Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san
Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san

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I bought two volumes of the manga and had to drop this title. The drawing isnt bad. The main character lacks personality. It is a typical person who would always say "I dont know" or "Ah ok" to anything. But anyway, it is more about the experience of working at a bookstore right?

The books are pretty informative about it. There are detailed things I did not know before about working at a bookstore. But either the Yen Press translation is bad or just weird paneling, it is DIFFICULT to follow the story on many pages. Some sentences dont make sense, or it is hard to ... know wth is going on. It killed the enjoyment of reading the series.

too bad beacuse i had high expectation of the title.

"Stories are free as birds until someone picks them up"

An educative and somewhat eccentric manga! Very strong first volume: an incredibly funny and honest depiction of life as a bookstore employee. A lot of interesting insight - take for example the little anecdote about the 'western comics' section manager's back pain caused by restocking books made from thicker materials than japanese manga! I also loved chapter 19 of volume 3 (a little bookmark for me haha), where Honda-san compares the publishing schedules and work reputations of the major manga publishing houses. It's an example of edifying insider information presented in an entertaining and funny ... style. In the first volume particularly, the punchlines, reinforced often by heavy brushstroke visuals, always land! An efficient way of demystifiying 'otaku' tropes, shown for example in the almost noble depiction of yaoi fangirls and recognizing manga as no longer a niche product but a true global sensation.

But it becomes clear that the author has saved his best stories for the first volume, and chapters became less funny and even slightly repetitive, not too mention a bit infodump-y as the story progressed. It will be interesting to see if he will reach some kind of stable ground from which to build a strong recurrent cast like the one from previous volumes.