I didn’t expect to like another “schoolgirl has crush, gets a makeover, learns about life” manga, but the twists in Cinderella Closet volume 1 by Wakana Yanai kept me interested enough to want to read another volume. “Country mouse” Haruka came to Tokyo for university. She had dreams of romance and popularity but finds herself working hard at a cafe and no time to be cute or do anything else but study. A random encounter with an attractive young woman, […]

With patience, sometimes we get what we wish for. I first encountered Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou in a pirated, scanlated online version back in 2009. I’d only been reading manga for a handful of years at that point, diving in as an escape from superheroes and maudlin autobio — it was give up comics, or find a new enthusiasm. Manga meant more genres, and books featuring young women, and more approaches to storytelling, such as this one. The series, a pastoral […]

In Hitsuzi Yamada’s The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again, Today volume 5, the cat Yukichi meets Saku’s parents! Which is kind of appropriate, as he’s the perfect boyfriend, except for the whole being-a-human-sized-cat thing. It’s New Year’s, and the parents have pulled out the guilt stops to get Saku to come visit, when all she wanted was a quiet holiday at home. That means plenty of favorite plot points, from a road trip to meeting former classmates to a shrine […]