Moyasimon manga vols. 1 and 2
Sep. 22nd, 2010 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yomikomaHaving enjoyed the Moyashimon anime, I was excited to finally get to read the manga it was based on. It was as good as expected, with some surprises!
Moyasimon (for some reason it's being sold under the Nihon-shiki romanization instead of Hepburn, which would be Moyashimon) is the story of Tadayasu Sawaki, a boy from a mold-brewing family who has just started at an unnamed Tokyo-area agricultural university. For no explained reason, he has the ability to see microbes with the naked eye, which look like small cute creatures to him (and to the reader). However, this ability is only occasionally the main point of a chapter. The primary plot driver is the interactions between Tadayasu and his classmates, who are an interesting ensemble of fellow students (including a grad student) and a fermentation-obsessed professor. Happily, there's a good gender balance and the comic easily passes the Bechdel test. It's mostly a college-based comedy with occasional breaks for relationships or microbiology. (And can I say, as much as I enjoy some high-school manga, it's nice that there are college ones out there too, about adults.)
It was interesting to see what pieces didn't get adapted into the anime, including a page about hemp cultivation and an entire chapter about lactic acid bacteria. One chapter is just the microbes discussing human-germ relations. And yes, they're still funny!
The female characters are cute, but more important to me they're competent. These characters are skilled biologists or at least biologists-in-training, not "cute-but-stupid" stereotypes.
One last thing - I had no idea how much I loved fake previews. The preview for book 2 at the end of book 1 makes it look like the book suddenly becomes a tense horror-action-thriller. Naturally it does nothing of the sort. I'm guessing book 3 isn't actually about the characters suddenly gaining ridiculous amounts of weight either. Also - really funny margin notes!
(The author mentions in some of those margin notes that he's excited that the book is being released in the US. Ishikawa-sensei, if you find this review, at least one fan is eagerly awaiting the next volume!)
Moyasimon (for some reason it's being sold under the Nihon-shiki romanization instead of Hepburn, which would be Moyashimon) is the story of Tadayasu Sawaki, a boy from a mold-brewing family who has just started at an unnamed Tokyo-area agricultural university. For no explained reason, he has the ability to see microbes with the naked eye, which look like small cute creatures to him (and to the reader). However, this ability is only occasionally the main point of a chapter. The primary plot driver is the interactions between Tadayasu and his classmates, who are an interesting ensemble of fellow students (including a grad student) and a fermentation-obsessed professor. Happily, there's a good gender balance and the comic easily passes the Bechdel test. It's mostly a college-based comedy with occasional breaks for relationships or microbiology. (And can I say, as much as I enjoy some high-school manga, it's nice that there are college ones out there too, about adults.)
It was interesting to see what pieces didn't get adapted into the anime, including a page about hemp cultivation and an entire chapter about lactic acid bacteria. One chapter is just the microbes discussing human-germ relations. And yes, they're still funny!
The female characters are cute, but more important to me they're competent. These characters are skilled biologists or at least biologists-in-training, not "cute-but-stupid" stereotypes.
One last thing - I had no idea how much I loved fake previews. The preview for book 2 at the end of book 1 makes it look like the book suddenly becomes a tense horror-action-thriller. Naturally it does nothing of the sort. I'm guessing book 3 isn't actually about the characters suddenly gaining ridiculous amounts of weight either. Also - really funny margin notes!
(The author mentions in some of those margin notes that he's excited that the book is being released in the US. Ishikawa-sensei, if you find this review, at least one fan is eagerly awaiting the next volume!)
