ガールズドーン! 1

They say you can't judge a book by its cover, but the cover of Girl's Dawn gives you a pretty accurate idea of what it's about. This is a 4koma gag manga with the typical straight man/wacky one dynamic and the surreal humor reminds me a lot of Kill me Baby (and the boxing club president even looks like Unused Character from that series who was also a boxer). I found this because I enjoye Yamamoto Ahiru's prior collection of semi-autobiographical 4komas and wanted to see what else he had, and his penchant for weird humor is still strong here. The humor in this series has fewer puns/wordplay than his real-life gag series but it can still be a bit tricky. Each chapter is fairly short and while the strips within a chapter all revolve around a central theme, that theme changes pretty quickly, which can also make it hard to get into a "flow" since the stories start and stop so quickly. On the other hand though, the shortness of each chapter makes this a good in-between book to slip a few chapters of between other books, or even during a quick break in your day.

That said, the effort to engage with this is worth it and there's a lot to like. Something I really enjoyed was that usually in the normal one/weird one dynamic, the normal one is kind of grumpy and to an extent hostile to the wacky one, but this has a bit more of a laid back vibe. Ai, the straight man, isn't really grumpy so much as she's reserved and quietly resigned to her strange companion's antics, but you can tell she generally doesn't mind too much and tends to be more worried if anything, though of course there are bits where Hitomi goes to far with her hijinks and Ai has to clap back a bit. I like though that they actually have solid moments of friendship between them here and there, and that Hitomi gets chances to show she can be clever and even good at certain things, like in a strip where she livens up Ai's family meal since they're a bit too poor to afford fancy ingredients. The last few strips in the volume are also very sweet. The weird teachers are also a lot of fun and I found myself wanting to see them more often. I think Yamamoto's artwork has also evolved since the 実録4コマ series, the character designs are clean and expressive and the huge ears are honestly just really funny. There's some really good perspective work and even areas where the art style shifts a bit that lets Yamamoto show his range and that's a lot of fun.

Language-wise I'd say it's generally on par with the other level 24 stuff I've attempted, which is to say I got most of what was going on but there were some strained times where it felt just a bit higher than my level. There's not as much wordplay, but occasionally a cultural thing or set phrase will trip me up. One panel revolves around ancient style kanji but I still got the broader joke of the overall strip. Generally it's not bad though, and there was one bit involving a character getting coal for Christmas where a side note had to explain that's something that Westerners do, which kind of felt like some bizarro world reverse translator's note which was kinda fun.

Also this is probably the first time in recorded history where the author's notes at the end of a volume are written in type and not handwriting. I can finally read what the author thinks about things! Hooray!