It’s often said that love changes people in weird and wonderful ways, but what if your other half turned out to be a giant robot? That’s the core concept of My Girlfriend is the Ultimate Weapon by Tetsuya Tashiro, bringing together high school romance and robot action.

Given the outlandish premise, my main question heading into this new series for Jump SQ was whether or not there was anything deeper underneath. The elevator pitch was interesting enough to warrant the small fee of 660 yen, but repeat purchases require positive first impressions. While MEGAPHONE PARADE proved charming enough last week to earn continued loyalty, it pains me to say that this column has seen its first dud.

To a certain extent, My Girlfriend is the Ultimate Weapon does make some kind of attempt to weave a thematic framework around the idea of nerds and normies. Not only is main character Kakeru Inui a self-proclaimed “gamer otaku” full of self doubt when the beautiful Miori Totsuka confesses to him out of nowhere, the aliens that Miori must fight against are described as “jocks” who barely pay attention to pathetic Earthlings. The chad Martian versus the virgin homo sapien, if you will.

Despite all of the preconceptions that come baked into this dichotomy, the story makes no serious attempt to interrogate them. It could have been interesting if the very idea of a beautiful girl suddenly confessing to a normal guy was used to criticize the artificial divisions that exist between “normal” people and otherwise, but the main character’s profile is essentially only used for wish fulfillment. Miori even turns out to be Kakeru’s childhood friend before she was killed by an alien and reconstructed as a vessel for the eponymous ultimate weapon, only driving the tropes home that much further.

The point of this column is not to be overly negative, nor to try and sink the debut of a new series before it even has time to get out the gate. Even so, My Girlfriend is the Ultimate Weapon offers the perfect example of how NOT to begin a story in a serialized format. Putting aside my thematic criticisms for a second, the first chapter ends with Miori kissing Kakeru on the cheek and absolutely no indication as to where the plot will go from here. Is there some kind of overriding mystery to explore? It feels more like a one-shot than anything else.

Speaking of one-shots, this series actually began as just that back in Jump SQ RISE almost three years ago. I’ll hold my hands up here and say that I haven’t actually read this former iteration in full, but many elements appear to have changed from the preview in the meantime. Not only was Kakeru once called Kotori and Miori known as Habagiri, Habagiri was more of a traditional-looking girl with long hair and a big ribbon. That character design makes the fact that she can transform into a giant robot a lot more funny, in my opinion.

With all of this in mind, it should perhaps come as no surprise that this new series was almost entirely overshadowed by the end of The New Prince of Tennis in the same issue. Given that the author previously did the art for Akame ga Kill!, was it really unrealistic to expect more?

Chapter One Club is a weekly column that aims to spotlight the latest in new series and one-shots from across a wide variety of different demographics and publications.