I Want to Get Close to That Shy Girl is one of the most trite, vacuous piles of nothing that I've ever read. This work says nothing and somehow accomplishes even less. Our two leads are about as uninspired and uninteresting as the entire concept of "high school romcom" could drool out in a coma, with every secondary character misfortunate enough to be conceptualized for this work registering as nothing more than cardboard cutouts to populate every poor excuse for a scene. The characterization and plot, if one could even generously refer to this work as having either, is soulless derivate often lacking enough momentum tokeep a less than 20 page chapter from feeling like a slog. The motivation of this work is that Shiraishi, Shy Girl A, thinks Ayame, Shy Girl B, is sooooo cool but soooo intimidating. Ayame, Shy Girl B, thinks Shiraishi, Shy Girl A, is sooooo cute and sooooo adorable.

Had they ever spoken before the first scene? Not really. Is there any even scant effort at motivation to explain why they are conscious of each other at all before the work begins? Also not really. So, I won't bother trying to do the work of making this vapid nothingness in any way sensible to you since the mangaka couldn't be fucked to do it themselves.

What follows the introduction is a series of paint-by-number contrivances that discard established circumstances and characterization with the changing of the winds to meander through a narrative with as many twists and turns as a highway. Shy Girl B has a part time job? Only in the first scene lmao. Shy Girl A can't even conceive of speaking to a stranger? Oops! Must have forgotten that detail teehee.

Etc. etc.

Banal storytelling aside, this work is also just a technical dumpster fire. I don't--I legitimately cannot--believe that this work was edited in any substantive way.

We freely, yet inconsistently, head hop between Point of View. Shiraishi is our first POV, yet she's discarded even within Chapter 1 for Ayame, who remains our POV character for most (but definitely not all) of the remainder of the work. Is there any rhyme or reason why sometimes we're locked into a strictly limited first person POV and sometimes we're an omniscient narrator freely jumping between them? Literally no, not at all.

The very fabric of the story, down to the basest technical ability of point of view, is treated as much as a contrivance as the inconsistent characterization and "plot" beats. It's as if the author's decision as to whether our POV would be limited or free flowing in a given scene was entirely dependent on which would lead to more unearned, wishy-washy meandering through fluffy angst.

And you better believe the work is written in such a way as to think it's totally nailing all of these emotional highs. Said "heights" are about as towering as an elementary school student atop a playground slide, though. It's giving soap opera that somehow took itself even more seriously.

This all, of course, leads to character inconsistencies within scenes. From Ayame's perspective, Shiraishi could be spacey and aloof while she herself is freaking out. In the literal next panel, it will be completely different. Then it will twist itself back again, then again, and again, and again. There is no rhyme nor reason why any characters behave or act in the ways they do, all of whom are seemingly driven by the author's morbid insistence at creating the least compelling rom-com ever printed.

There's more to say, but why bother? I'm completely serious when I say that, if you read this review, I, a complete stranger, have had more characterization through the way I expressed my annoyance with this work than every single character in it combined. I Want to Get Close to That Shy Girl is not just mediocre; it being published at all is an affront to more talented writers everywhere who have ever lost their own chances at publication to stale garbage such as this.

I don't recommend it.