The titular nurse and her supporting cast
Nurse Hitomi's Monster Infirmary is a seinen manga series written by Shake-O note , which began serialization in Tokuma Shoten's Monthly Comic Ryu magazine in 2013. The series stars the titular cyclops Hitomi-sensei, a nurse in a junior high school. The catch is that people in this world display odd traits starting from puberty, ranging from innocuous as possessing a wider body than usual to traits extreme as functional immortality.
Each chapter focuses on a student's issues with their change and how they cope with said issue. The exception to this is chapters expanding on nurse Hitomi herself, showing more of her background, family, and interacting with the other staff at the school. Most notable is the copious amounts of Fanservice that come with the heartwarming moments and lessons taught by Hitomi.
The manga is licensed for distribution in North America by Seven Seas Entertainment.
Nurse Hitomi's Monster Infirmary contains examples of:
- Accidental Pun: Itsuki bursts into laughter at Hitomi mentioning kids who "fly the coop" and turn to delinquency, since Tobita, the delinquent in question, is a Winged Humanoid. Hitomi insists she didn't mean to make a pun.
- An Aesop: Hitomi often dispenses wisdom to the students who come to her for medical care or guidance, like caring about other people's feelings, loving yourself, learning to accept help, and treating teachers as people.
- All Men Are Perverts: The boys all act pretty preverted towards their female classmates (and sometimes Hitomi), though most of the girls are almost as bad. The adult males seem to be a little more in control of themselves.
- Bait-and-Switch: The chapter focusing on Hitomi and Mitsumi's distant brother implies that the reason he's cut himself off from his family is because he's become a deranged stalker. However, the end of the chapter reveals that the stalker isn't the brother. The "girl" he's stalking is the brother, whose head has sprouted some Girlish Pigtails, and he doesn't contact his siblings because he's too embarrassed about it.
- Bland-Name Product: In Chapter 4, one movie poster advertises Star Track Out Of Darkness.
- The Blank: Okubo doesn't have a face, just a seemingly bottomless hole in her head. This doesn't prevent her from seeing, hearing, drinking, or speaking, though.
- Buxom Beauty Standard: Most of the boys (especially Hanyuu) seem to think this, though Mr. Tatara notably prefers flat chests. By the end of Chapter 7, Hanyuu has learned an important lesson:Hanyuu: There are no worthless breasts. Big breasts have an overwhelming presence... but small breasts are cute and stylish.
- Cast of Snowflakes: Even the background characters have different distinctive features applied to them.
- Central Theme: Coming to terms with your body. Each human in this world undergoes some sort of change in puberty that can be anything from shrinking to growing a sapient extra head. Each person has to learn it is just a part of growing up and not to be ashamed of it.
- Childhood Friends: Nurse Hitomi and her coworker, science teacher Tatara.
- Chuunibyou: Nurse Hitomi herself has hints of this, fantasizing about firing lasers from her eye. This is especially apparent when she's drunk.
- Creepy Crows: Some crows attack Tobita when she's trying to land, and she would have crashed if Moji hadn't caught her.
- Cute Clumsy Girl: A Running Gag involves Nurse Hitomi's lack of depth perception.
- Cute Monster Girl: Downplayed as they're not necessarily "monstrous," but definitely commonplace. Gender-inverted too.
- Cuteness Proximity: When Nayuki Masshiro sees Nezu-kun in a French Maid Outfit, she's overcome by
moe, hugging him and saying she wants to take him home with her. - Cyclops: Hitomi went from two eyes to just a single large one after puberty.
- "Dinner, Bath, or Sex" Offer: In Chapter 6, when Tatara is telling her to "take it [her lab coat] off and put an apron on," Hitomi has an Imagine Spot of her in a Naked Apron making this offer.
- Dragged into Drag: Vice President Kiryuin has a habit of forcing Nezu to wear dresses and maid outfits.
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: Applies to Hanyuu after he grew breasts and Rumi-chan due to his twintail-like prehensile appendages. Neither of them have objections to this.
- Erotic Dream: Chapter 14 opens with Hitomi having one involving, consecutively, Ken, Moji, and Kaminaga, and her sister coming in to defeat Kaminaga's Prehensile Hair bondage with Eye Beams.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Everyone just calls the class rep by her title, according to the bonus material at the end of chapter 41.
- Extreme Omnivore: Tabe can eat and digest anything.
- Feel No Pain: It is said that Fujimi, a Revenant Zombie, feels no pain at all.
- Fun T-Shirt:
- In Chapter 36, Tobita is wearing a shirt with a bird logo that says Milvus migrans, the scientific name for the black kite.
- In Chapter 43, Tobita wears a shirt with "Albred Hichcook's 'The Bird'" on it.
- Funny Background Event: In the Festival Episode, Okutou (an octopus girl) is seen eating takoyaki.
- Girl on Girl Is Hot: One of Hitomi's (female) coworkers embodies this sentiment, much to Hitomi's chagrin.
- How Dare You Die on Me!: After Moji serves as a Living Crashpad to save Tobita, she begs him to wake up after he falls unconscious from hitting his head on a wall.
- Huge Schoolgirl: Kyouko Ooki is more of a Giant Woman, at over 3 meters tall. Her best friend is Chisa Osanai, the shortest girl in the class.
- An Ice Person: Matsushiro has a naturally low body temperature, and sometimes generates snow around herself.
- Inflating Body Gag: Mario Fukura can inflate his Funny Afro and also other people around him. Hitomi helps calm him down and get control over his Power Incontinence. In the omake for Mario's introductory chapter, Fujimi gets him to inflate her on purpose, so she can become a living Rolling Boulder.
- Innocent Innuendo:
- In one chapter, the end of a page shows a boy with a flushed face, and then Shitara making a face pretty close to an ahegao, with her Overly-Long Tongue going off the page... And then we see that she was showing off her ability to tie two cherry stems in a knot with her tongue. Both of them are fully clothed and on a date in a cafe. However, this boy does have a tongue fetish, which Shitara was deliberately playing on.Boy: W...Wow, Shitara. Where...did you learn to use your tongue like that...
Shitara: Mn...mph...Did I do...a good job...? - Another chapter opens with sucking and slurping sounds coming from a girl with her head between a guy's legs, and then it turns out she's a vampire, and was sucking his blood, not his penis.
- In Chapter 30, most of the chapter is building up the expectation that Hitomi and Moji-sensei are going to have sex in the infirmary, but the thing that's "thicker and harder" than she thought it would be turns out to be his hair, which she was shaving for swim class.
- In one chapter, the end of a page shows a boy with a flushed face, and then Shitara making a face pretty close to an ahegao, with her Overly-Long Tongue going off the page... And then we see that she was showing off her ability to tie two cherry stems in a knot with her tongue. Both of them are fully clothed and on a date in a cafe. However, this boy does have a tongue fetish, which Shitara was deliberately playing on.
- Labcoat of Science and Medicine: Worn by Hitomi, the school nurse, and Tatara, the science teacher.
- Lame Pun Reaction: When Moji says he "missed getting injured by a hair", Tobita has no words to react.
- Like Brother and Sister: How Ken feels about Hitomi.
- A Lizard Named "Liz":
- Taiga Toura is a humanoid tiger. His given name is the Japanese transliteration of the English word tiger, and his family name is based on the Japanese word for "tiger", tora.
- Nezu-kun is a mouse person who's name is based on the Japanese word for "mouse", nezumi.
- Okutou the octopus girl has a name that's based on the Japanese transliteration of octo.
- Kaneko the Cat Boy has a name containing the Japanese word for "cat", neko.
- Love Hurts: Seen with several students, and in flashbacks focusing on a Love Triangle between middle school-aged Hitomi, Ken, and her friend Saki. Ten years later, Hitomi finds out Ken and Saki weren't going out after all.
- Multiarmed Multitasking: Science teacher Tatara makes use of this. For example, lighting a cigarette with one pair of hands while gesturing with the other pair.
- Multiple Head Case: Naruki Wakatsuki sprouted a growth that grew into a second, female head on his shoulders.
- Mum Looks Like a Sister: Ken's mother is in her 50s, but looks like a high schooler.
- Naughty Tentacles: In Chapter 31, Okutou the octopus girl sticks her tentacles into the hole where Okubo's face would be. Though in this case it's Okubo who pulls the tentacles into herself to do a Mind Meld and share her consciousness with Okutou.
- Non-Indicative Name: An unfortunate consequence of the English title, as the original Japanese translated more literally to "Nurse Hitomi's Health Room"
- Ojou: The student council vice president, Kaen Kiryuin, comes from a wealthy family and acts regal.
- Our Humans Are Different: Humans in this manga's universe can undergo dramatic, seemingly random changes come puberty, from sprouting wings on one's back, gaining effective immortality, gradual shrinking, and many others. This makes the North American title something of a misnomer, which the author points out in one of the volume afterwards.
- Our Zombies Are Different: Fujimi is a cute Revenant Zombie who's a normal schoolgirl other than her body constantly falling apart. A later chapter shows her backstory and how she died and came back to life.
- Paper People: In chapter 12, Usui becomes one of these when Giant Woman Kyouko falls on her. It also turns her into a Fourth-Wall Observer.
- Personality Powers: Tomei sees her newly-developing invisibility as a logical extension of her Shrinking Violet nature.
- Plant Person: Itsuki is actually the product of a bio-engineering experiment to create a humanoid plant rather than a post-puberty human like the other characters. They're shown photosynthesizing a couple of times but otherwise don't have any plant-based powers.
- Playing with Fire: Vice President Kaen Kiryuin seems to be either dragon or demon-themed, what with her horns and fire breath.
- Prehensile Hair:
- Class 2-D teacher Kaminaga has nerves inside her hair, so she can never cut it. She often uses it to grope Hitomi.
- Rumi has two prehensile twintails.
- Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: Chisa and Kyouko have been friends since childhood, and Chisa is very protective of Kyouko, who wants to both protect her friend back and prove that she can handle herself sometimes. At the end of Chapter 3, Kyouko is carrying Chisa home, and says that she loves her.
- Pun: When Moji-sensei (who's covered in fur) catches Tobita arriving late, she says "It's the fuzz!".
- Punny Name: Hitomi's surname, Manaka, sounds a lot like monocle, and is also a Japanese word for "eye".note Hitomi can also be written with the kanji for "pupil" (瞳).
- School Newspaper News Hound: Komori the bat girl loves "exposing the sordid scandals of the school's high and mighty".
- School Swimsuit: The female students and Hitomi wear them during swimming lesson season. The cover of Volume 6 shows Hitomi and Tobita wearing them, Hitomi with her Labcoat of Science and Medicine over it.
- Shout-Out:
- In Chapter 22, Hitomi's Chuunibyou tendencies of practicing in case she suddenly gains the ability to fire Eye Beams are compared to a teenage boy practicing the Kamehame-Ha from Dragon Ball.
- A Ferengi appears in Chapter 32, and Sisko and Garak appear at a table in the background of one panel. In chapter 36, there's a teacher named Picar-sensei who looks exactly like Jean-Luc. In another chapter, Hitomi and her father see a movie called "Star Track" with a ship identical to the Enterprise on the poster.
- In Chapter 32, the back room at the maid cafe has a "Monster Musumen: Everyday Life With Monster Boys" poster. It also appears in Hikage's manga magazine in Chapter 34.
- A background character who looks just like Papi without wings appears in Chapter 36.
- In Chapter 37, Kiryuin is reading a book called "Lady Vampire Camilla".
- The director of the campground in the class trip arc is a blatant expy of Machete named Machee, who looks exactly like Danny Trejo.
- Chapter 43 is a parody of several slasher films, including Friday the 13th and Halloween. On the last page, students who look like Hellraiser, Freddy Krueger, and a humanoid xenomorph appear.
- Smoking Is Cool: Ken is almost constantly smoking, and is usually pretty cool.
- Smoking Is Not Cool: On the other hand, Moji firmly believes in this, and tries to get Tobita to stop smoking.
- Smurfing:
- Nezu frequently replaces words in his speech with mouse references:
- When Taiga mistakenly thinks Nezu was a girl, Nezu squeaks out "You're mousetaken! I mean, mistaken!" Later on, he says Kaen is "Mousing up his ears."
- When Nezu asks the "vampire" why she's only targeting boys, he calls her out on her "Disqueakmination".
- Nezu frequently replaces words in his speech with mouse references:
- When Hanyuu tries to be The Peeping Tom in the girls' locker room, he justifies it by saying it's "the spirit of breastellectual curiosity".
- Stalker with a Crush: Fumio has been stalking Rumi-chan for a while. Ken finally confronts him about it.
- Thanks for the Mammary: Hanyuu accidentally gropes the Class Rep, and makes it worse by insulting her flat chest.
- Third Eye: Hitomi's younger sister Mitsumi has a third eye on her forehead. Her personality changes depending on which eyes are open or closed.
- Tiny Tyrannical Girl: Chisa Osanai is the shortest in the class, actually shrinking day to day, and she has quite the Height Angst about it. She's rather bossy and blunt, though it's only because she cares so much about her best friend Kyouko (she actually used to be taller than Kyouko before puberty).
- Wall Pin of Love: Done by Tatara-sensei to Hitomi in his intro chapter, though at this point it's not so much "love" as "teasing". He uses all four of his arms to do it.
- Winged Humanoid: Tobita is one, though she's still getting the hang of landing safely.
