Is I Made Friends with the Second Prettiest Girl in My Class Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Overview

Maki Maehara has decided, with some confidence, that high school isn't going to be any different from middle school: he'll keep his head down, stay a loner, and get through it. Then he runs into a classmate, Umi Asanagi, at a video rental store, and it turns out they both have a weakness for cheap, forgotten B-movies. Umi is popular — ranked "second prettiest in class" by the boys who keep score of that sort of thing — which is exactly why Maki agrees to be her friend only on the condition that nobody finds out. Two people from opposite ends of the social map, bonding in secret over movies nobody else has heard of.

It's a small premise, and the manga knows it. This isn't a story chasing a big hook; it's chasing two specific, well-observed people.

What it does well

Maki is the best thing here. His social anxiety doesn't read as a generic shonen-protagonist tic — it's written like someone who's built an entire worldview around not being wanted, and who has to be shown, not told, that he's wrong. Umi balances him out well: her frustration at being flattened into "the pretty one" by everyone around her gives the friendship actual stakes beyond a shared taste in movies. Neither of them is just a type.

The B-movie angle works better than it has any right to. It gives the two of them something concrete to talk about on the page — specific scenes, specific bad special effects — instead of the usual shorthand where two characters "just click." And the art is quietly good at the stuff that's hardest to draw well: two people sitting and talking, with nothing happening except a friendship getting a little more real.

Where it falls short

The pace is a real hurdle, especially early on. A lot of volume one is spent establishing the premise and the characters' headspace without much actually happening, and readers who want momentum will likely find it slow going. Maki's secrecy rule is the engine of the plot, but it also gets frustrating well before the story seems to clock that it should — the people around him don't push back on it as hard as the situation calls for, which makes some stretches feel like they're stalling rather than building.

And if you came in expecting a clear romance, know that it's not there yet in any concrete way. This reads, so far, as a friendship story with romantic potential sitting in the background rather than a will-they-won't-they already in motion.

Verdict

This won't work for readers who want a rom-com with momentum, but as a patient, well-observed story about two specific teenagers figuring out that they're allowed to be known, it earns its quiet approach more often than not. Worth starting if you're in the mood for something small.