Category: Comedy

Manga of the Month: Skull-faced Bookseller Honda-san

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Skull-faced Bookseller Honda-san by Honda

While the names and faces (heads? masks?) are changed to protect the innocent, Skull-faced Bookseller Honda-san is an autobiographic, day-in-the-life series about working in a Japanese bookstore chain that nails retail life in every hilarious moment.

“To those of you who commented, ‘Now I want to work at a bookstore!’–Thanks, and think again!”

Honda, our titular skull-faced bookseller, works in the American comics and manga sections of a large bookstore. She helps customers both Japanese and foreign, works with publishers and wholesalers to keep books in stock, and lends a hand to her fellow booksellers. The series is brimming with details of the bookstore industry, and depicts working in retail in a most wonderful-terrible-relatable way.

From enthusiastic BL fangirls to sales reps who won’t take no for an answer, from creating a book fair to the worst customer service training session, Honda’s honest and self-depreciating humor, attention to detail, and spot-on observations lead us through the charming chaos.

If you, like me, have ever worked in a bookstore or in retail in general, then you’ll probably feel Skull-faced Bookseller Honda-san deep in your heart. But even if you haven’t, the camaraderie between Honda and her coworkers, the disdain-pride you get from the job, and the love-hate relationship you have with customers is drawn with laugh-out-loud humor that will have you chuckling long after you put down a volume.

-Kate

Manga of the Month: Skip and Loafer

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Skip and Loafer by Misaki Takamatsu

Mitsumi has moved from a small town to Tokyo to live with her aunt and start a new chapter of her school life. She has grand ambitions of becoming a public servant (and mayor of her hometown someday)! Only come to find out, she is a bit less astute than one might imagine. She get hopelessly lost on the first day of school, pukes on a teacher after her opening ceremonies speech, but befriends a handsome slacker along the way and thus her new school life full of missteps begins.

I honestly picked up Skip and Loafer because the girl’s face on the cover made me laugh (and sums up the character perfectly btw). It just got better from there. The series balances the things you expect from a school comedy (navigating friendships, low-stakes misunderstandings, budding romance) with a willingness to show how flawed everyone is. Mitsumi has the classic can-do, nothings-gonna-get-me-down attitude of a shojo lead (despite running in a seinen magazine), but all her intelligence is in book smarts. In contrast, she lacks self-awareness, making for a protagonist who feels normal but not average. That robustness of character extends to every member of the cast and is what makes Skip and Loafer comedy gold while also being incredibly endearing.

It has been sometime since a school life story really captured me, but Takamatsu has given the genre a fresh twist with a heroine who is earnest and well-intentioned but also an overconfident blockhead.

-Kate