Man, I really wanted to like this manga more than I do. I've been reading quite a few short manga lately, many of which have been really good, such as the following: Yumi and Kurumi, an intensely heartwarming and wholesome manga about a sentient doll wanting to make a put upon woman happy; Yume no Hashibashi, a melancholic LGBT story that treats its characters with kindness even with its potentially problematic premise; Summer Ghost, a wonderful adaptation of the short movie that adds a lot more information than the movie could include; Kagome Kagome, a beautifully colored period piece about a nun yearning for alife beyond her convent; The Knight Blooms Behind Castle Walls, a story about a girl's dream of achieving knighthood that is incredibly well researched and full of solid world-building, and The Bones of an Invisible Human, a down-to-earth drama about a girl dealing with having murdered her abusive father and the fallout from it. But I admittedly found one that turned out to be a dud, Ms. Itsuya, which is a shame because I like its premise and it really could have been something good, but its overall execution was all over the place, leaving it feeling like an incoherent mess.
The story centers on a boy named Toki Sakamoto, whose life has been rough. He left his parents due to not fitting in with his stepfather's family, and has been living with his grandmother. But his grandmother is dealing with dementia, and he wants to take up a job to support her, but his school wants him to pursue his education rather than give it up. To ease the burden on him, his school arranges for him to live with the quirky substitute art teacher, the titular Itsuya Tsuruta and her ward, a girl named Kon. Yes, her first name is actually Kon, not her surname. Why this is, I have no clue. Itsuya is flighty and is not very good at drawing, but she seems to have the power to make her drawings come to life, using it to help those who cross her path, Toki included. Toki isn't sure what to make of her, and Kon's bad attitude doesn't make things easy for him either, but slowly, Toki becomes accustomed to his new situation.
You'd think a premise like this would lead to something heartwarming, and sure enough, Ms. Itsuya TRIES to be that. But honestly, its whole handling of its premise leaves a lot to be desired. For one, a majority of the characters are always shown bickering and being unnecessarily mean to each other with very little provocation. Seriously, Toki and Kon's interactions consist of the two of them being literally NOTHING but extremely rude and insensitive towards one another, even when it isn't warranted. Any time the two of them do try to help each other out, it's always undercut by some snarky comments they make leading to yet another needless argument. As a result, any scenes where they actually manage to have a civil conversation and whatever "heartwarming" scenes they get wind up feeling really hollow and unearned. The fact that the two of them marry at the end of the manga is especially baffling because every interaction they've had consists of them bickering and arguing, and I honestly cannot see why these two would ever get in any kind of romantic relationship whatsoever. I have no problem with characters having huge flaws, and Toki and Kon having character flaws isn't the issue here. I would have appreciated it if the mangaka had Toki and Kon not get along at first, but then gradually get to know one another and have them slowly come to respect one another. But that doesn't happen, and any time it does, the two of them immediately go back to arguing and making out of nowhere, insensitive comments to one another. Why is this manga trying to convince me that these two are made for each other when its attempts at doing so clearly state otherwise?
The other one-off characters aren't much better, as they're just as unnecessarily mean-spirited as Toki and Kon are, yet the manga wants you to believe that they're actually good people on the inside. For example, there's one early chapter where Toki's school tries to get him to live with his gym teacher Oniguma, and the manga really wants to convince you that this gym teacher is a good guy who cares about his son. But the first scene this gym teacher shares with his son is him flat-out slapping the kid, yelling at him for coming back to town after leaving his job, and calling him a weakling for not wanting to stay in the city, not even bothering to hear out why his son quit his job in the first place. Eventually, Oniguma and his son "supposedly" reconcile. I say supposedly because this reconciliation consists of Oniguma begging his son to come back not because he's sorry for what he did and not bothering to understand him...but because he's terrified of cockroaches and can't be bothered to kill them himself. The manga tries to make this seem super heartwarming, but all it does is make the dad come off as a massive jackass who only uses his son for his own convenience and hasn't learned a thing from his mistakes, so their so-called reconciliation falls completely flat and it makes it really hard to sympathize with this guy in any way. There's another chapter where Toki saves a kid from bullies, but not only is the kid an ungrateful brat about it, he even insults him right to his face by judging him for watching a children's cartoon. Ms. Itsuya, if you're trying to make me feel sympathy for these characters, don't make them into jackasses who are needlessly cruel to Toki or everyone else for no reason. Kon is especially egregious because all throughout her time in the manga, she's hotheaded, quick to anger, and extremely judgmental, using Toki for whatever the hell she wants without even asking him, is constantly on his case about stuff that doesn't need to be made into a big deal, and criticizes both him and Itsuya for liking a children's show. Oh, and the second volume throws in a character who, I'm not kidding you, pulls up Kon's skirt, loudly announces what color her undies are to everyone, and he gets barely any comeuppance whatsoever, and everyone just...forgets about it later. The hell?!
Do you see the problem with Ms. Itsuya yet? I want to like this manga and its premise, but it has an utterly unbearable cast of characters who seem to go out of their way to be as obnoxiously abrasive and jerkish as humanly possible, and its attempts at making the audience sympathize with them or make them grow nicer fall completely flat because of this, and it constantly undermines itself each time. The only character who escapes this is Itsuya herself, and even then, she has the problem of coming across as a bit too perfect, rarely showing any real character flaws of her own. She mostly exists just to be some guiding force to the kids rather than a character in her own right. The only real positives I can say about Ms. Itsuya as a manga are, 1. The art is alright, and 2. I actually liked the ending twist and the revelation it revealed about Itsuya's whole reason for magically creating art.
It sucks that I couldn't enjoy this manga, and believe me, I really want to! If you love Ms. Itsuya, good for you. It just didn't appeal to me personally. Luckily, the mangaka Mizu Sahara (real name Sumomo Yumeka) has made plenty of other manga, including an adaptation of Makoto Shinkai's Voices of a Distant Star that I read a long while ago. I should probably re-read that. But yeah, give Ms. Itsuya a read if you're into short manga that don't overstay their welcome, but if you can't tolerate the obnoxious characters, give it a miss.
