#a coffee shop in the unwaking world
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So, at one time I was planning on making a bunch of posts about fan-translated manga, because a bunch of new series were showing up which looked promising. And then most of them turned out to be huge disappointments, or to get dropped by the translators, or to get cancelled by the authors. I’ve got some new titles, and I’m going to strike while the iron is hot. Please note that I make no guarantees that these titles will continue to be good, or even just continue.
Since this is going to be somewhat long, I’m putting the summaries below the fold.
レディローズは平民になりたい (Lady Rose wa Heimin ni Naritai / “Lady Rose Wants to Become a Commoner”) [ link ]
In the past few years, there’s a whole genre of Japanese pop culture which might be summed up as “main character got reincarnated into a game world”, usually referred to as “isekai”. Most of these titles are about RPG worlds, but there’s a thriving subgenre of reincarnation into interactive romance/dating games. The ones which are getting translated tend to be more entertaining/well-written than the typical RPG setups, and this is no exception — after a traumatic life, the main character got reincarnated as the main character of a romance game titled “Nation’s Savior Lady Rose”… but she hates controlling men and the obligations of aristocratic life, and wants nothing more than to escape the game’s plot entirely. She manages to engineer her own exile and demotion to commoner status, but the plot isn’t letting her off so easily. I can’t resist posting a couple of pages (follow panels right-to-left):
ぶっカフェ! (Buccafé! / “Buddha Cafe”) [ link ]
A cute comic about a girl at college who gets a job as a waitress at a restaurant. She is so clumsy and airheaded that she has been fired from 108 previous jobs — and a third of those businesses closed because of her mistakes. The new job is at a café run by three young Buddhist priests, with Buddhism as the theme. It’s a good but very strange comic, comedy and romance and cooking and factoids about Buddhism all rolled up. (The translation hasn’t updated in a while; the translator has an account here on Tumblr which says they’ve been very busy lately.)
同居人はひざ、時々、頭のうえ。(Doukyonin wa Hiza, Tokidoki, Atama no Ue. / “My Housemate is in My Lap, Sometimes, or On My Head”) [ link ]
This comic is about a young man who became a shut-in when his parents were killed in an accident, making a living as a serialized author. He comes across a stray cat and adopts it, and in the process of taking care of the cat he begins to reestablish connections to the world. The story is told in alternating chapters from his perspective, and from the cat’s perspective.
古見さんは、コミュ症です。(Komi-san wa, Comyushou desu / “Komi-san has a Communication Disorder”) [ link ]
This one is already pretty popular, so you may have seen it around Tumblr: from the outside, Komi Shouko (a pun on “communication disorder”) seems to be the ideal, if somewhat cold, high school girl. In reality, she is terrified to talk to people, and communicates almost exclusively by writing notes. The guy sitting next to her, Tadano Hitohito (a pun on “just some guy”), figures it out and undertakes to help her make friends with others… who are all, as it turns out, insane. Practically every character’s name is a pun describing who they are (or, in some cases, what real-world person they are a parody of) and roughly seven eighths of the characters are weirdos of some kind or another, which is hilarious.
川柳少女 (Senryuu Shoujo / “Senryuu Girl”) [ link ]
The reason I mentioned Komi-san wa Comyushou desu above, even though so many people already know about it (and thus don’t need an introduction) was so that I could describe this as “a positive version of Komi-san wa Comyushou desu”. The main character, Yukishiro Nanako, has no problem dealing with people — but she has trouble formulating her sentences unless she writes them as senryuu (think “casual haiku” and you won’t be too far off). She has a crush on a dimwitted-but-well-meaning former delinquent named Busujima Eiji, who has become a big fan of senryuu even if he isn’t any good at them. As usual, various other unusual characters appear, and wacky hijinks ensue.
さめない街の喫茶店 (Samenai Machi no Kissaten / “The Unwaking Town’s Coffeeshop”) [ link ]
In a town named Lutetia (nothing to do with the real-world Lutetia, which was an ancient name for what eventually became Paris) a woman named Suzume finds herself stranded, and works at a coffee shop. The city has a dreamlike quality — one of the shop’s customers is a giant cat, and there are witches living in the city — and Suzume thinks she’s just dreaming it all… Despite the odd setting, this is actually a quiet slice-of-life comic crossed with a cooking manga — most of the stories conclude with a recipe of some sort (or at least most of one — you’ll probably need to do some research online to fill in the blanks). It’s a very cozy story, even if there are ominous overtones now and again.
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