>99% of people who read SetoUtsumi after 2021 will be following Odd Taxi's writer Kazuya Konomoto into his limited catalog, hoping to find anything else that has any of the particular magic of that anime's screenplay. I'm happy to report that SetoUtsumi has it. You can read any one or two of the episodic chapters before volume 8 and immediately smell the same snappy dialogue (smart talk between dumb characters), a mishmashing of an eclectic cast, and the invisible undercurrent of a much heavier overarching plot than two bros chattin' with a clown after school.
The art is meh. I would say it's passable (6ish); more experienced manga fetishists would probably say it's worse than that. Like all comedy, the humor is hit or miss depending on the reader, although I think Konomoto's character dialogue and situational irony are usually interesting enough to deliver most of the punchlines even if it isn't 100% your jam. A lot of the secondary characters have depth that is more hinted at than explored, so there are only 2 truly interesting minds to get to know.
With those unimportant demerits out of the way, this whole manga reeks of Odd Taxi to me from start to finish. It's that same Rockman (Boston) sound. So much of what that show did well bleeds through here. Maybe the translation I read was just particularly skillful, but the fact that each episodic chapter found a way to slice home into something I identified with despite the language barrier and despite Konomoto presumably having very different life experience to me was rewarding and haunting. Konomoto's writing gets comped a lot to Tarantino, but to me, his writing feels different in ways that are personally important to me. Tarantino is probably the best at writing the punchy dialogue of cool characters. Konomoto is equally adept at writing the punchy dialogue of seriously uncool characters. I am still shocked by the gripping, heavy, funny and seriously lame nonsense that these characters get out on the routine every chapter, and I love it. The dumb-character/smart-writing trick that Konomoto pulls out of his sleeve every chapter is the best thing about his manga and his anime (because, to me, after reading this manga, Odd Taxi is now His show).
All that said, this is a dark/grey comedy slice of life manga. Target audience for that is probably very small. Please give this a chance anyway, especially if you loved Odd Taxi. Odd Taxi is a better product, but lofi anthropomorphic animal mystery comedy thriller also probably had a miniscule target audience and blew that out of the water. Everything that made OT special is as-good or almost-as-good in SU. It also validates that the best part of OT was the writing, and that the writing is real and real good. Konomoto's hype train needs to be max capacity going forward.
And if, God forbid, you're the <1% that didn't come here from OT, I can sell this manga a different way. Have you ever read a slice-of-life manga with a {built-up, closed, emotionally satisfying, thematically consistent, dumb-character/smart-writing, Capital 'G'} Great ending?
