Kurokiya-san Wants to Lead Him Around by the Nose Volumes 1 and 2 Review

Who doesn’t love a good romantic comedy? Well, that’s what One Peace Books are banking on as they bring us the new series Kurokiya-san Wants to Lead Around by the Nose by mangaka Pororoca. Will it prove a charming work? Let’s find out!

Our story follows a high-school student and gyaru, Ruu Kurokiya. Unfortunately, she’s well on her way to flunking out of high school and the teachers are at their wits’ end trying to figure out how to deal with her. So, they’ve turned to honor student Tadao Tadashi who has volunteered as a private tutor to try and put Ruu back on the right track.

Surprisingly, despite being in different classes, the two are already well acquainted with each other, as they were childhood rivals. Back in elementary school, Ruu actually had the better grades, while Tadao often performed poorly on tests. The two lost touch after attending different middle schools, so Ruu never thought they’d be reunited under circumstances like this!

Although Ruu is happy to be reunited with Tadao and for his help tutoring her, she can’t help but want to tease him and have him crumble under her ‘gyaru charms’. Sadly, Tadao is very hard to fluster and avoids all of her obvious bait while continuing to try and keep on track with his lesson plans.

As the story goes on we’re introduced to Ruu’s friend Mashiro Yukiginu who secretly draws a popular manga based on Ruu and Tadao’s situation. We also meet Ren Hamada, Tadao’s friend from the honours class who is secretly in love with Mashiro. Although he doesn’t get introduced until Volume 2.

In many ways this series reminded me of Medaka Kuroiwa is Impervious to My Charms, or Teasing Master Takagi-san. It’s a similar set-up in that Ruu just wants to get Tadao’s attention and the more he refuses to give in, the more she escalates and slowly falls in love with him. As it turns out, Tadao also has feelings for Ruu but he’s not the kind of character to open up about them, so it seems it’s up to her to make the first move and break down his walls.

Because this is such a crowded premise right now, Kurokiya-san needs to do a lot to stand out and unfortunately, I feel it falls short. While Ruu’s character design is relatively detailed to reflect her gyaru fashion sense, the rest of the art is quite flat. I think with Tadao there’s an element of making his appearance plain to contrast with Ruu, but even Mashiro and Ren are rough around the edges with few bespoke features.

This is a series that hinges on pulling off the visual comedy, which it only manages half the time for me. Mangaka Pororoca does draw funny and exaggerated expressions, but sometimes I find them oddly stiff and not quite capturing the nature of the scene. I think a lot of that does just come down to the fact the art is so flat without a lot of shading, instead being made of solid tones without a lot of variation.

Honestly, the art could be forgiven if the story itself wasn’t so repetitive. By the end of Volume 1, I was already growing bored of the everyday after-school tutoring sessions between Ruu and Tadao. Volume 2 did substantially improve on this, thanks to Mashiro and Ren playing more of a central role as well as occasionally taking the cast out of the classroom but it still shares a lot of the same problems. And I don’t feel either volume develops Tadao particularly well, which is a shame since he’s the central love interest who is currently very overshadowed by Ruu.

It would be one thing if we weren’t swimming in titles like this (though not as badly as if it were isekai, it has to be said!), but since we are – that makes this difficult to recommend. If you’re someone who’s very invested in the tropes or the premise, then this will prove enjoyable regardless. It’s not a bad series, it’s just lacking in a few too many areas for me.

As mentioned Kurokiya-san Wants to Lead Him Around by the Nose Volume 1 and 2 both come to the West thanks to One Peace Books and have been translated by James Taber. Both of the releases read well translation-wise, but Volume 1 definitely has production issues where every Japanese sound effect text has placeholders above it where an English translation should be. One example is a page where Tadao sighs with はぁ〜〜〜〜 and above is simply “tjjjjjjjjjjhi/”. Thankfully this issue isn’t present in Volume 2, but it still left a bad impression of Volume 1 from a production standpoint.

The series is finished in Japan with five volumes in total. Here in English One Peace Books has Volume 3 scheduled for a release in February with #4 following in April. No sign of #5 at the time of writing, but I can’t imagine it will be that far behind.

Overall, Kurokiya-san Wants to Lead Him Around by the Nose is an inoffensive entry in what’s becoming a popular premise. These two volumes were enough to get a sense of what it wants to be and if that’s your thing, you’ll love it, but for me, it’s subpar in too many ways to want to carry on or to easily recommend it.

Our review copy from One Peace Books was provided by Turnaround Comics (Turnaround Publisher Services).