Reading Report: 18 December 2022
It's been another manga-a-day reading week, with a few double days mostly due to re-reading よつばと！ More below (partial spoilers for 夏へのトンネル and ダンダダン)
よつばと！ 4冊 While most of the reading was super smooth, there were definitely moments where I was unsure what Yotsuba was saying without kanji (which I totally see as a failing on my end). I was also reminded just how good the comedy writing is. The way Yotsuba slowly forgets how to pronounce 地球温暖化 over the course of several volumes, the way she's unaware of her own actions like when she smacks Jumbo in the face and then asks him if he has a stomach ache, the chapter where Yotsuba, Ena, and Miura all cause each other to scream when confronted with their fears (Yotsuba with the eyeball demon, Miura with a frog in her face, and Ena when her teddy bear is damaged). I loved Yotsuba saying that a 花屋さん is kind of pointless when 花火 exist. Lastly I don't know if I find it more funny or just endearing but Yotsuba going to get eggs for her dad and saying she also got こどもよう eggs and putting a tiny box of quail eggs on top of the bigger eggs just ends my life, my soul literally leaves my body thinking about it. Yotsuba is really good.
甘々と稲妻 1冊 An NtE server member mentioned this had a similar family structure to Yotsuba but with cooking and the girl growing older, two interesting spins on the formula. I was surprised to find that what I really liked in the story is the pathos. The writing is definitely still cute but each character has a seriousness to their writing that I didn't expect. The lack of a mother figure in the family is a serious hurdle the dad and daughter struggle with, and the older girl they befriend has her own family issues at home. The cooking sections are pretty good, and I like the way the character traits come into cooking as well, like the cooking girl character having a phobia of knives because of past trauma. My biggest problem is that the art is kind of messy and I find it hard to follow some panels with like half a dozen hand-written text sections over a messy background.
夏へのトンネル、さよなら出口 1冊 This was volume 2 of 夏へのトンネル. Since it's only 4 volumes long I plan to finish it before the end of the year. The story continues in the ways you'd sort of expect but very little to do with the tunnel has progressed. Hanashiro and the MC do some experiments and figure out where the time dilation starts and just how much time passes outside per second spent in the tunnel. Ultimately they calculate that one day spent in the tunnel would be the same as 6.5 years outside. More interestingly there is a chapter where the two go to hand some school notes to Kawasaki (the bully girl from vol 1) since she hasn't been coming to school. It starts raining just as they get there so the two come inside and spend some time with her and you find out a lot about her as a person. Hanashiro explains her side of things (kind of tactlessly) but it ends up changing Kawasaki's heart so much that the next day she comes to school being like "I want to be more like Hanashiro!" and sort of becoming friends with the main cast.
ダンダダン 3冊 I started this one as a sort of "manga trade" situation. A certain somebody gave Chainsaw Man another shot so in return I wanted to give a new series a chance at their request. Of course it's a great series. Almost every panel is super vibrant, expressive, and reads super well. The actual story is also pretty good. It's a bit of a shonen fightboy series at times, but the comedy writing is always really fun. The way certain "villain" characters will talk to the main characters and to each-other is genuinely funny. In Vol 3 one "villain" is referred to as a ギグワーカー and constantly told his pay is going to be cut if he doesn't just finish the job. Of course my favourite moment was a short pathos scene where you see why アクロバティックさらさら is the way she is, giving some reasoning for why she fought so hard to hold onto Aira when she had her.