Joshiraku

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"This manga presents you with inoffensive dialogue that will not bother you to let you enjoy the cuteness of the girls"

This is a surprisingly underrated manga on this site, it's written by Kouji Kumenta and drawn by Yasu, of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and the art of Toradora fame respectively.

You can really tell this manga is written by Kumeta, it's sarcastic and witty, chalk full of Japanese culture and references, and you'll probably need to read the little glossary at the end of each chapter to understand a lot of the jokes. This is because not only are their jokes revolving anime, but idols, the manga ... industry, celebrities, Japanese politics, religion, history, and general culture of Japan.

Even though half of the jokes are lost because of a cultural difference, the jokes I do get are funny, theres lots of meta jokes. Even the jokes I don't understand, and have to read at the end of each chapter I find amusing, retroactively laughing at the "genius" of the jokes.

If I ever learn to speak Japanese, I would go straight back to this manga, and that's because a lot of jokes are puns and such involving kanji and what-not, that you would only understand if you knew Japanese. Even the main character's names are puns.

The art in this manga is beautiful, and this time around not drawn by Kumeta, but Yasu as mentioned earlier.

In interviews they've stated that the cuteness of the girls sorta came first (something similar to that, if you wanna read it, a quick google search of "Kumeta Kouji" should probably even do, whatever though", and that's sorta even the tagline of the manga with the whole ""This manga presents you with inoffensive dialogue that will not bother you to let you enjoy the cuteness of the girls" or ""This manga is about cute girls and what they do to entertain themselves. A manga that doesn't focus on frustrating topics or similar things.", however it's translated it doesn't matter.

I really like the art style of this manga, the girls look so cute and unique too, with their design coming before their personality.

All 5 main girls are cute, unique, lovable and funny. I find it's one of those series where you love every character pretty much equally.

So, to the question of "should I read this manga?" to put it simply, can you read Japanese and do you know about Japanese culture and such? If not, are you willing to read afterwards to understand the joke? If you can't answer "yes" to at least one of these questions, then I would tell you to read something else.

But if you say yes to one of those definitely yes, read it, it's not that long, and it's funny all the way through with great art to accompany it.

Have you seen the anime adaptation? If so, this manga is exactly what you expected. It is hard to understand the manga without knowing why the jokes are funny, but the same goes for the incredibly popular anime, except here, you might get a little (LOT) T/L to help you. While the joes the characters tell might be hard to get, the jokes the STORY tells are amazing. After seeing the anime, this manga is truly everything I was hoping it would be. If you are on the fence about it, go read just one chapter, and you will probably be hooked.