Review: Kingyo Used Books Volume 1

"Why would there be manga at a goldfish store?" - one of the unique characters. (Kingyo = Goldfish) So yeah. A used bookstore that only sells manga and magazines that are solely for manga. What story is there to be told about that you say? A lot.

So, I hope by now you know that uhm... I... you.... me and you... I know we have a lot in common so uhm... if you want to maybe... 

Send me some used manga? (●´∀｀●) 

My collection consists of mostly used manga. So I know why there would be a used manga bookstore in Japan. I would like one established here myself, maybe with the help of all the manga publishers out there, they could join in and send their overstocks or shelf worn manga for a lower price. Anyway, that's the premise of this title.

Exactly.

Kingyo Used Books Volume 1: (by Seimu Yoshizaki) A slice-of-life story about a book store solely selling used manga. They buy and sell used manga, no matter what title, no matter what issue of a magazine, they have it all (almost everything.) The story is an episodic one where every person is tied to this used bookstore. You have:

1. a salaryman who doesn't know what he wants to be and he doesn't have a direction in life;
2. an artist who can't stop drawing but is stuck at trying to top a genius;
3. an archer who's stage fright kills his performance;
4. a foreign detective that was solely inspired by a detective manga;
5. a man who was tired of manga found his home in French comics;
6. a bored housewife searching for something more to her life;
7. and lastly, a sedori (a person who buys used books and sells them at a different store at a higher price) who sells her manga with pride.

What do they have in common? Manga. Manga is the Sun and these characters revolve around it. They can't progress as characters (more like, they can't sustain life if we're still talking about the analogy) without manga being a part of their lives.

Art: Quirky but anatomically correct. It's a mix between shounen and shoujo. The art may look a little funny but it looks like it borrowed some features from a shoujo manga (this is an example from my collection: Platinum Garden.) The big head, tall guy and big hands reminds me of the mentioned manga. The details drawn in the covers of the books, this is definitely drawn well and I bet the mangaka took her time drawing this series. I love the art!

Look at the detail!

Panel Pacing: Good! It has the standard box panels and it felt like I was reading a "real" manga (the golden age of manga, where almost everything was drawn within a panel like comics). The use of free flowing panels are in moderation which is like a checkpoint after looking at a lot of box panels. If I was reading this title in a magazine format, then I would say that it's not efficient and but since it's in a tankobon format, I'll forget about it.

Story: I love the episodic story telling. You can just pick this first volume up and not pick up the others because it's a stand alone title. What I mean by that is, you can have a lot of stories out of this volume and not want to crave for more because it satisfies the curious mind. I've been reading this for more than a week now because I was trying to conserve it. Each chapter is a different story, you don't need to read this within a single sitting because you can resume reading even after a week without worry about forgetting. Awesome right?

This title would be mostly likely to be picked up by adults. It tackles a lot of issues that adults have with their life and what manga has done with their lives.

Attention to detail.

Characters: A unique bunch of characters:

1. Store Manager - the average woman with a moderate amount of knowledge about manga
2. Manga Expert - a grown man but a total manga otaku who has a lot of quirks
3. Foreign Detective - a foreigner who fell in love with a manga title and was inspired by it's main char.

These characters are all between the age of 25-30 and they have grown so I think that there wouldn't be any development in this story. There are however, unique characters for each chapter that have grown due to the help of manga. To simplify, the memories related to manga made them see plain happiness (joy of life).

Bottomline: Read it. Once you read through the whole volume, you'll feel satisfied. You will not want more out of the volume because it's a compilation of short stories that tell the positive effects of manga. It's not about a character and his/her journey or conflict, it's about something that ties different characters together.

Do I need to cut back on my words? I would appreciate your comments about this post! Thanks!