Welcome to the latest edition of the Multiversity Manga Club! We at Multiversity Comics are huge fans of all kinds of comics, but our coverage admittedly skews toward American and European books. Nevertheless, manga, or Japanese comics, has a huge presence in the world of graphic story-telling, as anyone who has frequented a book store chain over the last decade can attest. I myself have only dabbled in the medium throughout the years, primarily through my love of “Dragon Ball Z.” With the hope of presenting a more concerted effort to highlight the fascinating world of manga, I’ll be selecting a specific work each month and inviting readers to join me in reading and examining the book.
One of the things I wanted to accomplish with this Manga Club is to help get as many people into the medium as possible. However, I feel like I’ve done a pretty poor job at that so far. While I’ve tried to highlight several different genres, I’ll admit the selection has primarily skewed toward shonen. For example, things my wife would never read. In fact, when it comes to manga, there’s only one book that she not only will read, but actively pesters me to read. So, for something completely different, I present to you “Chi’s Sweet Home.”
“Chi’s Sweet Home,” written and illustrated by Kanata Konami, is an adorable manga short starring the troublesome kitten Chi and her wholesome family the Yamadas. The manga was originally published in 5 to 6 page chapters within the Japanese seinen magazine “Weekly Morning” from 2004 to 2015 and published in collected editions by Vertical, Inc. in the U.S. Seinen, which translates to “youth,” is a genre of manga that actually tends to skew more to older readers and encompasses a wide range of style and subject matter. To sum “Chi” up in a sentence, think “Garfield,” if Garfield was saccharin sweet with a semi-serialized story. If you’re instantly turned off by the obvious cutesy factor, it’s not likely this one will win you over. However, if you’re the kind of person who has ever wasted an hour watching cat videos, this one is definitely for you. This month I’ll be reading and reviewing the first volume of the series, which contains chapters 1 through 20. I hope that you all will take a chance on this one and look forward to getting your reactions!
