What's Michael?

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If you didn’t know anything about it, you’d think What’s Michael is just another boring cat manga that’s just meant to be “cute” and be an easy sell amongst housewives but you couldn’t be farthest from the truth and you’d probably miss out a great manga.

What’s Michael is completely wacky and absurd and could, similar to some of the classic comedies like Urusei Yatsura or the works of Fujiko Fujio. It’s organized in very short chapters (usually 6 pages long) and most of them act like parodies of different genres and in particular to hard-boiled detective stories but there’s a great variety to the ... setting, they can appear as salarymen, boxers, yakuza, fight like ultraman or be in a variety shows. There’s also a great variety of recurring characters involved in different stories like the criminal vet infiltrating homes to cure random cats, a yakuza trying to hide his love for cats because he’s afraid to be ridiculous among his associates. There’s also chapters focused around a normal households with continuous storylines in a way similar to chi though they’re never regular slice of life and always a bit absurd in a way. It’s also important to note that there’s a lot of weird and disproportionate facial expressions that can easily put you off if you’re used to this type of humor but otherwise serves to make it unique given that the author clearly has it's own style.

What’s Michael is very representative of 80s Japanese comedies and there’s a big chance you’ll like it if you like works produced around the same time, this manga is not available online but seems to get reprints quite often, the latest being the fatcat collection by dark horse so if you’re curious about it, give it a try !