Cranky authors, antisocial vet students, biker mechanics, and students in both college and high school - there's certainly variety here!
Creative Talent:
Writer/Artist: Deathco Cotorino
Translator: Melanie Schoen
Adaptation: Melanie Schoen
What They Say:
High school student Yuta bumps into a man outside the train station, injuring him. The man's name is Tsubaki Nishijima, occupation: novelist. In exchange for crippling his arm, Tsubaki demands Yuta work like a slave every day! Today's job is to take exact dictation of Tsubaki's words. Whaaat? What's with this perverted depiction of "Come"...!!! Isn't this sexual harassment?
What We Say:
Packaging:
Digital Manga Publishing lives up to their usual standards here, with a full color dustjacket, fairly sharp art reproduction, and their usual very good print quality, although the blacks aren't as dark as they could be in places and some pages look almost faded. The paper quality isn't the best - it's thin and somewhat yellow. This is good, but not Digital Manga Publishing's best.
Art:
Cotorino's art is bold, distinctive, and heavy on the cute. Her panel layouts are simple but effective, and backgrounds are minimal. She seems to really enjoy using negative space to set off her various characters. There's some nice variety in character design here as well, especially considering the number of characters.
Text/SFX:
All sound effects are translated on the page in a font that closely matches the original. The translation itself wasn't the greatest - there some rough spots, as well as a few points that were downright confusing. It's not the worst, but it certainly isn't the greatest, either.
Contents (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
When Yuuta ends up late to school one day, he accidentally knocks a man named Tsubaki down the stairs. Tsubaki ends up with some fairly serious injuries that are going to take months to heal, and leave him unable to work. As an author, his hands are pretty crucial for him, so he declares that Yuuta is his slave. Yuuta, out of guilt, agrees, but ends up having a difficult time of it. Not only is he not the most accomplished typist in the world, but having to type out love scenes is not exactly what he had in mind.
Tsubaki is a skilled novelist, but for all of his skill he led an extremely sheltered childhood and doesn't have much experience out in the real world. Yuuta is determined to show Tsubaki something fun, but what is there to bind them together once Tsubaki heals and is released from the hospital?
The other stories in the book are a mixed bag, ranging from fun to head-scratching. "To Keep a Cat" was probably my favorite of the bunch. When an antisocial vet student stumbles on an unconsious man, he can't seem to help taking him home and taking care of him. But he refuses Mutsuki's offer of payment with his body because of his unwillingness to become attached to another human. Somehow, though, the two are drawn to each other, and might just find what they need in the other person. The 4-koma strip that followed this story was one of my favorite parts of the book.
Comments:
From ex-motorcycle gang mechanics to chance encounters at a 24-hour convenience store, there's really a lot of variety in the stories here. With anthologies like this, the stories are short enough that there's not really much room for plot or character development, which is definitely the case here. And some of the stories are extremely short - one was only six pages long. In a way, though, the sheer variety here worked in the book's favor. Each story was so different from the rest that it remained fresh and unpredictable, despite the general lack of development. If you want a story with some depth and substance, this isn't going to be the book for you, but if you're in the mood for something light and fun, this isn't a bad choice.
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