Dec 31, 2023
What if Nekojiru wrote a children’s book? This manga is the answer to that question. For those who are unfamiliar with Nekojiru, you will be surprisingly welcomed with the following: scorn, satire, violence, cute characters, crude drawings and cruel personalities. If, however, you are already a fan of Nekojiru, you will come across an unusually wholesome storytelling that overlaps with her straightforward humour.
The first half of the volume depicts separate stories that parody well-known traditional tales, where the protagonists are excessively cruel or exceptionally idiotic, often contrasting with secondary characters and antagonists that are only slightly smarter.
For the second half of the work, the
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stories revolve around two characters that differ from the typical dynamic found on the rest of Nekojiru’s works, where a leading, older character has a silly idea that is supported by a little version of themselves. In this case, however, the reader is presented with an antithetical pair of protagonists, a white cat and a black cat, making the black cat a particularly rare instance of a gentle character in Nekojiru’s works that is not ultimately stroke down with a gruesome finish. On the contrary, the stories, while retaining most of the author’s recurrent motives and wit, let the heroes grow and the events connect with each other, as well as putting to test the reader through the actions and testimonies of the secondary characters. Notable examples are the bear and the businessman, reflecting Nekojiru’s esteem for intelligent beings of any sort. In the end, the protagonists are simply looking for new experiences in a rather hostile and decidedly cruel world, while slightly pursuing a remote objective (finding their mother), often missing better opportunities due to their intrinsic incredulity.
The manga closes with the author’s husband reflecting on her wife’s suicide, which sheds a dim light on an already scarce subject that deserves a whole separate discussion. I will not stop to discuss her motives in this review, but if you are interested in Nekojiru’s attitude towards reality and her rationale, you will mostly likely find this postface of relevance.
All in all, this manga essentially consists of a parody of fairy tales ingrained in Nekojiru’s humour, her realistic approach to characterisation and her cruelty in outcomes. To put it in a phrase, I would consider this work as an enriching experience to unsuspecting readers and Nekojiru fans alike, a successful challenge to literature targeting children.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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