James Nicoll Reviews

2021’s Kaiju Girl Caramelise, Volume 5 is the fifth tankōbon of Spica Aoki’s comedic kaiju romance manga. Titled Otome Kaijū Kyaramerize in the original Japanese, Kaiju Girl Caramelise has been serialized in Monthly Comic Alive since early 2018. The 2022 English translation of Volume 5 is by Taylor Engel.

Kuroe’s social anxiety is fueled by a medical condition she’s desperate to conceal even from her astonishingly hunky boyfriend Minami. When stressed, Kuroe transforms into the office-building-sized kaiju, Harugon.

How did Kuroe contract this unusual condition, you ask? Kuroe’s mother Rinko knows.

Desperate to save kaiju from extinction, biologist Rinko filched an egg from a kaiju nest, then raised the girl who emerged as her daughter. Conveniently, the hatchling manifested a heretofore unknown kaiju ability, the ability to mimic human form. Kuroe isn’t a human schoolgirl who sometimes becomes a kaiju. She is a kaiju who is also a Japanese schoolgirl.

Rather than explain to Kuroe about her background, Rinko decided it would be more prudent to lie to Kuroe, in hopes that Rinko’s adopted daughter would be overlooked by those who would otherwise exploit or menace her. To Rinko’s credit, people still have not connected Kuroe with Harugon. On the other hand, Kuroe is socially anxious to the point of self-sabotage.

To Kuroe’s alarm, student Yoneyama seems to have made the connection between schoolgirl and monster. Yoneyama has a secret of his own: he is not the adult he appears to be. A growth spurt provided the grade five student with the appearance of an adult. Treated as a freak by schoolmates, his only interest in Kuroe is to befriend someone he thinks is very cool.

Alas, the new friendship is the very thing to drive a wedge between Kuroe and Minami. Romantic calamity looms. Can the second kaiju even now headed towards Kuroe’s city provide a welcome distraction?

~oOo~

Ah, romantic misunderstandings that could be cleared up in less than a minute if only people would talk to each other, rather than jumping to conclusions. I hate those. I really hate those.

I am not sure about Rinko’s thought processes. First, she was very lucky that Kuroe is a human schoolgirl most of the time. Given that she could not have known that was a possibility¹, how was she planning on raising Kuroe? When is she planning on explaining to her daughter that she isn’t a sick girl, but a shape-shifter?

The whole kaiju take the appearance of whatever animal is near them when they hatch suggests that kaiju or at least some kaiju are brood parasites. Brood parasite kaiju is a novel idea, if that is what the author is going for. It would explain how kaiju seem to pop up out of nowhere: they live amongst us unseen… for a while. Nightmare possibility.

Longtime readers of KGC will no doubt notice that yet again, Kuroe encounters a new friend who embodies the lesson that one cannot judge by appearances. Will Kuroe learn from this or even remember the moral by the next volume? Past experience suggests not.

This was a perfectly fine volume… except for the fact that it employs a trope I absolutely hate. Obviously most other people’s milage must vary or romantic misunderstandings would not pop up so often.

Kaiju Girl Caramelise, Volume 5 is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Apple Books), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

1: Rinko explains away the shapeshifting as the product of spontaneous evolution, which makes me wonder if she got her degree by sending away cereal boxtops or perhaps attended an institution affiliated with the Discovery Institute.