After living in the shadows for what feels like her entire life, Sakura meets the first person who actually sees her. Or rather, smells her.
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Before we start the review…
What’s the Japanese level?
I rate this as an early-advanced series. To see my reasonings for my rankings, please click here!
Who wrote this manga?
This manga was written by Aoi Nuwi.
Info about the series
- There are currently three volumes published in Japanese
You can check out this series for yourself below.
What’s this series about?
Sakura has lived her whole life seemingly invisible. Not only do a good majority of her classmates not even know her name—going as far as most not knowing how to read the Kanji, her voice doesn’t even register in her teachers brain half the time. Though lonely, she’s become accustomed to living “in the shadows”. While she seems to not linger in the minds of the humans around her, she is able to find some companionship in one of the neighbourhood dogs.
While taking it on a walk one day, the two pass by a lake, only to spot a mysterious looking boy on the other side. With snow-white hair and different coloured eyes, Sakura isn’t sure if he’s human or some ethereal being. He disappears in an instant, leading to further questioning in her head.
The next day at school, the same mysterious boy makes an appearance—Shio Magami, is a new transfer student. His family just moved back to Japan from Europe, and he’s brand new to town. As he’s beautiful and foreign, all of Sakura’s classmates are instantly drawn to him. This leads to Sakura being shoved even more into the shadows, but again, she’s used to this.
Since Shio came to school however, Sakura has felt like she’s being watched—something she’s absolutely not used to. It’s not just a strange feeling, as she quickly discovers that Shio has been indeed staring at her every time they’re in the same room. It’s not subtle either, he will full on stop what he’s doing and just blatantly watch her.
A little while later, Sakura is asked by one of her teachers to deliver a box to a storage room. It isn’t until after she leaves the classroom with the box that the teacher says to be careful, as the door is broken—he really is a terrible teacher. Sadly, as Sakura wasn’t in the room to hear the warning, she quickly becomes locked in the storage room. She attempts to call for help through the window, but as she’s quickly forgotten by her classmates even when right beside them, there’s no way any of them would noticed her missing.
That’s what she thought at least, as Shio quickly hops up a tree and into the window of the room that she’s trapped in—on at least the third floor. Shio then proves himself to not only be the first of her classmates to know her full name, but to actively realize when she was missing. The two begin talking, when various thinga happen, leading to the two of them falling over. Shio then makes a strange comment about how Sakura smells…and promptly turns into a wolf! He then jumps out of the window, and doesn’t come back to school for the next few days.
My thoughts on this volume
I did slightly judge this book by its cover, and it ended up being absolutely nothing like what I thought it would be. Just looking at Shio on the cover, I had assumed that the would be more of an aloof, almost tsundere character. In actuality, he’s one of the kindest ML’s I’ve come across in a while!
Shio spends a lot of time reassuring Sakura that she’s absolutely not a “see-through human” as she often refers to herself as, and that he’s interested in learning more about her. He also tells her that while he was at first drawn to her because of her smell, he quickly became interested in learning more about her as a person. As Sakura clearly doesn’t have a lot of self-confidence, it was very nice watching Shio reassure her that she in fact does matter.
Sakura would often refer to the things that she liked as silly, or would greatly misrepresent the amount of effort she put into doing things—like if she spent all night working on something, she would say it only took her a few minutes. Shio tells her that he thinks all of her “likes”, no matter how small, are an important part of her, so she shouldn’t put them down! I think he’s going to do wonderful things for her self-confidence. I think that if this series doesn’t end up being romance, but instead a story about friendship, it would work fantastically.
I am curious about Shio’s family, as it seems like there are a lot more werewolves in the town than we were shown in this volume. I’m also hoping to learn more about the rules and whatnot that the werewolf family lives by, as they seems to be a little bit more strict, and more dark, than anything that happened in this volume.
My favourite parts of this volume (spoilers)
💛 Shio’s name being the French word for puppy—it’s confirmed in this volume that he was indeed named puppy, and that he’s viewed as the baby of the family.
💚 Shio’s dad—just, oh my god.
💙 Shio choosing to turn into a wolf to save the hat that Sakura dropped, and Sakura choosing to stay with him until he turned back into a human.
❤️ Shio being able to talk to dogs—I found this to be both incredibly funny and kind of sweet. This is where we learn that Sakura is loved by all dogs/dog-humans.
💙 Sakura standing up to Shio’s dad for him, even though he was a little bit terrifying.
💚 The werewolves being able to smell the weather—I feel like if werewolves were real, they would absolutely be able to smell the rain well before it came down.
💛 Shio’s little ears popping up when he half-transforms. He’s too cute oh my goodness.
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