Cowa!

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Cowa! is a cute little gag manga that deviates from much of Toriyama's normal style. Instead of the crude slapstick style comedy found through much of Toriyama's works, Cowa beautiful weaves in moral principals that promote charming moral principals. While the work is not necessarily mature, it is refined in the way it understands itself and the universe. The way the gags are woven into the plot helps to add to the charm of the story, and does a great job at establishing the main characters. Cowa doesn't over stay it's welcome, and it's quite short, but could use another volume to expand the universe ... a bit. It's a shame the character will likely never be explored again.

Well, it's something that your kids should like.

Story:
It starts off pretty simple, I wasn't expecting an overarching story, though I did get one near the end. I really did expect the sumo guy to marry paifu's mom, but that didn't happen.

Art:
Everything looks fine.

Character:
It's pretty basic stuff, paifu is reckless little kid who is a vampire, who has a friend who is kinda shy and not much beyond that. He also has a rival who isn't his friend but is his rival. No one goes beyond that. The wrestler guy is cool, I guess.
...
Enjoyment:
It wasn't a chore to get through but I wasn't tearing through it. It's fine, something to give a child who would likely be very happy with it.

Overall:
See enjoyment.

I was very surprised to find that Akira Toriyama did this series after Dragon Ball ended. I'm not saying it's bad, but it's something I would have expected earlier in his career. What we have here is a monster village living with humans. The monsters get sick and they have to team up with a human, who's referred to as a murderer every other page it seems like, to road trip across the country in search of medicine.

I really didn't like this.

What's a shame is that I could totally see myself liking this because Toriyama created a better version of this story early in ... his Dragon Ball run where the main characters were kids and the world was crazy fun. Here, it's just fart jokes and kid rivalries that get on your nerves. I didn't find the art to be interesting, the characters were obnoxious, the jokes weren't even that funny. I understand it's aimed at a younger demographic, but so was early Dragon Ball. What really got me though was that after a few chapters you could tell that Toriyama abandoned the whole slice of life aspect of the story and went full in on the fighting, which felt so... meh. Again, it was fine, but it wasn't needed.

I didn't expect much out of this and it disappointed me even then. It's not terrible, but I'd hardly recommend it to someone older than 8.

Story: 4/10
Art: 3/10
Character: 3/10
Enjoyment: 3/10
Overall: 3/10