Hitomi-chan Is Shy With Strangers (Japanese: 瞳ちゃんは人見知り, Hepburn: Hitomi-chan wa Hito Mishiri) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Chorisuke Natsumi. It has been serialized on Akita Shoten's online platform Manga Cross since September 2018.
One day while on his way to school, Yuu Usami meets a new transfer student named Hitomi Takano, who has an intimidating appearance. However, he later discovers she is actually shy. Yuu befriends Hitomi and over time, they start to develop feelings for each other.
Written and illustrated by Chorisuke Natsumi, Hitomi-chan Is Shy With Strangers debuted on Akita Shoten's online platform Manga Cross [ja] on September 20, 2018.[3] Akita Shoten has collected its chapters into individual tankōbon volumes. The first volume was released on May 20, 2019.[4]
In May 2021, Seven Seas Entertainment announced that they had licensed the series for English release in North America in both physical and digital format.[5] The first volume was released on October 5, 2021.[6]
In a review of the first volume, Caitlin Moore of Anime News Network called the series a "mediocre iteration of the [romantic comedy] genre." Moore compared the series art and humor to Azumanga Daioh, adding, however, that the characters are less appealing. Moore called the humor repetitive and criticized the "overreliance on fanservice", concluding: "I can only really see two particular subsets of manga fans getting into it: those who have never come across this subgenre before and thus don't know how unoriginal it is and those who love this subgenre and consume everything in it they find. If neither of those describe you, however, this one is better off skipped."[24]