters feel like they always have and seeing them in these new scenarios feels like another great spin on the formula.

I liked that their son, Makkun, comes up with zany ideas like dear old dad did, but the games Makkun plays feel more grounded, like something a very young child could actually come up with and execute, as opposed to Seki's more absurdist (but still kind of plausible) flights of fancy. The dynamic between Rumi and Makkun is fun, as she tries to steer her son's troubling play into something that will build morals, and I liked the approach to Seki himself in this volume. It actually takes a while before we finally see him, and when we do we realize he hasn't changed at all, but we're glad to see him succeeding in life. I like that this series seems to take a bit of a serialized approach as well, the first few chapters are kind of a new spin on the classic formula with Makkun doing a weird game and Rumi trying to keep it from ending in disaster, but we get a two-part flashback of how Rumi and Seki reconnected and it's implied we'll get some more filling in of what happened in the time since.

Language-wise this actually felt easier than the average Seki-Kun volume, which makes sense since a lot of the early chapters are Rumi talking to her baby child. The sentences are generally easier and there's fewer kanji, though the scenes when she's talking to her peers and catching up on things are a bit closer to the original series' difficulty, which is to say you might need to re-read a few sentences but it's not bad. It probably took about 90 minutes total to read this volume which is pretty fast for me.

It's a promising start to an interesting take on the series, and I'm excited to see how it evolves. It is kind of bittersweet seeing these characters grown up, but also charming to see how they've stayed themselves and seem happy in life.