Tsuta Suzuki

Much better than the bore-fest of volume 1. I actually liked reading this. It was less of an animal encyclopedia (of course, animal facts abound) and focused more on the wacky design hijinks and characters. Next volume Ueda goes to Hell.

Much better than the bore-fest of volume 1. I actually liked reading this. It was less of an animal encyclopedia (of course, animal facts abound) and focused more on the wacky design hijinks and characters. Next volume Ueda goes to Hell.

There truly is a manga for every topic. In this quirky manga, God contracts a design team to create His animals. Cool! I think this story will appeal mainly to animal lovers. There are a few (animal) penis and poop jokes, so it’s a little childish and adult at the same time.

There’s not a lot going on here, but the animal facts and analysis are charming. Even though I’m an artist, and I’m all too familiar with tweaking designs to make them work, I found this story boring. I’m still show more waiting on volumes 2 and 3 from the library, so we’ll see if my opinion changes.

[rating from enjoyment] show less

One main story taking up two thirds of the volume, and two more shorter stories in the end. The main story concerns a man who falls ill and is then approached by a wolf man who informs him his family is cursed, but (since he's bored) he's been protecting them/fulfilling their wishes. The main character wants to be rid of the disease, so the wolf man lives with him, pulling out some of the disease each day while the main grumps about the fact the wolf man is always having sex with him while show more doing it. The other two stories include a romance between a friendly teacher and a quiet boy, and a gruff man who allows a homeless boy to live with him.

Rather than most of my other yaoi that were given to me, I actually picked this one out myself because of the clean, attractive art that looked a little different than the usual varieties of yaoi art (it reminds me of art I've seen in various series in ZERO SUM), and because it had a bit of a fantasy-ish plot and looked fairly upbeat.

Now that I've read the manga, I can't say I was wrong on any of those points, but I didn't actually enjoy this much. The fantasy elements aren't really any deeper than what you see in the plot description. It doesn't haven any hugely creepy rape scenes or what-the-hell-do-they-see-in-each-other pairings, but it is the sort of yaoi that doesn't seem to think it's characters need any more reason to fall in love with one another than spending a little time together. There are plenty of yaoi fans that don't mind that, so for them it's probably a fun romantic comedy, but such relationships to me are so unconvincing I can't manage to find it very fun or sexy.

What's a little strange is that while the actual plot and dialog go through the usual silly romantic comedy lecherous-seme/uke-that-likes-it-but-insists-he-doesn't motions, the inner monologues of the main character oftentimes treads into heavier waters, with the character sometimes mulling over his family's deaths, his desire to be self-sufficient, or his struggle with the fact he wants cured but dislikes the means by which it must be done. When I first heard these musings I was interested, as they seemed they could make a decent inner struggle alongside the romance, but after a while I began to notice that these musings were just that. Random musings, once in a while popping up, probably to make the story seem deeper than it really is, just before we move onto the next curse-removal-sex scene. After a while it became downright irritating that it continued to insist on bringing such things up.

If you're happy with the usual romantic comedies about laid back dirty-minded semes and ukes that constantly insist they don't like what they clearly do, I guess this is a solid offering, and it's got some art and fantasy elements to give it a little bit of distinction. But if you need actual romantic development rather than something where romance is just automatically assumed, I'd skip this one. show less