Otona ni Nuts

I feel as if I needed to rewrite my review on this, so I'm starting over again. I'm not sure why.

Instant Teen: Just Add Nuts! is a sweet story about a young fifth grader named Natsumi Kawashima who wants to become a beautiful young woman, but unfortunately for her, she still looks (and acts) like a kid. On chance she finds these nuts, accidentally mixed in with nuts that were only supposed to be for adults, and they change her into a very well developed woman! She turns back not long after, but she soon discovers the source of the nuts: a genius doctor named Dr. Morinomiya, the creator of these miracle nuts. Dr. Morinomiya experiments with her and the nuts, so she gains more, and soon she is able to get herself into all sorts of trouble, not without dragging her neighbor and childhood friend Asuma along.

You may be thinking this series sounds kind of silly. Well, it is. It’s a ridiculous, fluffy romance of a young girl who wants to grow up too fast and her best friend. But I adore it. I’m not even sure why myself. The story lacks, obviously, in maturity, and the audience is targeted for young shoujo-lovers or kids. But it’s just so adorable, that I own all four volumes and have re-read it several times.

From the very beginning you get to see how Natsumi feels. She obviously desires more for her looks, and it very dissatisfied with her tomboyish appearance. All the characters are well thought out. Asuma, Natsumi’s childhood friend, is torn with his desire for her adult self and the comfort of his best friend, and also jealousy of the men Natsumi is able to encounter from her outrageous body. During the series it’s shown again and again how even though Natsumi is in an adult body, her mind is still the same. Her body may have grown but the maturity level of a kid is still present in her.

The art, though it is flawed, is actually really adorable. This is one of Haruka Fukushima’s earlier works, and she gets a better grasp of human anatomy in her works such as Cherry Juice and Kedamono Damono, so the amateur-style shines through Instant Teen. But despite the many mistakes in her work, her lines are neat and swift, and the eyes bright and lively, bringing out Instant Teen farther with likeable artwork. There’s just something I love about Haruka’s style. Everything she draws just looks so cute.

This is one of the sweetest shoujo you’ll get your hands on, a story of an impatient girl struggling to grow up before she’s ready.

I have no business reading this, and if you are over thirteen or even just have a little sense of critical analysis neither does you. But since we are here, how about I tell you why.

Tokyopop is was a weird company with a habit of releasing everything they could get their filthy paws on. Then after years on decline they went under because of bad management. They had some good stuff and some that was frankly horribly bland and generic crap. Otona ni Nuts(Instant Teen) is one of the latter ones.

Premise: a cute little fifth grader who have a big crush on a barber steals a bunch of nuts from a lady on the street and eats them. Apparently the genius who made them somehow got them mixed up in a basket of freebie nuts. When she wakes up the next day she is an adult and by accident meets the barber-guy who instantly falls in love with her, of course kids are not illogical creatures that are easy to distinguish in this universe. Add her neighbor/best friend who has a crush on her into the mix and you have a totally unoriginal story to look forward to. Genius.

If you haven't caught my drift yet, the story is quite predictable. For a work aimed at kids, who would have thought? Next.

Characters are unlikeable and not acting their age. The main character is swaying on the the dangerous "this could get really dark"-line. And by that I mean romantic relations with an older man. For something with such an innocent premise it sure likes to titillate which is odd since it's a work obviously for young girl. Maybe I just don't get it

The art is pretty basic and often go “extremely shojo” meaning bubbles, flowers and other nasty fluff elements. As per usual with these works the fluff tries to cover up the total lack of backgrounds and it will get tiresome in the long run to just look at characters with a white background. Sometimes there may some shadow-effects, if we are lucky that is. The blandness of the character-designs are not contributing but at this point who really cares. It's perfectly serviceable for the story it accompanies.

Enjoyment equals none. At least not on when trying to take the story serious. Otherwise there will something to make fun of on every page, which will probably be as enjoyable as this will ever be but even this get tiresome since the sheer quantity of things to ridicule will be just too much to juggle. And that is when the premise is not even taken into account.

Unless you really want to waste an hour or two away there is no reason at all to read this. If you had plans to, just forget it ever existed. It's one of the worst thing to come from the manga boom and I promise it's way better to not have had this pathetic experience that is Otona Ni Nuts. Especially if you are an owner of a pair yourself.

Otona Ni Nuts. A hell of a ride reading that. I remember first coming across it around a decade ago in my neighbourhood bookstore that had a huge wall of Tokyopop manga and I was debating between getting the first volume of it or finishing up Natsumi Ando's Zodiac P.I. (and ultimately I chose the latter option.) So fast-forward to quarantine 2020 and me being bored out of my mind and trying to remember the Tokyopop titles I found in that bookstore so I could read them online. Instant Teen: Just Add Nuts (Tokyopop's title) was one of 'em. So I read it. And quite frankly, I regret it.

Otona Ni Nuts is, in itself, a cute, funny story idea; you've got a dumb kid who, like so many other dumb kids, wants nothing more than to grow up with haste. She's got her childhood friend who holds complicated feelings towards her and her stance, and wants her to just enjoy being a kid alongside him while they still can. But, since she's both dumb and a kid, she just can't seem to realize how much of a blessing childhood really is and ends up eating these odd genetically engineered nuts to turn her into a "sexy adult" at the most random of times and for the most absurd of reasons, from trying to seduce an older college man on a cruise ship to competing with a older masculine lady on who can be the sexiest. It's downright bonkers but that's part of it's charm.

That being said, however, the execution of the story itself in the manga was poor. It was super, SUPER rushed and all the gags and gimmicks were more fetish-y than anything. There were way too many confusing moments that came out of the blue and left me going "huh?" much too frequently for a manga of it's type and length. Also, the amount of illogical nonsense in this manga is UNBELIEVABLE (how is Natsumi's mother not questioning where the heck her daughter is skipping off to for such large periods of time? How's she letting her hang out with some wacko scientist all the damn time? If she's at public events or doing modelling while using her real name, wouldn't her parents see her? My brain hurts from all the "duhhhh")

A big chunk of the confusion came from the unfortunately sloppy art. I took a look at some of Fukushima's more recent works and it looks like that's just how her art is, but honestly the art in Otona Ni Nuts is just...not good. Even though I adore the early 00's shoujo art style generally, this simply wasn't up to par with me at all. I couldn't understand half of what was going because I literally couldn't SEE what was going on. Art that is: crowded + sloppy = recipe for a manga disaster. If I can't follow through with a story because of it's art, that automatically ruins the story for me, no matter how good the story is. And I can say for sure now that I won't be checking out any of Fukushima's other work because of this.

The characters were fine. Bland, unfunny, and not much else to them other than that they're all airheaded, rude, and shameless (especially Natsumi, flashing her rack for all to see without much thought or reprimand.) The adult characters bothered me the most, like the scientist and his tomboy lover. Why a fully grown adult would constantly go head-to-head with a literal child in a competition of sexiness is completely beyond me. But hey, manga right?

I'm a bit confused on how this was serialized as a manga for younger girls, since a lot of the moments were akin to the ecchi fanservice you get in shounen manga and anime. But I guess maybe that was supposed to be the deal-breaker here? Showing that young girls can enjoy gross humour in a coming-of-age (if you could even call this "coming-of-age") story too? If that's the case, then I'm pretty sure there are better manga out there that fit the bill. This manga also never garnered any kind of notable attention contrary to most Nakayoshi-serialized manga, but I think anyone else who read it can tell why.

In conclusion, Otona Ni Nuts is a hilariously dumb attempt at a potentially good story concept, and it's one manga I'm putting on my invisible "Store-away-in-the-dark-abyss-of-your-mind-and-never-think-about-again" list.

Story
Otana Ni Nuts is definitely a strange manga that tells the story of a young 5th grade girl who only dreams of becoming a woman, and when I mean woman I mean the whole deal like, boobies, looks, and everything, mostly the sexiness though. The young heroine Natsumi, spins around adoringly in front of her mirror posing like the models from ‘America’s Got Talent,’ while saying her ideal line “sexy” with apples on her breasts to make them look like the sexy grown up boobies (mine are kind of small though). The manga explores the hardships in which little kids’ face, such as having little to no respect, and or not being able to receive some special gift. As a result of facing these sorts of hardships, Natsumi steals a bag of peanuts that are meant for adults only and eats them and than bing bam boom, the next morning she wakes up with the body of a beautiful teenage girl (If I say anymore it’ll be a spoiler)! Well anyway, I personally do love the plot of this whole manga even though it does sound strange at first. I do admit that I was a bit skeptical to read this manga due to its overly weird synopsis which this website provided, but you’d be very surprised to know that it could be quite enjoyable to those shojo fans out there. However, this manga is indeed far from what you’d call a masterpiece, just from reading the first few chapters of this manga I could easily tell the flaws of it. But the number one flaw that will always bother me is the fact that this manga is a bit too fast paced to the point where we’re hearing multiple proposals (not telling what kind) in just a few chapters.

Characters
I absolutely felt no emotions towards the characters in this manga whatsoever which is quite strange due to the fact that I’m quite judgmental when it comes to the characters of anime and manga. For some strange reason throughout reading all four volumes of this manga I felt no specific emotion except for enjoyment, but the enjoyment didn’t feel right, it felt sort of empty. Perhaps you could call it a sense of artificial enjoyment if there was such a thing that exists. The manga concentrated on a total of three characters: Natsumi, Asuma, and Yuunosuke. Natsumi is our main heroine, who is probably no different from any other heroine in the shojo industry today. The only features, I believe that are quite uncommon in other shojo heroines if the fact that Natsumi is probably is the only girl to have ever wished for something purely childish as to grow up and be that sexy lady she dreams to be. The main male protagonist is Asuma Yaneyama, who is known to be very close friends with Natsumi. Our next character is Morinomiya Yuunosuke the handsome doctor who is the creator of those life-changing nuts.

Art
The art of this manga is definitely not impressive, fantastic, enchanting, or OMFG THIS IS ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS! In fact, I found the quality of art to be somewhat amateur compared to the many other types of anime/manga art in the entertainment industry of Japan. I felt as if the characters were too skinny and were a bit disproportionate compared to the usual shojo style, but I must say that I did find the art a bit interesting and such. Sometimes it’s okay to see something different for once, makes the whole story a bit of interest. I have come to understand that Otana Ni Nuts were one of Haruka Fukushima’s earlier works which only excites me more to see the other shojo manga she has written.

Overall
There were a few things that I thought of while reading this manga: If I had the chance to grow up 10 years into the future would I? Would the reasons differ from each person? Personally if I had the chance to be in adult for about eight hours than I would seize that chance, besides don’t we all need a little adventure in our lives? I would recommend Otana Ni Nuts to anyone who enjoy shojo and who question the chance of becoming an adult for one day.

Otona Ni Nuts story was about a girl wanting to become an adult because of a barber. The story was good enough. The art was great. But the character of the girl was kind of... Well, irritating. We do have a reason why at times we dream of becoming an adult but if those nuts are true why go so far?? She always cause trouble. If I was her childhood friend I might not take it. The only character I liked was the childhood friend. Because of his love he would ALWAYS stand by her side. Although I did enjoy it. Overall, It's fair enough.

I recommend this for those who like the patient type boy and kinda dumb girl who doesn't realize the feelings of others

Instant Teen: Just Add Nuts, was one of the first manga series I ever read. I loved it. Alot. I forgot about it for awhile though, so I just added it to my list recently. The story was very interesting, and I loved the characters. I can't quite explain alot about it, since I have forgotten abit of it 'cause I haven't read it for years, but I think it's definatly worth reading. Thanks for reading this review, I hope you read and enjoy this manga :D