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Captivated, by You
Hayashi’s frank, guileless demeanor quietly draws the attention of classmates and strangers as he counts all the stairs in school, photographs street signs, and dries sweet potatoes on the classroom balcony. In a world shaped by conformity, Hayashi is refreshingly and unapologetically true to himself. Conversely, Nikaidou has worked very hard to perfect a gloomy, dour façade that keeps his classmates far, far away. While much of the school regards Nikaidou as a bad omen, one student catches a glimpse behind the mask and—undeterred by rumors of bad luck and supernatural powers—begins to pick away Nikaidou’s carefully crafted persona…
170 pages, Hardcover
First published August 10, 2019
14 people are currently reading
343 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 127 reviews
August 29, 2021
This may be one of the oddest manga I have ever read. The second half was better than the first, which had distinct overtones of Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto but was somehow less good.
December 28, 2021
The manga is so much better than the series adaptation!
Though accurate, it just do not have the right vibe.
Coming to the manga, the character presence is quite intense. I like it very much, thank you.
The story is quite weird. You do not know what ti expect. It's comedy yet dark.
And the worst part? It feels so incomplete 😭
Though accurate, it just do not have the right vibe.
Coming to the manga, the character presence is quite intense. I like it very much, thank you.
The story is quite weird. You do not know what ti expect. It's comedy yet dark.
And the worst part? It feels so incomplete 😭
February 17, 2022
The Souichi = Nikaidou made me laugh since Souichi is my favorite Ito character.
June 25, 2021
More reviews (and no fluff) on the blog http://surrealtalvi.wordpress.com/
Imagine if an author went to your high school and wrote little side stories about the more unusual and quirkier classmates - you'd get this book. More a slice of life and stream of consciousness type of storytelling, Captivated By You may sound like a cheesy romance but it instead a very non-judgemental look at what it means to be an unpopular high schooler in Japan.The book is broken down by separate stories that somewhat interconnect. In one, a student calls a classmate 'cute' in a dare and then has to deal with that classmate constantly asking if he meant it. In another, a girl reads a book and posts a review online. When she gets an unusual response, she ends up meeting up with that boy and they create a unique friendship. That boy is the same 'cute' one from the first chapter. In another chapter, a student is curious why the guy who sits behind him always looks so gloomy and has an aura of bad luck. When he meets up with a middle school friend, it turns out she knew gloomy boy and tells that he was super popular with the girls - until one left a used sanitary pad of hers in his locker and freaked him out. In another, a bullied kid is helped by the 'cute' guy and they form an odd friendship. Several stories in that theme continue.
The artwork is very adult shounen and definitely does not glamorize its subjects. If anything, it almost feels like a GANTZ and I expect something supernatural to jump out. Yes, it does feel primitive but it does suit the stories. This is not a romance and it isn't a kids action manga. It's a slice of life set of stories about unusual friendships.
This is definitely a book made for awards. That said, I did have a hard time reading. The stories were just a bit too odd and the common theme of friendships was stretched quite a bit as a result. This is a book full of characters you'd tend to avoid in real life - for very obvious reasons. And I can't say that the friendships they found as a result of trying to get to know another person better were all that enlightening or even interesting. If anything, it kind of dredges up all the ennui and minutiae of high school that we never remember because it was all so meaningless.
It is a thought provoking book. It's not glamorous or romantic and it is pretty darn odd. Like the stories, the artwork can be hard to get past and certainly is not going to endear you to the story any further. It's a book you read when you want to be challenged intellectually and enjoy stories that are unusual or nuanced. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.
September 11, 2021
2.5 ⭐
#weird #strange #whatsthemeaning?
#weird #strange #whatsthemeaning?
December 26, 2021
the funniest book ive read this year
December 13, 2023
I picked this up based on an ad I saw in the back of a volume of 'The Summer Hikaru Died', expecting it to be just some standard BL thing with nice art. But as it turns out, this is not BL at all. It's actually just a collection of one-shot comics to do with daily high school life, with its final half is dedicated to a series of loosely-connected one-offs about a guy who's so hot he has to nerf himself by acting like a freak so women don't obsessively fawn over him. Kind of feels like something akin to 'Haven't You Heard, I'm Sakamoto' with its specific blend of absurd humor played straight.
The art is really great, it feels like a blend of pixiv yaoi doujin and junji ito. Hope Wayama's other stuff also gets translated in the US.
The art is really great, it feels like a blend of pixiv yaoi doujin and junji ito. Hope Wayama's other stuff also gets translated in the US.
July 29, 2025
i read it cause i couldn't sleep and had a lot of time on my hands. it was a fun read, tbh but it would have been perfect if it was just about medaka and nikaidou. but the rest of the stories were short and kinda funny, so it was okay.
December 8, 2021
A solid 3.5 stars that I rounded down because I didn't really like the last chapter. This slice of life manga has a feeling of being a series of short stories, though they're all vaguely connected. I surprised myself by really liking this??
April 9, 2022
The art was beautiful. But it's been twenty-four hours and I'm still not sure what I read. A bizarre, but pleasant, slice of life.
Read
May 28, 2024Guess who’s stupid ass didn’t realize this was a short story anthology and not one linear story and was like “huh???? Bwuhhh????” The whole time
January 30, 2023
I watched the show maybe 2 years ago and I enjoyed it and the characters. I meant to buy this before but just never got the chance to it. There really isn’t any difference between the manga and the show, but I wanted to support the work that the show came from.
September 24, 2025
ho conosciuto questo titolo grazie ad un GDL e sono contenta di ciò. mi è piaciuta la storia e soprattutto i disegni, molte gag, molte risate. adorato davvero tanto, straconsiglio.
ps. le scene con nikaido le mie preferite 😂
ps. le scene con nikaido le mie preferite 😂
October 17, 2021
Damn. I really didn’t like this. It was boring to me, and a Junji Ito-esque art style for a slice-of-life manga just doesn’t work for me.
November 19, 2021
(3.5) a bit scattered but still fun
January 20, 2024
Quirky, inconsequential snippets of daily life.
Read
June 16, 202412am amazing manga 10/10 no notes
so funny and i love medaka so immensely 🫶
reread because i love this book but also for a reading challenge 🤌
so funny and i love medaka so immensely 🫶
reread because i love this book but also for a reading challenge 🤌
July 28, 2025
Captivated by You… 📕
Such an odd little manga. No BL and nothing queer, just a collection of short stories about odd friendships between boys. I’m really curious to see how this works as an anime….
Such an odd little manga. No BL and nothing queer, just a collection of short stories about odd friendships between boys. I’m really curious to see how this works as an anime….
April 19, 2022
Holymoly my heart, I never expected this to be so wholesome and funny! I love it so much, I'm gonna need a physical copy. Absolutely recommend this short read
September 9, 2025
big fan of slice of life mangas with eccentric characters…a HUUGE fan, even….
September 16, 2021
Plenty of laughs and great artwork.
July 13, 2022
This shit right here was funny as fuck my dudes. I literally laughed out fucking loud, not just once but at least 5 times my man’s. Some odd ball reading material right here but in the end it all made… no fucking sense at all but guess what I still enjoyed the adventure.
January 10, 2022
This bored me. It's a series of loosely connected short stories but I didn't fine any of them very interesting or meaningful.
October 7, 2022
i read the first 30 pges of this book nov 2021 in a public library in a state i was visiting. i was so immersed i was standing there for the whole time reading it. it was captivating 🫶
August 30, 2025
I wish the two main characters in here could've both been developed into full-length stories, but I absolutely enjoyed both.
What's funny is, I've seen this manga around for a while but always skipped past it because the cover was honestly pretty unappealing. When I realized it was the same mangaka as Let's Go Karaoke , which I loved, I grabbed it from the library to see if it was better than it looked. And now I've ordered a copy for myself.
Why did I say that was funny? Because the cover is accomplishing exactly what the character - starring in the second half of the book - intended.
In middle school, Nikaidou had been the "prince" of the school - handsome, easy-going, extremely popular, with crowds of girls always flocking around him. This turned into a curse after a while, with one girl even leaving a used pad in his locker, alongside all of his love notes.
That's...disturbing, and also couldn't have been a jealous boy doing it, because boys (at any age, honestly, but particularly in middle school) would never be able to bring themself to touch something like that. Certain parts of female anatomy remain terrifying to men.
Regardless, it freaked Nikaidou out, understandably. The unrelenting attention was already bad enough, especially since he was kind of a pushover who didn't know how to say no, but this incident was crossing the line in idol stalker territory. So he transferred out of that school and into a high school where no one knew him.
It wasn't enough though, because with his pretty face, the attention would've started up all over again. So he panicked, shaved off all his hair, tucked his blazer into his pants, and went to the entrance ceremony hoping this time would be different. After a surprise encounter with a sweaty, glowering, glasses-wearing guy who scared him to bits - even though the guy was nice enough and said sorry for startling him - Nikaidou found his inspiration.
For the next two years, he wore fake glasses, grew his hair back out and let it dangle over his face, and slouched around the school, staring at the ground, not speaking to anyone, and eventually creating a cursed persona where everyone was afraid to interact with him.
Until that same guy he'd run into during the entrance ceremony found out his secret and was intrigued enough to befriend him and make him smile.
Like Let's Go Karaoke, both of these storylines have very strong BL hints - at least the idea of a same-sex crush, or at least interest that crosses from friendship into something a little more significant, even if one or both of the characters don't really acknowledge it. After all, the title is "Captivated, by You," so that's the whole theme. Unexpected interest that blurs some boundaries.
I was a tiny bit disappointed by how the manga opened, because the anime (released alongside Let's Go Karaoke spent a bit more time on Hayashi and Ema. And I really, really liked that episode. That one, with Ema discovering that he truly finds his weird male classmate Hayashi "cute," definitely feels like a lot stronger attraction than with Nikaidou and Medaka (who's interested in a former female classmate, too).
It's still cute in the manga, but it felt a bit more substantial in the anime.
From there, we get various snapshots of other characters encountering Hayashi and being intrigued by his strange behavior and dedication to making the most of his youth, when you can do lots of pointless things without any of them having to mean anything at all.
I particularly liked the guy who - with a slight assist from Hayashi and a drink poured from a balcony - stood up to his school bully. I would've liked to see more of his storyline, too.
So while you shouldn't go into this expecting a complete start-to-finish story, it's a lovely set of slice-of-life snapshots of some really enjoyable characters. I'd definitely read anything else this mangaka writes in future. She has such a fun sense of humor and good grasp on quickly sketched, well-developed characterizations.
What's funny is, I've seen this manga around for a while but always skipped past it because the cover was honestly pretty unappealing. When I realized it was the same mangaka as Let's Go Karaoke , which I loved, I grabbed it from the library to see if it was better than it looked. And now I've ordered a copy for myself.
Why did I say that was funny? Because the cover is accomplishing exactly what the character - starring in the second half of the book - intended.
In middle school, Nikaidou had been the "prince" of the school - handsome, easy-going, extremely popular, with crowds of girls always flocking around him. This turned into a curse after a while, with one girl even leaving a used pad in his locker, alongside all of his love notes.
That's...disturbing, and also couldn't have been a jealous boy doing it, because boys (at any age, honestly, but particularly in middle school) would never be able to bring themself to touch something like that. Certain parts of female anatomy remain terrifying to men.
Regardless, it freaked Nikaidou out, understandably. The unrelenting attention was already bad enough, especially since he was kind of a pushover who didn't know how to say no, but this incident was crossing the line in idol stalker territory. So he transferred out of that school and into a high school where no one knew him.
It wasn't enough though, because with his pretty face, the attention would've started up all over again. So he panicked, shaved off all his hair, tucked his blazer into his pants, and went to the entrance ceremony hoping this time would be different. After a surprise encounter with a sweaty, glowering, glasses-wearing guy who scared him to bits - even though the guy was nice enough and said sorry for startling him - Nikaidou found his inspiration.
For the next two years, he wore fake glasses, grew his hair back out and let it dangle over his face, and slouched around the school, staring at the ground, not speaking to anyone, and eventually creating a cursed persona where everyone was afraid to interact with him.
Until that same guy he'd run into during the entrance ceremony found out his secret and was intrigued enough to befriend him and make him smile.
Like Let's Go Karaoke, both of these storylines have very strong BL hints - at least the idea of a same-sex crush, or at least interest that crosses from friendship into something a little more significant, even if one or both of the characters don't really acknowledge it. After all, the title is "Captivated, by You," so that's the whole theme. Unexpected interest that blurs some boundaries.
I was a tiny bit disappointed by how the manga opened, because the anime (released alongside Let's Go Karaoke spent a bit more time on Hayashi and Ema. And I really, really liked that episode. That one, with Ema discovering that he truly finds his weird male classmate Hayashi "cute," definitely feels like a lot stronger attraction than with Nikaidou and Medaka (who's interested in a former female classmate, too).
It's still cute in the manga, but it felt a bit more substantial in the anime.
From there, we get various snapshots of other characters encountering Hayashi and being intrigued by his strange behavior and dedication to making the most of his youth, when you can do lots of pointless things without any of them having to mean anything at all.
I particularly liked the guy who - with a slight assist from Hayashi and a drink poured from a balcony - stood up to his school bully. I would've liked to see more of his storyline, too.
So while you shouldn't go into this expecting a complete start-to-finish story, it's a lovely set of slice-of-life snapshots of some really enjoyable characters. I'd definitely read anything else this mangaka writes in future. She has such a fun sense of humor and good grasp on quickly sketched, well-developed characterizations.
February 19, 2023
I was rather...captivated (pun intended) by this book during my bookstore reading binge. It was the last book I read while the reading itch was winding down after finishing 2 other books and half of 2 others. I had the energy to read one more book, and man did it grip on tightly.
This is a series of short stories that happen within 2 schools, an all-boys school in the first half and then another co-ed school in the latter. The focus shifts between perspectives throughout, and some of the same characters would appear and we would learn a little more about that character from the perspective shift.
The art was overall beautiful throughout, but there was a noticeable medium change in the middle of the comic that was mildly distracting. The soft, bolder lines took away from the sharp, precise lines of the first stories. It somewhat evens out after that middle story, but that shift is lessened. Wayama has a similar art style to someone along the lines of Junji Ito (which it's referenced within one of the stories) and Inio Asano. The characters are drawn subtly and in a more realistic manner than the common image of what the mainstream expects out of anime/manga. You could believably believe that Wayama just wrote and drew stories about his old classmates and left it at that.
The stories themselves were very fun and funny, I was laughing to myself on more than one occasion. I loved to see the classmates' interactions and how they would behave in another story when a new perspective came around. There was also some of that light BL (boys love) implication within the stories, which added an air of sweetness, and for those that BL isn't their jam arguably all but one could be read as a deepening or developing friendship between guys. Which is also very much welcome.
I believe the only thing that keeps it from being a 5-star read is the fact that it's only one volume and we don't have the opportunity to see those relationships develop even further. But this was a great read and definitely worth adding to my library for further rereads.
This is a series of short stories that happen within 2 schools, an all-boys school in the first half and then another co-ed school in the latter. The focus shifts between perspectives throughout, and some of the same characters would appear and we would learn a little more about that character from the perspective shift.
The art was overall beautiful throughout, but there was a noticeable medium change in the middle of the comic that was mildly distracting. The soft, bolder lines took away from the sharp, precise lines of the first stories. It somewhat evens out after that middle story, but that shift is lessened. Wayama has a similar art style to someone along the lines of Junji Ito (which it's referenced within one of the stories) and Inio Asano. The characters are drawn subtly and in a more realistic manner than the common image of what the mainstream expects out of anime/manga. You could believably believe that Wayama just wrote and drew stories about his old classmates and left it at that.
The stories themselves were very fun and funny, I was laughing to myself on more than one occasion. I loved to see the classmates' interactions and how they would behave in another story when a new perspective came around. There was also some of that light BL (boys love) implication within the stories, which added an air of sweetness, and for those that BL isn't their jam arguably all but one could be read as a deepening or developing friendship between guys. Which is also very much welcome.
I believe the only thing that keeps it from being a 5-star read is the fact that it's only one volume and we don't have the opportunity to see those relationships develop even further. But this was a great read and definitely worth adding to my library for further rereads.
February 22, 2022
Captivated, by You is a manga collection of loosely-connected stories between two characters: Hayashi & Nikaidou, each getting three stories aimed at them. Hayashi is a guy who keeps to himself, but is known for his strange, random activities around campus. He would count the steps around the buildings, play shiri-tori, and dressing up in a panda suit while visiting a classmate. Despite his eccentricities, he brings a positive vibe to the people who interacts with him. In doing so, they feel more comfortable and often realize something about themselves while in his presence. Nikaidou, is much more different, he carries this creepy gloom vibe around him. Classmates start believing he is some kind of curse and do as much to avoid him. It takes one guy, who is paired up with him, to break through that exterior before realizing Nikaidou is not what he seemed. In fact, we get a weird friendship between the two in their stories, as Nikaidou begins to fail at keeping his creepy demeanor with Medaka.
I do not fully understand the context of what exactly this manga is meant as, given the other reviewers seem to indicate that it's more some artsy award than it is a standard manga read. Regardless, I enjoyed it its rather peaceful story telling, with a few splashes of humor here and there. Each story does seem like it build up to some kind of climax, but then it falls as easily as it begins, keeping with that lax tone. The art style, though, is a real treat as most of the styles seem to be influenced by how older manga art tended to be. A retro-sleek kind of look that was able to translate the character expression without becoming to overexaggerated. Obviously, this volume would not be for every manga fan out there, but I quite enjoyed reading the quirkiness in this. Looks like I'll being picking this one up again in the future, hopefully I'm more experienced in understanding what is behind these stories then.
I do not fully understand the context of what exactly this manga is meant as, given the other reviewers seem to indicate that it's more some artsy award than it is a standard manga read. Regardless, I enjoyed it its rather peaceful story telling, with a few splashes of humor here and there. Each story does seem like it build up to some kind of climax, but then it falls as easily as it begins, keeping with that lax tone. The art style, though, is a real treat as most of the styles seem to be influenced by how older manga art tended to be. A retro-sleek kind of look that was able to translate the character expression without becoming to overexaggerated. Obviously, this volume would not be for every manga fan out there, but I quite enjoyed reading the quirkiness in this. Looks like I'll being picking this one up again in the future, hopefully I'm more experienced in understanding what is behind these stories then.
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