I don't read Yuri Manga! I...I'm just holding that for a friend!
Shinozaki-san Ki wo Ota Shika ni! ("Don't become an otaku, Shinozaki-san!") is a manga by Shou Hikawa, which was serialized in Comic Meteor from 2012 to 2017 and compiled into nine volumes.
In middle school, with her beautiful looks and outgoing personality, Akina Shinozaki used to be the leader of a group of hotties at the top of her class hierarchy. However, after her high school debut is delayed by a week due to a cold, she finds herself the odd person out as all her classmates have already formed their cliques.
Sitting next to her is an otaku girl, Kaede Sasamura, whom she immediately dismisses as a freak, but when Akina later bumps into her, knocking her glasses off, Akina is dumbstruck when she realizes Kaede is actually very beautiful. Puzzled by why Kaede chose the life of an otaku and feeling that it's a tragic waste, Akina decides to save Kaede from the disgusting life choice by introducing her to fashion and grooming her for a perfect high school life, but the only way to get close to Kaede is for Akina to pretend to be an otaku herself, much to her chagrin.
Still, she'll do whatever it takes to save Kaede from the otaku lifestyle, as soon as she is done watching some Prepure, cosplaying, playing videogames and tabletop RPGs, reading gay and lesbian Doujins, going to anime conventions, creating a maid café, writing Fanfics, and fantasizing about alone time with Kaede... wait, what was she supposed to be doing again?
Shinozaki-san Ki wo Ota Shika ni! contains examples of:
- Beach Episode: Of the "Pool Episode" variety. Chapter 11 and 12 take place at a water park. It's initially a subverted setup for a Two-Timer Date since Kaede and Konatsu both invite Akina, but Akina explicitly chooses Kaede, who invited her first. The real plot of the chapters is it sets up Akina's high school friends meeting her middle school friends for the first time.
- Bland-Name Product:
- Prepure for Pretty Cure (including such installments as "Futari de Prepure", "Flash Prepure", "HeartBreak Prepure", and "Slime Prepure").
- The Monster Hunter equivalent is "Mamono Hunter."
- Chapter 3 mentioned a hit show among girls called Taraba and Kani.
- The in-universe Windows is called "Wenby's."
- Hibari and Ayu frequently cosplays characters from Hong Kong Project.
- Kuroki's Lacrosse, a manga with legions of rabid Yaoi Fangirls that parodies Kuroko's Basketball.
- Brother–Sister Incest: Brought up occasionally but subverted pretty hard.
- Makoto honestly has no interest in his little sister or anyone he considers a little sister, like Chigusa. It weirds him out that everyone keeps bringing it up. He even thinks it's wrong for a college kid like him to be with a teenager.
- Akina cannot stand Makoto most of the time and her sexual interests lie elsewhere.
- But I Read a Book About It:
- Akina discovers a book titled: "How To Seduce A Female Otaku." Of course, she bought it.
- Kaede thinks she'll be fine playing baseball due to having read a lot of baseball manga. When Akina checks on her during sports day, Kaede gets beaned by a fly ball.
- Cast Full of Gay: Parodied in a Tabletop RPG Akina plays where every character the party encounters is revealed to be gay, the non-violent way to end the campaign is to discover the Demon Queen is gay as well.
- Chekhov's Gunman:
- The Elegant Gothic Lolita Akina sees every so often is revealed in chapter 27 to be, Usuba Nanae, Makoto's senior at University whom he frequently helps out with her doujin circle, whether he wants to or not.
- Konatsu once mentioned having made a foreign friend, showing off a picture of her on her phone. In chapter 32, Akina unknowingly meets that friend at Winter Comichest. She doesn't realize who Amy is until she sees that she's accompanied by Konatsu.
- The author is fond of this trope. Characters are introduced without much notice only to have A Day in the Limelight chapter or become a Recurring Character later on.
- Colbert Bump: Micchy is capable of these In-Universe. She's renowned for playing any and all game demos at Comichest and any game she favors will see a boost in popularity.
- Contrived Coincidence: In chapter 19, Akina accidentally bumps into a girl on the street who just so happens to be Hibari sans cosplay, who just so happens to be heading to Otome Road accompanied by Akina's oldest friend Chigusa.
- Cuteness Overload: Akina is head-over-heels for Kaede, and just about anything Kaede does turn Akina into a flustered mess. It's so bad that Akina becomes known for fainting easily, when in reality, she's as athletic and healthy as they come.
- A Day in the Limelight:
- Chapter 5 is about Micchy, and chapter 6 about Makoto and his creepy friends. Chapter 16 focuses on Konatsu. Chapter 19 has Hibari take the spotlight.
- Special mention goes to chapter 17 where Akina gets to finally have the day she's always wanted.
- Distracted by the Sexy: When trying to covertly put a doujin she borrowed from her brother back in his room, Akina comes across a yuri doujin and stops to flip through it.
- Funbag Airbag:
- Kaede gets pushed into Akina while in a crowd rush. Poor Micchy ain't so lucky and just gets squished up against a wall.
- Akina gets shoved into Ayu's chest, much to her enjoyment, then Kaede's which almost kills her.
- Girl Posse: Akina and her friends; Chigusa, Touko, and Konatsu, formed one when they were in middle school.
- I'm Standing Right Here: Akina has a tendency to insult her brother Makoto and her friend Konatsu while right in front of them. While Makoto protests, Konatsu usually takes it with a stride.
- Irony: Akina is actually as popular with her classmates as she wanted to be, as a great number of them want to be her friends, being admired for her athleticism, academics and beauty, but her efforts to become an otaku for Kaede's sake has led to mutual difficulties in approaching a topic of conversation.
- Luminescent Blush: In chapter 1, after hearing from the school nurse that Kaede came to the nurse's office with teary eyes, really worried about Akina's condition after she fainted from a lack of sleep. Akina blushed knowing Kaede cared a lot about her, cementing her resolve to get deeper into the otaku pit to get close to her.
- Megaton Punch:
- Matoko frequently receives these from Akina, luckily he has a protective layer of fat.
- After a disastrous game of cards at school that ended with Akina getting her boobs rubbed twice, Konatsu bursts into Akina's home clamoring to play cards with boob-rubbing as the penalty. Akina gives her a megaton karate chop so hard she's out flat.
- Moment Killer: The few times Akina manages to get around her speech problems, its almost guaranteed she will be interrupted by someone.
- No Poker Face: In chapter 36, Akina and friends are playing Old Maid with an anime-themed deck. At first, Akina thinks it'll be easy since Kaede has no poker face. But she draws the joker anyway because she was distracted by how cute Kaede is. Once she sees the joker is am anime character vomiting, she finds herself unable to keep a poker face either.
- Open Secret: Everyone in Akina's class knows she's an otaku.
- Akina's friends were pretty quick to deduce that she had fallen for a girl and that that girl was Kaede, though they may have just been joking.
- Otaku: Poor Akina she's surrounded, and being infected with their poison.
- Potty Emergency: Akina has one in Chapter 15, but has to wait in a long line (but don't worry, she makes it).
- Running Gag: Akina and Mokoto walk in on each other without knocking, Doubly funny since it's Makoto's room and he doesn't need to knock but is punished anyway.
- Shipping: A common subject of conversation, most notably getting a tabletop adventure themed on it.
- Shout-Out: A lot for the Pretty Cure series.
- Chapter 1 has Makoto doing the "Yamcha pose".
- Chapter 4 has a conversation that seems copy and pasted from an ImageBoard.
- Chapter 15 has plenty of shoutouts in the form of cosplay: Faust, Remia and even a cardboard box
Gunnam. - In chapter 34, Akina, Kaede, and Micchy go on a pilgrimmage to the shrine where "Happy Song" took place.
- In chapter 35, when being shepherded around Akibahara, Amy wants to see the Radiokan with the satellite crashed atop it.
- Sick Episode: Akina was sick for a week when school started which is why she was isolated from the class that had already formed cliques. Kaede becomes sick in a later chapter.
- Status Quo Is God: Over the course of the manga's run, there's been barely any development with either Shinozaki's acceptance of being an otaku, or her acting on her feelings for Kaede. Every time Akina is about to be outed as gay or otaku, she denies it, or some contrived plot device comes in to delay it. Then the Reset Button is pressed and everyone moves along like nothing happened. It takes until the very end of the manga for Akina to finally come out as both a lesbian and otaku.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: Chapter 17, Akina is finally allowed to show off her fashionista skills, and not only that she does not become the butt of any jokes and the whole day ends up being one she has wanted for a long time.
- Two-Timer Date: At the start of chapter 11, both Kaede and Konatsu call Akina to ask if she wants to hang out the next day. Since Kaede called first, Akina turns down Konatsu, subverting the trope but setting up that both groups are at the local water park at the same time.
- Yaoi Fan Girl: Almost every otaku girl introduced.
- Lampshaded by Usuba, who teaches Koto that "Every woman is rotten" note whether she realizes it or not.
- Ayu can only get over her Shrinking Violet ways when talking about her favorite Yaoi pairings.
- When Konatsu shoves Makoto and Hoshi together during an outing to Akibahara, a trio of girls in the background squee and think, "Fat loser bottom? I'd ship that!"
- Yuri Genre: Becoming more and more obvious with each chapter as Akina's feelings for Kaede become ever more obvious.
