Just Listen to the Song (Japanese: フツーに聞いてくれ, Hepburn: Futsū ni Kiitekure, "Listen to Me Normally") is a Japanese one-shotweb manga written by Tatsuki Fujimoto and illustrated by Oto Toda. It was released on the Shōnen Jump+ website in July 2022.
Plot
A student uploads a song to YouTube as a confession of his crush on a girl within his class but when he returns to school the next day, he is rejected with a simple "Sorry" after she had shared the song with their classmates over Line. The student is tempted to delete the video after people start spotting a ghost within the video but is encouraged not to as it would anger the spirits by a different student.
The video goes viral internationally as people begin to spot more and more anomalies within the video as well as hidden meanings when the song is translated into a multitude of languages and reversed.
Due to the fame of the initial clip, the student releases a second video as encouraged by his mother who is being requested by the people at her work for a part two but it fails to replicate the first video's fame
The student then deletes both videos but is met by his crush who tells him that people already downloaded the videos and it was pointless and brings up how both songs were inspired by the time he sketched her in art class in middle school. The one-shot ends with them both listening to the songs together.
Viz Media and Manga Plus published the one-shot in English simultaneously with its Japanese release.[4][5]
Reception
Brian Salvatore from Multiversity Comics praised the story despite the manga's short length, especially for how it left several parts to interpretation; Salvatore also praised Toda's artwork. However, Salvatore felt that the manga tells the reader what to think at times.[1] Kazushi Shimada from Real Sound [ja] praised the story's message about looking for the deeper meaning in art and Toda's artwork. Shimada also liked that the story was left vague and open to interpretation at points.[6]
