‘Kono Bijutsubu ni wa Mondai Ga Aru!’ is, in summary, about the daily misadventures of an idiosyncratic art club.
We have our male protagonist, Uchimaki Subaru who draws wonderfully but mainly of anime characters, most prominently moe girls. Our female protagonist, Usami Mizuki, joins the art club out of interest but with far less talent than Subaru in artistic talent. Then, completing our gang is the president of the club, whose name has not yet been said.
From the first chapter, not much of an impression can be drawn. We are merely introduced to the characters and are given sufficient information of how the club works (which is completely dysfunctional in a compellingly efficient way). Even for a first introduction, readers are entertained with each character’s quirky personality and the hijinks they commit.
Because only one translated chapter has been released, the characters should be relatively one-dimensional which is understandable. In this case, however, it’s not the case. Usami Mizuki makes a great protagonist and you can really feel her passion for art through her knowledge and imagination. She’s passionate without being overboard, as in not in the kind of characters which overdoes it to the extent of unbelievable. Uchimaki Subaru is a funny one, with enviable drawing skills yet ‘wastes’ them on drawing manga/anime characters all the time. He should be extremely relatable for us all anime/manga fans and should provide more interesting character development further on in the manga. Lastly, the club president, the laziest of the bunch, awards his members ‘points’ as a way of displaying his club leader activities. Not much can be deduced from him but the gag running for him is hilarious. It can, however, become tiresome if abused in the later future.
The art is clean and simple, yet does not pale in comparison to the drawings our characters produce. Nevertheless, one does have to hand props to the mangka for making the drawings the characters produce more explicit than the actual artwork/backdrop which is a great and effective way to us readers. I mean, how many of us have read mangas where they use whatever kind of club in existence simply as a plot device?
With only one chapter translated, ‘Kono Bijutsubu ni wa Mondai Ga Aru!’ has great potential to become an engaging manga about art and the kind of people who draw as well as the extra romance here and there. I just hope it doesn’t become as dull as ‘Tonari no Kashiwagi-san’ which is another manga about a web artist. It may be too soon to expect anything but ‘Kono Bijutsubu ni wa Mondai Ga Aru!’ is a delightful [one-chapter] read and anyone who does so will sure to feel bubbly and nostalgic inside.
-a review written for 'Reviews from the unreviewed'