I have a strong love towards dark coming of age stories. The presence of titles like Punpun on this list makes this no secret. I will avoid detailing too many things about my own life, but I will say that my own lived experience does contribute to how much this and other stories resonate with me.
This story is a parody of Doraemon, an otherworldly creature comes to live with a random child and enhances their life with a plethora of bizarre fantastical gadgets. Naturally, the story does not go like this. I will keep this brief, as the manga is short and incredibly easy to spoil. But in essence, the story concerns the embodiment of vapid joy being confronted with deeply traumatised children, rather than the typical white-bread protagonists of that style of stories. I would like to say that while the series is quite dark, I would not call it exploitative or even that distant from the experience of the average child. Even if you personally have not experienced bullying, neglect, depression, abuse, you certainly know someone who has. Regardless of how distance your lived experiences are you still desire to help them in some sort of way. Even if you see that you cannot do anything. Even if you see the other persons life deteriorate faster by the day and your relationship slip through your fingers, you'll likely feel as if anything you do has no effect. This manga explores this exact thing. A creature who has never experienced strife is confronted with the suffering of everyday life. But it doesn't feel dejected by it's inability to help, it simply continues to hit its head against the wall in hopes of making a difference in the world. I think everyone wishes they had a Doraemon character like this to help them. In the end the best anyone can do is try to help your close ones, and be open to others. The worst mistake of my life was isolating myself from others when I needed people the most. And this story confronts the misanthropic ideas that were deeply rooted in me back then.