The Spring 2022 season saw the emergence of the anime adaptation of Keigo Maki's slice of life romance manga, Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie; known in Japan as 'Kawaii Dake ja Nai Shikimori-san'. The anime has been one of the Spring season's most anticipated, particularly when it comes to slice of life and romance, but fans of the manga may have noticed how different things are in the anime.
Whatever the opinion on these changes, it is fairly standard for the anime adaptation of a manga to differ from its source material (hence the struggle with filler episodes in Shо̄nen anime, for instance), but some changes are more noticeable than others, and deviating from the source material completely is not particularly the most popular option. In the case of Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie, these changes have had profound effects on the series overall, so here's a small rundown on just how different the anime Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie really is.
Short-Form vs Long Form
Part of the major revisions to the characters and story of Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie lie in the huge difference between the manga's style of administering the story compared to the anime. Each chapter of the manga is incredibly short, often covering just one event or an aspect thereof, such as a walk to school, the trip to the movies or the planetarium, or even a mere conversation. The anime rearranges the chronology of these events from the manga, and puts several events together, changing the context thereof or adding in aspects that the manga lacked.
This is the trend for all the episodes, which contain a mixture of rearranged content from the first and second volumes (thus far), and filler. Comedy anime like Nichijou or Daily Lives of High School Boys adapt the material and its short episodic format, often including the events of several chapters neatly separated as they are in the manga, a format that perhaps would have prompted less revision for the anime. This series could also have delivered the various Izumi and Shikimori moments with much greater impact in a much more episodic format.
Izumi, the Unfortunate
While it is a feature of both anime and manga that YĹ« Izumi is a magnet for spontaneous and inexplicable bouts of misfortune, there are subtle differences in how this is presented in both the anime and the manga. In the anime's first episode, we see Izumi trip and fall less than eight seconds after leaving the house to go to school, which isn't something that we see happening in the manga equivalent of that same day. At school, he messes up his self-introduction and somehow, the blackboard duster becomes a vicious projectile aiming straight for his face; however, Shikimori manages to protect him from the impact. Since the majority of his class are layovers from the previous year, Izumi is known fairly well by his classmates, particularly because of his uncanny ability to attract injury and misfortune. While Shikimori goes to the bathroom to clean chalk dust out of her hair, their classmates jokingly ask Izumi how he managed to get a girlfriend as cute and great as Shikimori with his "condition", but he merely laughs off their insensitivity. When she returns, the conversation quickly shuts down as the nameless classmates don't want Shikimori hearing them tease her boyfriend.
She and Izumi head off to the library, but as they leave, Shikimori turns to give them a glare so intense it sends shivers down their spines. This happens similarly early on in the manga; however, the classmates' conversation is more about how someone plain and ordinary like Izumi could have a girlfriend like Shikimori, earning them the same chilling glare, but Shikimori doesn't attempt to comfort Izumi, rather telling him later on that she thinks that those classmates are narrow-minded. The point of the anime is to contrast Izumi's misfortune and apparent lack of competence with Shikimori's extreme competence in everything, but in the manga, Shikimori's protective nature and her boldness mingle together in a way that makes Shikimori's coolness much more pronounced.
Inuzuka, the Prominent
One of the biggest differences between the manga and the anime of Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie lies in the side character Shū Inuzuka. The reason why he is such a big alteration is due to the fact that in the manga, he only appears for the first time in Chapter 18, which depicts the events from their first day as second year high school students. In the anime, he appears in the very first episode, during which they find out what class grouping they'll be part of. It is also on this day that the group go bowling in the anime. However, in the manga, the bowling day is directly tied to it being the first day of the new semester, since Inuzuka had a day off from work that.
Notably, in the manga equivalent of the day they find out their class groupings, Inuzuka is nowhere to be found as this occurs long before his introduction. It has to be said that Inuzuka's increased importance in the anime has made him the catalyst for some major events thus far, like Izumi and Shikimori's trip to the movies which, in the manga, happened long before Inuzuka's introduction to the story. Unlike his manga counterpart, the anime version of Inuzuka features in every single episode, and shows up for events that he simply wasn't part of in the original work. His appearance has and will continue to feature as part of many changes from the original manga.
The Big Basketball Bout
One of the series' most notable attempts to show the audience just how cool Shikimori can be is in the second episode in the series, which featured a sports day competition between Izumi's class and the other second year high school class at his school. Firstly, in the anime, we see Izumi's soccer team get completely dismantled while the manga "offscreens" that part. Secondly, even Shikimori's great basketball performance was a complete contrivance for the sake of the anime. In the manga, we see Izumi and Shikimori's interactions prior to their respective matches, and Izumi does go to the infirmary like in the anime; however, the rivalry that Shikimori supposedly has with Kamiya in that match is actually anime-exclusive content: Kamiya only debuts in Chapter 39 of the manga. Since we don't see as much of Shikimori's match in the manga, we don't see how Izumi and the girls react to the face Shikimori pulls after hearing her boyfriend cheer her on.
Hyper-Competent Shikimori
After the bowling day of the first episode, Shikimori and Izumi walk home together with the sunset staining everything a vibrant orange. While talking, Izumi stops a few paces ahead of her when she asks if he is bothered by the comments their classmates were making about their relationship when a sign comes falling down on Izumi. Shikimori deals with this in the anime by giving it a kick so powerful the sign goes flying off, no longer posing any danger to Izumi; however, in the manga, she merely pulls him closer, daringly using physical touch to shock Izumi and save him at the same time. It must be said that the Shikimori of the manga is protagonised a lot less, and also not made out to seem so incredibly overpowered.
In an attempt to manufacture a "best girl" out of Shikimori, the anime has greatly exaggerated her coolness, nearly making her the kind of overpowered slice of life character that is competent to the point of ridicule (in a similar realm to the main character of Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto!). As a result of the chronic exaggeration of Shikimori's perfection, the anime has seesawed between contriving events that highlight Shikimori's apparent ability to perform superhuman feats more heavily than the manga; and locating her coolness in much less exaggerated areas that are mundane in comparison. As a result, Shikimori is understandably much more balanced in the original work.