竹宮惠子作品集 サンルームにて

Highly recommended collection of 1970 manga shorts

This is a tough one to rate and review. This short story collection consists of 6 of 武宮恵子's early works:

• GO! STOP! 物語: a romantic comedy where two young heirs of a company compete over the hand of a young lady. This takes up the majority of the page count of the book at 50% of the pages.
• サンルームにて: the tragic story of the friendship and romance between two young men (notable for being, as of this writing, the earliest known kiss depicted between two young men in manga).
• タムタム＆ベベ: a girl and a boy go on a date (very short; only a few pages)
• 雪の日に...: a young man despairs at the illness of his friend; has elements of a fairy tale mixed in.
• おヤエさん: a woman is hired to care for a bratty young man (also short).
• ヒップに乾杯！: a story told almost entirely without text about a young man who saves a girl from being hit in the street by a car; sci-fi.

I enjoyed all of these; these were all originally published in 1970 or 1971, and both the art style and content of the stories heavily reflects that. サンルームにて and 雪の日に... were perhaps my favorites; サンルームにて in particular I would recommend reading for its historical value. In every story the character art is humongously expressive and detailed, with some lovely backgrounds as well. Honestly, a learner might get some joy out of just looking at the pictures, even if they're not 100% following the story. Those who do follow the stories will find a diverse array of themes and and setups; they were never boring, and if you don't care for one, you can rest assured the next will be entirely different.

The difficulty for these is a bit tough to judge; the language used is older, but not so old as to be pre-WWII, so while some grammar and vocabulary may be dated, you're not looking at any ゐ's or anything like that. If you can get past older styles of speech, then you'll find a pretty typical, everyday selection of vocabulary.