ちゅんトーク【電子特典付】

Two things I have a lot of trouble with when reading manga are 4komas and handwriting. With 4komas you don't have the inertia of context that a longer story has and switching topics quickly can be tough. Handwriting should be pretty self-evident. So when I say this is a volume of handwritten 4komas that I understood 95% of... that's pretty good.

This adheres to my thesis that cartoon animals are funnier the more realistic they are and the focus here is birds, which are already inherently kind of surreal and funny so you don't need to punch up the real thing too much. You've got a family of sparrows, a huge pigeon, and a group of snuggly java sparrows all with quirky personalities just doing various things and enjoying life. Each chapter is centered around a particular season and the gags and adventures have to do with that season.

The artwork is very charming, the birds are beautifully rendered with realistic detail while still being expressive and conveying personality. I think my favorite visually is Babuchun, the baby sparrow, who reminds me of a little baby sparrow I saved a year or two ago and had that same kind of beak (called a gape flange which isn't really part of the beak but makes the mouth more visible for the parents to feed their young). The vampire shrike who just wants to be friends with everyone is always funny too (and the gag kind of has grounding in actual shrike behavior, they tend to impale their prey on thorns, much like old Vlad the Impaler, but this shrike is a lot more friendly).

While it is important to push yourself with something a bit higher than your level, it's also important to see how far you've come so running into something you can read just about fluently, especially when it's a type of book that would have been challenging previously. This was fun, cute, and if you love birds it has a lot you'll realize from their real-world quirks.