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Well, this will be the first review that I've ever done that will not be handed in as homework and THAT really says something about this series.
Yotsuba&! is a slice of life manga and as you know the slice of life genre for anime or manga could simply not exist without comedy tacked on. I've watched many slice of life animes but Yotsuba&! is my first manga of the genre therefore I have no basis of comparison. But does it really matter? I caught up with this manga yesterday so I haven't really had time to wallow in cynicsm to pick holes in the manga because that's not what a review is about! I'm just review it because I absolutely enjoyed it, simple raw enjoyment. Unlike anime reviews though, where the reviewer has several points to pick on such as voice acting, art, animation and such. Manga, it's just the art and story.
It IS a slice of life, I swear! She's holding a water pistol T.T
This unique manga is a slice of life that REALLY feels like a slice of life. Again I have no basis of comparison accept for anime but for example Lucky Star and Azumanga Daioh you dip in and out of several characters lives but that doesn't happen in Yotsuba&!. The reader follows the life of Yotsuba, a five year old who is clueless, hyper and simply hilarious, in her new town. Each chapter records another day in Yotsuba's activity filled life so the reader really gets that sense of continuity which was great. The jokes are often centered around Yotsuba's youth and innocence, for example falling to sleep in a bed store or thinking that white cows make plain milk and brown cows make coffee milk, which I guess can turn some heads away, but that never once happened to me.
Other characters such as the neighbours, Yotsuba's dad and his friend's Jumbo and Yanda (<-- My favourite character!) play an important if not more important role than Yotsuba because it is mainly Yotsuba's reaction to all these different characters that makes this manga so heart-warmingly comical. All the characters have such wonderful, weird, unique and perhaps most essentially they all have a realistic personality and it is virtually impossible to not like any of them.
As for the art, I have read enough mangas to know that it was nothing special but it was perfect for a slice of life manga. In fact it's simplicity emphasises Yotsuba's youth, it also gave it a more light-hearted, easy-on-the-eyes feel which was in stark contrast to Minami-Ke, in my opinion.
I'd give this manga 10 out of 10 any day and I look forward to seeing it as an anime. Finally for a conclusion I'd like to leave a complaint to balance my overly biased review: Why are the volumes released so irregularly?!
Excuses for the recent lack of posts:
Okay, so as you know I study in the U.K. But what do I do when I'm not here? I go back home... To Thailand. Yup. That's right. I'm Thai. Right now though, I'm back in the U.K. and waiting for school to start. Unfortunately, the place I'm staying at the moment has a download limit due to some stupid contract with BT broadband and because I'm not the only one using the internet here, I have to be considerate and whatnot. So yup, that means no anime until I can get my hands on an unsecure network nearby or an internet cafe. It's sad to see the page views going down so rapidly but I don't blame you. This means Spice and Wolf posts will be done at a later date :(. Currently, I'm just trying my hand on some mangas. I'm more of an anime-man myself but recently I've been enjoying some pretty good mangas such as Yotsubato which has encouraged me to review it.
(P.S. That lazy dick, TK, is all talk and no walk... What a douche X.X)
