Register Manga Sparks Backlash in Japan Over 36-Year-Old Man Falling for High School Girl

A new controversy has erupted in Japan after women on social media criticized a manga called Register by Fujimaru. The story follows a man in his 30s who visits his local supermarket and becomes captivated by the girl working at the register — only to discover that she is a high school student.

The situation has divided readers, but many users don’t see the story as just another romantic fantasy. For them, making a teenage girl the love interest of a 36-year-old man makes the premise uncomfortable, especially when the story appears to frame their relationship as a romance.

New Controversy in Japan Targets Register Manga

The story follows a 36-year-old freelance composer who has been unlucky in love.

Eight years earlier, his former girlfriend, who had promised to marry him, left him for someone else. The experience left him struggling with relationships and even made it difficult for him to compose love songs.

Everything changes when he meets a high school girl who works at a supermarket.

After their encounter, the protagonist gradually begins developing feelings for her.

However, angry posts about the manga began circulating on social media, quickly turning the series into a major controversy.

“They look exactly like a father and daughter. Is this seriously a romance manga? That’s disgusting.”

“When this manga first started running, its promotional tagline was something like, ‘Are middle-aged people not allowed to fall in love?’ So I assumed it was a romance between two middle-aged adults and decided to give it a read.

Then, in the first chapter, I discovered that the love interest was — surprise! — a high school student, and it was love at first sight, too (!). By the second chapter, we already had the usual clichés: a breast-touching scene in a changing room and shots of the girl getting changed.

In the end, it was just another ‘manga designed to feed middle-aged men’s fantasies and churn out a bunch of delusional guys.'”

There were plenty of other comments, but I’m not going to keep stuffing this article with all of them.

The Controversy Started With an Experience at a Convenience Store

Interestingly, the discussion didn’t start with the manga itself.

Before that, someone posted on X about an experience they allegedly had while working at a convenience store.

According to the post, an older man would show up roughly every three days and always buy the same products.

One day, an item he usually purchased was out of stock. The employee asked if he wanted her to check whether they had any in the back.

The man reportedly seemed extremely happy about the gesture.

From that day onward, according to the account, he started trying to chat with her more frequently, asking personal questions such as where she lived and how old she was.

The person who shared the story acknowledged that perhaps the man simply didn’t know how to start a conversation and was asking random questions. Even so, she admitted that his change in behavior made her uncomfortable.

That’s when another user connected the experience to the manga, arguing that stories like this could help normalize older men approaching young girls.

The comparison went viral, prompting more people to check out the series.

Some Reactions to the Controversy

• “Nobody needs to explain that this doesn’t happen in real life. Everyone already knows that, right?”
• “Just separate them by target audience and age rating. Make every manga you don’t like an R18 title. Problem solved.”
• “Then should the men in shoujo manga be treated the same way? Would they accept that?”
• “Isn’t the whole point of fiction that it depicts things that aren’t real?”
• “BL should be completely banned.”
• “Seriously, the cause-and-effect relationship is backwards. There are older men who want to date high school girls and, if possible, even marry them. Since some of these men are part of the manga readership and there’s demand for this kind of story, these manga keep getting released.”
• “But aren’t the perpetrators in BL stories often older men, too?”
• “I’d also like the BL genre to be completely abolished. Why? Because I find it disgusting.”
• “If you don’t watch it, it disappears from your field of vision. But you can’t stand the fact that it continues to exist… Life must be hard for you. It’s just a drawing.”

Fujimaru is known in the hentai scene for publishing several adult manga. However, as far as I know, the artist has only drawn wholesome romance manga, and this may be their first commercially published manga. I could be mistaken, though.