スケッチブック is a comedic slice-of-life 4 panel comic series about the ordinary, everyday antics of the members of high school art club. Despite being popular enough in Japan to be serialized for 17 years and get turned into an anime (スケッチブック 〜full color's〜), this series is almost unknown in America, even after getting translated and released.
I picked up this series because I had hoped to find something similar in difficulty to よつばと, but this unfortunately did not turn out to be case.
The problem is the format itself, I suspect. Due to their strict space limitations 4 panel comics have only brief snippets of dialogue or exposition, and can't show much action — they literally only have four panels to tell a joke, after all. For a language learner this already presents a problem, because shortened sentences are full of contractions and slang, and they drop subjects, particles, and other parts of the sentence as well. In a way, short sentences are harder to analyze than long ones, because you can't analyze what isn't there.
On top of that, due to the format's brevity the jokes must necessarily depend heavily upon what the reader already knows and therefore does not need to be told — in other words, cultural context. A lot of the jokes in these comics are about everyday, ordinary things, some of which (cats, art supplies, masking tape) are familiar to a non-Japanese reader, but some of which (Japanese insects, Japanese music, Japanese wordplay) are not. And therein lies the problem, because if you have to spend 10 minutes Googling Japanese insects to "get" the joke, you're probably not going to laugh. For a language learner who is already struggling with vocabulary and grammar, grappling with cultural context on top of that to in order to get the joke is a bit too much to ask.
Another issue is that the online stores I checked (Bookwalker and Amazon) have low quality scans, making the furigana and handwritten parts very blurry and hard to make out. I would recommend getting a physical copy — except that the series appears to be out of print, so good luck finding it outside of Japan. All typeset kanji do have furigana, but handwritten words and character profiles do not.
Despite all of this, it's a great comic, and I really, really like it. The characters are quirky, the humor is relatable, and the vibes are ultra chill. No romance, no fanservice, no violence, and not even any serious conflict: just everyday people going through everyday life being rather silly, because life itself is rather silly, when you think about it. It's quite similar to あずまんが大王 (which is by the author of よつばと). So if you enjoyed that series and are looking for something in the same vein, you'll almost certainly also like スケッチブック.
Highly enjoyable, but not suitable for learning
スケッチブック is a comedic slice-of-life 4 panel comic series about the ordinary, everyday antics of the members of high school art club. Despite being popular enough in Japan to be serialized for 17 years and get turned into an anime (スケッチブック 〜full color's〜), this series is almost unknown in America, even after getting translated and released.
I picked up this series because I had hoped to find something similar in difficulty to よつばと, but this unfortunately did not turn out to be case.
The problem is the format itself, I suspect. Due to their strict space limitations 4 panel comics have only brief snippets of dialogue or exposition, and can't show much action — they literally only have four panels to tell a joke, after all. For a language learner this already presents a problem, because shortened sentences are full of contractions and slang, and they drop subjects, particles, and other parts of the sentence as well. In a way, short sentences are harder to analyze than long ones, because you can't analyze what isn't there.
On top of that, due to the format's brevity the jokes must necessarily depend heavily upon what the reader already knows and therefore does not need to be told — in other words, cultural context. A lot of the jokes in these comics are about everyday, ordinary things, some of which (cats, art supplies, masking tape) are familiar to a non-Japanese reader, but some of which (Japanese insects, Japanese music, Japanese wordplay) are not. And therein lies the problem, because if you have to spend 10 minutes Googling Japanese insects to "get" the joke, you're probably not going to laugh. For a language learner who is already struggling with vocabulary and grammar, grappling with cultural context on top of that to in order to get the joke is a bit too much to ask.
Another issue is that the online stores I checked (Bookwalker and Amazon) have low quality scans, making the furigana and handwritten parts very blurry and hard to make out. I would recommend getting a physical copy — except that the series appears to be out of print, so good luck finding it outside of Japan. All typeset kanji do have furigana, but handwritten words and character profiles do not.
Despite all of this, it's a great comic, and I really, really like it. The characters are quirky, the humor is relatable, and the vibes are ultra chill. No romance, no fanservice, no violence, and not even any serious conflict: just everyday people going through everyday life being rather silly, because life itself is rather silly, when you think about it. It's quite similar to あずまんが大王 (which is by the author of よつばと). So if you enjoyed that series and are looking for something in the same vein, you'll almost certainly also like スケッチブック.