Amane Mizuno is having a pretty typical high school life: she’s got friends, school isn’t too bad, and one of her classmates is maybe into her! So now comes the tough part: working up the courage to actually talk with her classmate and maybe even go out with him!
The most immediately striking thing about The Girl with the Sanpaku Eyes isn’t the story but the art, or rather the colors. DENPA Books licenses manga that are a bit more esoteric than usual and, while the premise is a pretty typical one, publishing full color manga is still a rarity in the US. Sanpaku Eyes has a very soft, warm color scheme to it, much like the cover a lot of it is in shades of grapefruit and tangerine, and these colors seem to reflect the overall mood of the story; Mizuno might have a mean face but her life is actually a rather charmed one.
Perhaps a little surprisingly, this is a very standard rom-com and a very kind-hearted one like that; since Mizuno’s eyes are quite literally in the title I expected her to receive some amount of teasing for them but there’s barely a comment made about her eyes in general. In fact, the only thing I can think of is how Mizuno and her brother run into some of her friends outside of school and, since Mizuno’s brother has sanpaku eyes as well, one of her friends is attracted to him for looking like Mizuno! There aren’t any comments about how Mizuno seems “unapproachable” for her resting bitch face or anything along those lines, and if you keep an eye on the background characters it seems like they’re actually cheering Mizuno on in her efforts to get to know Katou. Frankly it’s almost disappointing to read a rom-com with so little conflict in it!
Honestly, after reading one volume of this series I was satisfied and didn’t feel the need to continue any further, there’s just not enough going on for me! I prefer rom-coms that are a bit more joke-dense, like Horimiya or Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun; The Girl with the Sanpaku Eyes is just too laid-back for my tastes. In some ways it’s more like a romantic slice-of-life than a comedy and I just find Mizuno’s life, well, a little dull.
I’m sure that plenty of manga readers, who prefer the “rom” parts of rom-coms, will be utterly charmed with this colorful manga however and its light-hearted, low-stakes story of high school crushes.