Yotsuba&! vol. 1 by Kiyohiko Azuma
by William the Bloody
Yotsuba, a young girl, and her dad are moving. This is the first time she'll be living in any kind of town or anything, and she's never seen so many houses, or people, and she's very excited. Excited and confused. She doesn't really know about things like neighbours, doorbells, air conditioning, or too much about manners. She's an excited and curious little kid, and unconcerned when it comes to wandering off on her own. In her wanders, she inadvertently meets her new neighbors, and becomes friends with them, even if they think she's more than a little weird.
The Good: This is the first work by Azuma that I have ever read, and it was pretty darn good. The art is clean and has a nice manga style. Azuma is very much at home drawing cute little Yotsuba as well as the older teenaged and adult characters. And yeah, Yotsuba is cute as a button, not just in appearance, but also in personality. And while we're on the subject of personality, each character has their own uniqueness. which I love. The neighbour girls who befriend Yotsuba all display different traits, but a certain level of tolerance and patience for the ignorant yet impulsive Yotsuba. She may lack a certain amount of understanding, but you just have to feel affection for someone who can find genuine, innocent happiness in nearly everything, including a rainstorm and bugs.
The Bad: Yotsuba is very cute, but I don't really get why she is so clueless about so many things. The book gets around to mentioning that she's from "overseas," and that her dad is her adoptive father from Japan and that he brought her home with him, but I mean, they didn't have streets with houses, or schools, or stores, or proper manners where she's from? And where is that exactly? And how come she can speak perfect Japanese? And yet she knows Buddhist prayer. Huh. This stuff may be answered down the line a little, but the story doesn't really seem too concerned with pesky details like that, unless it's purposefully trying to get me to wonder, which it very well might.
All in all, I enjoyed the book, but was also mildly confused by it. It had some genuinely cute and funny parts such as "Boxer Man" and when her dad frightens her with a bullseye, which were both humourous and adorable as all get out. I have no idea how many volumes this series runs, and as of right now, if it's a ginormous 20+ volume run, I don't know if I could get that invested in it, but I do think I'll give volume 2 a go, just to see where it goes.
B+