不機嫌なモノノケ庵 1

This is a brief (spoiler-free) review of the whole series.

This manga became one of my favorite series! I love the cute and creative youkai designs and worldbuilding, the gradually unfolding mystery, and the growing friendship and trust between the main characters. Although early on the art is a little rough and there's a tired cliche or two used, the art grows to be quite pretty and the storytelling becomes smoother and more complex. Early on, the story is pretty light and seems like a cute youkai of the day story, but while it never goes outright dark, it does become more serious as the main storyline comes to the forefront, and there are a couple of surprisingly horrifying scenes near the end. The ending did seem a bit abrupt, but overall I was satisfied with the story and sad to leave all of the characters.

In terms of language learning: I started reading it when I was probably ~N3 and was mostly able to muddle through chapters with a dictionary, a little confusion, and occasionally checking the translation at that point. I learned a lot through reading it. Everything has furigana, and though the author occasionally throws in obscure kanji, the vocabulary is pretty usable and doesn't have much jargon or made-up words. There is some slang, but nothing that I found very difficult (things like ない>ねぇ that you have probably come across before).