Mona Kawai is a highschool girl who moved to Tokyo a year ago. She loves being the center of attention and is surrounded by the love and affection of her classmates. However, she is utterly shocked when she is met with rejection by the transfer student Medaka Kuroiwa.
What Mona doesn't know is that Medaka was born in a temple and is currently a monk in training. To follow the temple's rules, he must not interact with any girls. Medaka tries to resist Mona's charms, while Mona desperately tries to make Medaka fall for her, during which she ironically starts developing feelings for him.
Medaka Kuroiwa is Impervious to My Charms (黒岩メダカに私の可愛いが通じない, Kuroiwa Medaka ni Watashi no Kawaii ga Tsuujinai, "My Charms Are Wasted on Kuroiwa Medaka") is a Shounen manga by Ran Kuze. It began serialization in Kodansha's Weekly Shonen Magazine in May 2021. The manga was licensed in English by Kodansha USA in March 2022.
This manga contains examples of:
- Accent Slip-Up: Whenever Mona gets very emotional, she will slip into her natural Kansai accent.
- Attention Whore: The initial motivation that Mona has for pursuing Medaka is that he's not fawning over her like other boys do, as she's unaware that he's doing his best not to show it. Eventually, this leads to Medaka having Mona's undivided attention.
- Celibate Hero: Medaka is a monk in training and he tries to not interact much with women. Before he came to school, he only saw women on TV.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Mona dislikes other girls getting close to Medaka.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Tsubomi Haruno is given focus at the end of Chapter 4, but she can already be seen on the color page of Chapter 1 and she appears in the background of the very first panel.
- Everyone Can See It: Tsubomi Haruno quickly figures out that Mona likes Medaka. Mona denies it, but Tsubomi can't be convinced otherwise and ships the two together. Mona's rival in love, Asahi, is baffled in Chapter 21 that Mona doesn't seem to realize her feelings for Medaka are genuine.
- The Fake Cutie: Played with. Mona keeps the pretension that she's a weary and fashionable city girl, but she's more bucolic and not as well put together as she shows. Still, she does an excellent job doing it, as she's an idol at school. As such, Mona is indeed cute, but not in the way she shows.
- Fanservice: Especially in the early chapters, Mona tries to charm Medaka with her body, which leads to Panty Shots.
- Green-Eyed Epiphany: Subverted. In Chapter 29, Mona wonders why she's getting so worked up, just because some other girls took pictures with Medaka, while she couldn't. She is feeling weird about it, but doesn't realize that she's simply jealous.
- I Can't Believe A Girl Like You Would Notice Me: Medaka is terrible at reading girls, since he has never had any contact with them at all. As such, his ignoring of Mona is half embarrassment, and half not recognizing her advances.
- I Love You Because I Can't Control You: Most boys find Mona unbelievably cute and many have confessed to her, but Medaka has managed to resist her charm. She now tries her best to make Medaka fall for her without realizing that she has already fallen for him herself, and he himself reciprocates.
- Innocently Insensitive: Medaka gets called out about it. While his reaction to Mona is justified to the reader, since he is extremelly awkward and religiously has an issue with interacting with her, in-universe, all that everyone sees is a guy being rude for no reason to a girl that is going out of her way to try to welcome a new transfer student. He acknowledges that he goes to far in his attempt to not be tempted and starts being nicer and at least trying to not frown when around her.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: Chapter 21 begins with a flashback of Asahi thinking that Love Is a Weakness and that Love at First Sight doesn't exist. One moment later she sees Medaka and falls in love with him.
- Love at First Sight: Asahi instantly fell in love with Medaka.
- Not So Above It All: Medaka's inner thoughts readily reveal that he does like Mona very, very much, and is more willing to give it a go to whatever she wants. He just has a great poker face to hide it.
- Oblivious to Love: Either that or it's Selective Obliviousness, as Mona doesn't realize that she genuinely likes Medaka.
- Sick Episode: Medaka is sick between Chapter 19 and 21. Mona and Asahi come to visit and nurse him.
- Slave to PR: Mona is very dedicated to her image as school idol and quite a few plots come from her trying to make herself look good or avoid making someone think even a smidge less of her, for example, desperately trying to hide that she used salt instead of sugar to bake or hiding her real accent that comes out when she is stressed.
- Those Two Guys: Medaka can often seen hanging around with two male classmates who give exposition about other people.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Medaka is several times called out by his guy friends or Tsubomi when he gives Mona the cold shoulder.
