Hobbies are meant to be fun. That’s the mindset I try to keep with my handful of hobbies, but sometimes it feels like I need to force myself to take them seriously because just enjoying something doesn’t feel productive enough. Reading manga is by far my biggest hobby and I take it much more seriously than I need to with a reading calendar to make sure I’m not slacking and now a series of blog posts where I spend hours combing through a series to find what makes it tick. Constantly keeping yourself at a 10 is a great way to burn out and kill your motivation to ever come back, so sometimes it’s nice to bring yourself down to a 2.
Fushigi Neko no Kyuu-chan by Sasami Nitori is a very simple yet fulfilling series that is easy to read, visually appealing, and almost entirely devoid of conflict. It’s a good “fluff” series that exists for the sole purpose of making the reader smile. The series has a very simple premise of a man named Hinata raising a cat named Kyuu-chan who has a certain degree of human sentience but is still a cat. There are no grand adventures, heart-wrenching dramatic moments, or hyper-detailed action scenes; There is a man, there is a cat, and the two of them enjoy the little comforts of life together.
Hinata works an office job and is on good terms with his coworkers. He has his likes and dislikes, but the inner workings of his mind are never explored because he’s just a regular person going through his life like the rest of us. Hinata’s one defining character trait is his love for Kyuu-chan. He embodies every person on the planet who loves their pet by constantly thinking about how cute they are, contemplating buying them things just to spoil them, and jumping at the opportunity to show them off. These are easy traits to relate to or understand at the very least since Kyuu-chan is indeed cute enough to warrant that kind of mindset.
Kyuu-chan is a little off-putting at first due to being slightly more than just a cat. He has a bowtie, can stand on his hind legs, and has no reserves when it comes to letting his intentions and desires be known. His emotional level is somewhere between a cat and a human where reacts to more than just a cat would but still reacts to those things as a cat. Kyuu-chan is also notably a very social, generally accepting character who does not feel ill will towards many people save for a few who treat him as just another animal.
There are many side characters in Fushigi Neko no Kyuu-chan, but none of them are particularly noteworthy. Each one is a member of the community or their social circle whose character extends as far as their label: The bakery employee, the coworker who loves his dog, the doorman, and so on. These characters exist solely to interact with Hinata and Kyuu-chan in whatever way will accent their trait the best. Think of it similarly to episodes of Sesame Street where Elmo spends time with a postal worker or a firefighter and engages in light banter while learning about their job.
While the content of Fushigi Neko no Kyuu-chan is extremely easy to digest just through the nature of not being serious, there are two especially important facts to note about the series: Each chapter is one page long, and there is a new chapter released every day barring any hiatuses. One-page chapters are by far the best publication method for this series and no commitment to complicated storylines makes this both easy to pick up and come back to should the reader lapse for a while. This is a very rare kind of series where the reader dictates the pace. It’s fine if a few chapters are missed or the reader decides to catch up another time. Kyuu-chan will still be doing his thing, ready to give people that sense of warmth that might be just the thing they need to pick their days up.
Fushigi Neko no Kyuu-chan is a reminder to stop and breathe. Not everything is a race, and acting as such will hurt you in some way sooner or later. We’re all out here on our respective grinds, but we’re more than that. Stop, breathe, take a moment to appreciate what’s important to you, and do your thing with renewed vigor. Fushigi Neko no Kyuu-chan does not have an official English release, but we stan most fan translators. Although it may seem like a simple web comic, there are physical releases of this series available as well as a wide variety of merch on Amazon Japan.
No comments:
Post a Comment