Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san! Won Shogakukan Manga Award in 2021! And a highly anticipated movie adaptation also in 2022!

Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san (Teasing Master Takagi-san) is a light hearted manga series written and illustrated by Soichiro Yamamoto. The manga began serialization in Japan in 2013 and have become such a smash-hit that in November 2017, Yen Press announced an English release of this beloved manga series in North America. In 2021, Teasing Master Takagi-san won the 66th Shogakukan Manga Award in the shonen category, which focuses on young readers.

After 2 seasons of anime adaptation by Shin-Ei Animation, which started airing from 2018, a third season will soon premiere in January 2022. Not only that, fans of the manga will be on the edge of their seat, waiting for the movie premiere also in 2022.

The story began with a scene in a middle school classroom, where the female lead Takagi and the male lead Nishikata sat next to each other.

In the first few frames, readers will instantly be pulled in by Takagi’s mischievous smile and anxiously await as she makes the first move. Your heart starts to beat *doki doki* as Nishikata looked at his neighbor and tried not to be caught by surprise.

But Nishikata still fell for her trap as Takagi gave him a mysterious box with a cat suddenly jumped out to scare him.

After getting tricked the first time, Nishikata became more vigilant than ever.

He looked at Takagi and anticipated what her next trick could be. However, Takagi just asked to borrow Nishikata’s eraser as she forgot hers.

Nishikata lent Takagi his eraser and teased “Forgetting your eraser...... How clumsy!”. To that, Takagi just said “I guess” with a calm smile.

Takagi told Nishikata that there were people who believed that if you wrote the name of the person you like on your eraser and used it up, your love would become mutual. Takagi looked at Nishikata and smiled as if she knew he had written someone’s name on his eraser.

Nishikata got flustered and tried to get his eraser back......

......only to find out that she teased him again. There was nothing on Nishikata’s eraser.

Nishikata abruptly stood up and yelled “There’s nothing written there at all”. As Nishikata looked over to Takagi’s desk, he found out that Takagi did bring her eraser after all.

After getting scolded by the teacher, Nishikata sat down and started to plot his revenge while Takagi went to the bathroom. Here’s my chance! – Nishikata thought, he would write someone’s name on her eraser and make fun of Takagi when she came back.

However, he discovered that Takagi already wrote someone’s name on her eraser. Who could it be?

The first letter is “L”, so not his name. Nishikata was disappointed but he wouldn’t admit his felling. Finally, Nishikata could hardly hold back his curiosity and pulled the cover off to read what was written on the eraser......

It turned out that Takagi just wrote “Look at the hallway”, and secretly stood at the door to watch him the whole time. Yet again, he fell victim.

Takagi walked back to her seat and laughed at Nishikata’s remark that someday he will get back at her. She said it would be impossible for Nishikata to do that, as he just missed half of his big chance.

Wait! What big chance? And why half?

Takagi did write something on the other side of her eraser and Nishikata just missed the chance to find out what it was.

Reader gets a glimpse that it is something that starts with “Ni......”

The readers will slowly but surely fall in love with the manga’s delightful humor and the surprisingly sweet relationship between two main characters.

She would mercilessly play pranks on Nishikata, while the easy-to-blush Nishikata would try to come up with elaborate plan to get back at her and always end up failing spectacularly.

Here, Nishikata tried to make a funny face to get Takagi to laugh out loud in the middle of class. The strict teacher would surely scold her for this – or so he thought!

Takagi calmly flipped a mirror open and showed Nishikata his face to make him blurt out laughing. And the teacher yelled at him for disturbing the class. Takagi won again.

Nishikata tried not to look at Takagi out of fear that she would tease him more.

But, when Nishikata least expected......

......he couldn’t help but look over just to discover that Takagi has been waiting for him.

Unlike the usual playful demeanor, Takagi showed a softer expression and said “You finally look over here”. Nishikata heart beat loudly and his face turned bright red.

What could she mean? Is this the start of a love story? Will Nishikata ever get back at Takagi?