Kanata Konami

What a beautiful combination of humorous and heartwarming this comic is!

Sue, a seventeen year old house cat, is enjoying the relaxation of her ‘senior-citizen’ days. Her plans are thrown for a toss when her owner brings home a mischievous new kitten named Tai-chan. Poor Sue! From being allowed to sleep to being awakened all hours of the day, from getting to eat her meals in peace to being pestered about foods, Sue’s life goes haywire. Do you think Sue will enjoy being a show more ‘cat-sitter’ to little Tai?

Konami Kanata is known for her cat manga ‘Chi's Sweet Home’. This book showed me how adorable her works can be. Tai-chan is drawn in such a cute kawaii style that you will feel tempted to pull his cheeks in every panel. Sue is the perfect antithesis, what with her frustrated looks and overdrawn sighs.

The whole book isn’t exactly one story but a series of mini misadventures the two cats get into, mainly because of Tai-chan’s naughtiness. Not surprisingly for a cat story, the book is peppered with a variety of mews and meows and mrows, the translation of each being written next to the sound. This added so much more fun to the proceedings.

The book is just volume 1, so there is a slightly incomplete ending to the issue, but nothing like a cliff-hanger. I can’t wait to get my hands on the next issue!

Cat lovers, you can’t miss out on this one!

5 purry meows for this gem!

My thanks to Kodansha and NetGalley for the ARC of “Sue & Tai-chan 1”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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Chi's Sweet Home 01 by Kanata Konami is about a little kitten and the family who adopts her when she is separated from her mother and siblings. I read the book because we recently took in a stray kitten and I was looking for something different to read.

I normally shy away from stories told from the point of view of an animal because most authors can't pull it off. Konami is a rare exception. This mangaka gets cats both in terms of personality and in body language.

Although the artwork is show more amazingly cute it's also spot on. Anyone who has cared for a tiny kitten and watched it grow into cathood will recognize Chi's unstoppable enthusiasm.

The book isn't entirely about Chi, though. It's also about the human family who takes her in — a young couple and their potty training toddler. It's the toddler's misspeaking of the Japanese for pee that ends up giving the kitten her name. Just as Harriet ended being the one who instinctively knew how to pan train Tortuga, so does this toddler.

To add drama to the series, Chi is taken in by a family who isn't allowed to have cats. Of course there's rumor of a giant black cat also living in the building. But they are still wary of having Chi in their home. At one point, when Chi discovers the front window, they try to disguise her by filling the window sill with cute stuffed animals!

I recommend this series to anyone who has cats. My entire family: daughter, son, husband and I are all laughing our way through the manga series. show less

Chi, a young kitten, and her family and friends are back in a second volume, this time with new "adventures" like a frog getting in the house, Chi wandering too far in the neighborhood and getting lost, and Chi becoming ill from some bad meat.

As with the previous volume, the family only hears meowing from Chi, but we get to hear what those translated thoughts mean. These are often humorous as Chi has far more energy than she has knowledge. She is an adorable character that readers who love show more or have cats will especially enjoy seeing in print.

Once again, the family appears Caucasian via the illustrations even though they have Japanese names; they also seem to have a rather traditional patriarchy set up where Daddy works on business and Mommy does housework. It's not the worst thing in the world, but I do like to see when children's books especially are more up to date than that. Otherwise, this is a great read! show less

This one deserved all the stars. It made me cry... twice. Sad, happy, sad, happy... man what a rollercoaster! Chi finally meets his kitten family, his two siblings and his mom. It takes him a while to figure it out but when he does he's torn between his human family and the cat family. What will he choose? As usual, the cats were all adorable and really great ending... (chariots of fire was playing in my head!).