13-year-old Kaede Komura has a crush on Ai Mie, the Bespectacled Cutie who sits next to him during class, but he's not sure she even knows he exists. Then, one day she leaves her glasses at home, and has to rely on Kaede for help in class. Kaede soon finds himself helping her on a regular basis, all while trying to hide his developing crush on her - and trying to get a handle on whether Ai feels the same way.
The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses (Suki na Ko ga Megane wo Wasureta) is a manga by Koume Fujichika. It initially began on his Twitter account in April 2018 before being picked up by Monthly Gangan Joker magazine in November of the same year, and ended on April 22, 2024. An anime adaptation by GoHands aired in the Summer 2023 season.
The manga provides examples of:
- Ad-Break Double-Take: Episode 10 does this with the opening credits. The Cold Open ends with Narumi asking Kaede whether he and Ai were kissing. After the opening credits, the scene is shown again, with only minor differences.
- Airplane of Love: A Running Gag is for Ai to say or do something that Kaede interprets as romantic, followed by a shot of an airplane flying over or past the school. The anime loves to exaggerate the trope: one early episode has this happen three times in as many minutes, while in Episode 10, after one of Kaede's classmates mistakenly thinks he and Ai had been kissing, two airplanes fly over the school.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: After the first time Ai forgets her glasses, Kaede idly wishes that she could come to school without them more often. The next day, Ai arrives at school without her glasses, having stepped on them and broken them. Kaede is horrified, believing it's the result of his wish.
- Bespectacled Cutie: Ai, at least, on the occasions where she actually remembers to wear her glasses.
- Blind Mistake: Happens a few times when Ai doesn't have her glasses on, such as mistaking a discarded plastic bag for a cat and wondering why it won't meow back at her.
- Blind Without 'Em: Ai, hence why she has to rely on Kaede whenever she forgets to wear them (which is often). Hammered home in the first episode when she's forced to press her face right up against her textbook in order to be able to read it.
- Brick Joke:
- In an early episode, Ai mistakes a shopping bag for a cat and tries to pet it. A few episodes later, Kaede comes across an actual cat and muses that Ai probably wouldn't make the opposite mistake and think it's a shopping bag. This leads to its own Brick Joke when Ai comes across the same cat and correctly identifies what it is despite not having her glasses on.
- In Episode 12, Ai mentions that her goal for the future is to get married and own a pet fish. In the following episode, she asks him what his favourite kind of fish is. Kaede doesn't notice the connection.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Kaede is unable to tell Ai how he feels out of fear of rejection. In one episode he does try to tell her, but can't get any further than "I..."; an oblivious Ai assures him that whatever it is, she'll wait until he's ready to tell her.
- Cute Clumsy Girl: Considering how frequently she seems to forget her glasses, Ai has to count as this. The fact that she's Blind Without 'Em only compounds it.
- Everyone Can See It: Since Kaede and Ai are constantly around one another, other students in their class pick up on Kaede's crush and even start helping him. A notable example is when the new semester starts and the seating chart gets changed - Kaede and Ai are placed apart from each other, but the girl placed next to Kaede decides to swap seats with Ai.
- The Glasses Gotta Go: Inverted. Ai looks positively adorable with her glasses on, but with them off, she's reduced to a Clint Eastwood-esque squint that makes her look like a Perpetual Frowner. On the occasions where she tries contact lenses, they irritate her eyes and produce the same effect. Kaede admits that she's still cute even when squinting, but seems to prefer her with her glasses on.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each of the episodes in the anime have the "the girl I like" somewhere in the title.
- Modesty Shorts: Ai wears black shorts under her school uniform skirt.
- No Sense of Personal Space: Downplayed and justified. Ai regularly gets right up close to Kaede while not wearing her glasses, in order to get a good look at his face. She doesn't seem to realise just how close she's getting, or how much Kaede gets flustered by it.
- Not What It Looks Like: When the class go for swimming lessons, Kaede finds himself wondering what people with glasses do when they swim, and starts watching Ai to see what she doesnote . Only when a male classmate points it out to him does Kaede realise that it looks like he's ogling Ai in her swimsuit.
- Oblivious to Love: Episode 9 reveals that Ai never even considered the possibility of being in love before, and has definitively never noticed Kaede's feelings. It's only once her friend Asuka falls for another classmate and Ai later recognizes that same expression on Kaede's face that things start to click together for her.
- Once an Episode: Ai leaving her glasses somewhere and having to go without them.
- The Oner: The anime's first episode begins with a long tracking shot of Kaede arriving at school, walking to his classroom and sitting down at his desk, with Ai bumping into him on the way there.
