One Shot Review: Just Listen to the Song (フツーに聞いてくれ) written by Tatsuki Fujimoto and illustrated by Oto Toda
I've fallen behind on my writing and my reading, so I'm about a month late coming in coming to Just Listen to the Song (Japanese, Futsuu ni Kiitekure, lit. "Listen to Me Normally") written by Chainsaw Man manga-ka Tatsuki Fujimoto and illustrated by Oto Toda. Toda is a former assistant of Fujimoto's who recently released a critically acclaimed short story collection called "To Strip the Flesh" in English. Coming in at only 20-pages, Listen to the Song is on the shorter end of one-shots, but it is no less impactful. It tells the story of a boy who confesses his love to his classmate by way of uploading a song he wrote for her to an online video sharing site. In an act of teenage cruelty, the girl then shares the video with everyone at their school, in addition to rejecting him. Before the boy can delete the video, it explodes in popularity. People begin reading all sorts of messages into the video that the boy never intended. Eventually, the video becomes