Shinkaigyo no Anko-san, or "Anko-san, a Deep Sea Fish" is one of those chill, funny manga about girls enjoying their friendships in a slice-of-life format. However, almost all of them are half-fish! Playing on the 'monster girl' theme seen across many manga and anime, Anko-san is fairly generic in terms of being just another monster girl manga, however, plays slightly less into ecchi scenes (of course there still are multiple, mermaids on the beach were unavoidable) and more into the biology of each species of fish.
Indeed, as a new character is introduced, their personality is entirely based off of the characteristics of their fish component, fighting fish being boisterous and playful, sunfish being laid-back and 'bright'. The author goes somewhat into depth about the fish species during character introduction, and tries to make the characteristics shaping the character's personalities very clear. I found this quite enjoyable, as the biology was not difficult to understand and made a lot of sense, helping immensely with characterisation, and also taught me new things!
However, it wasn't needed so much as you could pretty much tell the character's personality instantly upon seeing them. This made the manga feel very generic and basic at times, not detracting from the enjoyment, but from the overall feel. Especially the main human girl who accompanies Anko, Wakasa, is your generic happy girl, which is fine, but makes the fun and basic manga a little more plain. (Not like soooo many other manga and anime have generic mc's either though)
The art in Anko-san was good, each mermaid's tail fin, their major distinguishing feature in this manga, was drawn with extreme detail, even contrasting a little with the detail of the rest of the manga (this was not a bad thing).
Overall, Anko-san was a very enjoyable manga that played on the monster girl slice of life theme, with mermaids on land this time, and had nice art, characters and most importantly amusing scenes. It's definitely worth a try, only being 27 relatively short chapters long. Enjoy!
