Hot Stuff

Ugh, I can't eat that kind of spicy stuff

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While I'm on this Topic

Yotsuba&! Volume 6 by Kiyohiko Azuma

Yen Press is finally releasing the loooong awaited sixth Yotsuba&! book along with new editions of the first five volumes, and with the seventh and eighth books coming soon. Yessss! Sounds like the English-speaking world might finally get caught-up with their fellow Japanese readers. Now to get someone to license Chi’s Sweet Home.

The Creepy Side of Cute

Yotsuba&! Volume 5
That's just f#$*&d up! It's been raining a lot lately, which isn't unusual in this part of the world. But the weather's starting to mess with my mood.

Old vs. New Azumanga Daioh

The original Azumanga Daioh yonkoma published by MediaWorks are on the left. The 10th Anniversary Edition versions published by Shogakukan are on the right. As the side-by-side comparison shows, the redrawing of these comic strips are very thorough. The stylistic changes are also pretty clear-cut.

Cover Design: Azumanga Daioh: Hoshuu-hen

あずまんが大王　1年生

So that's what the post-Yotsuba&! version of Azumanga Daioh looks like. The minimal design, resembling a high school textbook, eschews the more conventional style used in the MediaWorks covers. I wouldn't mind getting my hands on Shogakukan's 10th anniversary editions partly because they will most likely not be reproduced in English by Yen Press (here). But I'm also enough of a nerd to want to own at least one Japanese language version of a preferred manga.

Update: Here are the rest of the Shogakukan covers:

あずまんが大王　2年生

あずまんが大王　3年生

I See Dead People

That's my neighbor Mr. Horikoshi...

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Watching Kimura Sensei

You see, he is a normal person after all

Azumanga Daioh Desktop Wallpaper

Osaka Sparkles (大阪)

Darn pleased ta meet ya, ya'll! 

Yo, how you doin? 

  Azumanga Daioh Desktop Wallpaper

Miss Sakaki! (榊さん)

I will. I won't. I will. I won't. I will...

Azumanga Daioh Desktop Wallpaper

Ah Sakaki! (あ 榊)

Where can I go find a real cat?

Azumanga Daioh Desktop Wallpaper

Sukeban Chiyo Mihama (すけばん 美浜 ちよ)

That's Mihama-Senpai to you!

Azumanga Daioh Desktop Wallpaper

I Dream of Yotsuba&!

Yotsuba&! is a fiendishly cute manga by Kiyohiko Azuma, the one palatable moe artist. - Shaenon K. Garrity

The impression left from reading the comics blogs is that Yotsuba&! is the greatest domestic comedy this side of the Ocean, and who am I to argue with their collective wisdom? Actually I'm addicted to Yotsuba&! I go through withdrawal every time I finish reading a volume. Seriously, when's the next one coming out? I'm dying out here.

Anyway, I was thinking about the subject of moe and whether it can be connected to Yotsuba&! I suppose creator Kiyohiko Azuma could be accused of a certain regressive obsession with the juvenile and the cute. His previous work Azumanga Daioh focussed on the interactions of several adolescent girls, while in Yotsuba&! he goes back to early childhood. Both works tend to focus on the parts that people remember fondly when looking back on life. But there's a bittersweet quality to Azuma's nostalgia - a certain recognition of the passage of time and the ephemeral nature of youth. It doesn't undermine the serene lightness, but it gives the comedy just enough of an emotional edge that nicely deepens the overall effect.


There is something about the Yotsuba&! household that targets the seinen demographic: Mister Koiwai, A single, unattached, adult male, goes overseas and brings back a cute orphan girl. Notice the lack of romantic complications with another adult to come between them. But Yotsuba doesn't act like some cloying, sentimental image of a child, nor does she possess the usual cliches designed to appeal to some otaku fetish: She's not a robot, maid, magical girl, or an alien, as far as we know. She doesn't have any affectations or strange vulnerabilities calculated to evoke a protective response outside of her age and innocence. Her unexplained background, odball behavior, ignorance of certain aspects of Japanese culture, as well as her dad's laid-back parenting style do imply there's more to her than Koiwai is letting on. But otherwise the two behave a lot like any single father and adoptive daughter would behave given the circumstances.


Kiyohiko Azuma's cartooning style is slick enough to appeal to the general audience, but clean and simple enough not to appear too saccharine. He cleverly modulates his characters' renditions based on their age: Yotsuba's cartoonish appearance perfectly reflects her hyperactive personality, while the grown-ups are drawn with greater realism. Yotsuba's neighbors the Ayase sisters fall somewhere in between. In comparison, the girls in Barasui's similarly-styled comedy Strawberry Marshmallow come across as all too precious. And even that's pretty restrained next to the fan-service heavy male/female "sibling" relationship in Chokotto's Sister. The moe mind-set means going deep into very creepy territory in order to scratch that itch.



But Yotsuba inhabits a perfectly mundane world capably rendered by Azuma (or his assistants?). There's not much in it that most adults would find interesting. But when filtered through Yotsuba's largely uninformed point of view...


Awww...now ain't she the cutest?