The best way to describe Caterpillar Girl and Bad Texter Boy is messy, complicated high school romance meets Tokyo Ghoul.
Well, the ghouls’ part at least. Also, it probably reminds me of a few other series out there, but that might describe this fascinatingly flawed work.
Caterpillar Girl and Bad Texter Boy was serialized in Gene pixiv starting sometime in 2016. Kadokawa and pixiv launched it in 2014, and, generally, monsters seem to be a theme of the publication. A few titles from it have been licensed here: Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea, Fairy Tale Battle Royal (which will be coming in October) and My Girlfriend is a T-Rex by Sanzo. Oh hey look, synergy! Now Yen Press has the rights to Sanzo’s newest work. But what about it makes it stand out from other monster manga?
Well, this one involves a creepy and cute caterpillar!
But it wasn’t like that initially. Suzume Kikuo loved her long time childhood friend Akane (Aa-chan). However, socially awkward and apparently a troll online, Akane doesn’t want her to get into a relationship with him. From Suzume’s beauty, smarts, and attitude contrasted with him thinking of himself as a miserable person, he believes Suzume can find someone better than him. We flash to a month later; when the next time Akane meets Suzume, she’s now been turned into a caterpillar.
This, essentially, escalated really fast…
But if you thought this would be more of a comedic bent based on the premise, you’d be wrong. Instead, the two meet again and discover the darker aspects of each other. Suzume learns what she can’t do in her new form, while Akane comes to terms with who he’s really hurting around him. Both agree they need to try and turn her back to normal, but upon doing so, they need the help of the one who turned her into the caterpillar in the first place, Yutaka Ouga. That person already hates Akane for reasons, so…this is gonna be a challenge.
This manga tries to play up its cute and playful tone by having the caterpillar blush and make cute faces whenever something adorable needs to happen, but outside of a few moments, it was probably a mistake. Especially compared to what happens later on, it somehow seems out of place. Thankfully, there are not too many moments of this and later on focuses on what’s happening at that point in time. But if you thought you were gonna read something lighthearted because of the title or the premise, Akane chastising Suzume for throwing her humanity away for him tells you you’re wrong.
This leads to parts where Caterpillar Girl and Bad Texter Boy gets a bit messy. With only three main characters, the focus is where it needs to be — either on Akane, Suzune, or Yutaka. The only real fault lies in explaining certain aspects of Akane’s personality, but the manga does a solid job of making me hate him for at least 2/3 of the work. The climax ended a bit clumsily to me. This could be an art-related thing as the style sometimes was a hit-and-miss. And finally, there’s a lot of talking in this manga. Maybe a bit too much. Some of it is necessary, but maybe visuals could have shown certain aspects better.
But despite some of these issues, some of which affect the story, this manga is intriguing. The more I read of it, the more the characters and how they reacted to things clicked with me. Also fascinating was the backstories of each character, which explains either their undesirable personalities or their attitudes towards others. One section that stood out to me involving a character was how they grew up, and when you look back on a character’s actions in the story, you see why they do the things they do. That’s good storytelling.
How you see Akane and Suzume’s relationship as the manga goes on will affect your enjoyment. In the end, I still think Akane’s not a likable guy, but I can at least be content with how his arc went. Suzume is more of a mixed one for me. Obviously, turning yourself into a caterpillar after getting rejected is illogical, but her actions with and without Akane shows how much she did love him, and what happens to her character at the end compared to at the beginning is impressive. The wildcard is Yutaka, a student who obviously is more than just a student, but her involvement in the narrative is solid.
All in all, Caterpillar Girl and Bad Texter Boy is a fantastic read. It’s a beautifully told love story that’s tragic despite its premise. What ultimately happens between these three characters will be hard to forget, and though I do wish it could’ve ended a bit stronger or cleaned things up, I sometimes remember that not everything can be perfect. This isn’t close to perfect at all, and yet it’ll be a manga I’ll be thinking about at least for a good while.