Manga Review – Tokyo Tarareba Girls Vol 1 by Akiko Higashimura (3/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Contemporary Fiction/Manga
Length: 176 pages
Publisher: Kodansha Comics
Release Date: June 26, 2018
ISBN-13: 978-1632366856
Stand Alone or Series: 1st volume in the Tokyo Tarareba Girls series
Source: Amazon Vine
Rating: 3/5 stars

“Rinko has done everything right. She hustled her way through her 20s to make it as a screenwriter, renting her own office in a trendy Tokyo neighborhood. Everything should have gone according to plan… So at 33, she can’t help but lament the fact that her career’s plateaued, she’s still painfully single, and she spends most of her nights drinking with her two best friends in their favorite pub. One night, drunk and delusional, Rinko swears to get married by the time the Tokyo Olympics roll around in 2020. But finding a man–and love–may be a cutthroat, dirty job for a romantic at heart.”

I got this book from the Amazon Vine program to review. This is the first book in the Tokyo Tarareba Girls series. I haven’t read much josei manga (or any really). This is manga aimed at women in their late teens/early twenties….it reminded me a lot of chick lit. While the illustration was well done, I wasn’t a fan of the story or of how the women were portrayed. I found the whole thing to be a bit over the top silly. If you like that sort of ditsy middle aged drama this might be for you, I just didn’t enjoy it much.

The story features Rinko who is a mid 30’s screenwriter who panics when she realizes she still isn’t married and the Tokyo olympics are happening soon (why the Olympics coming to town sparks panic over not being married I never understood). What follows is a series of events where Rinko regrets her decision to turn away an old flame and meets a young male model who causes her to lose a screenwriting job. Throughout this Rinko meets her friends in a pub many times and commiserates with them over drinks.

I had some issues with this manga. The first was that there is a lot of slang and pop culture items very specific to Japan that made it hard to follow things (they are explained in an index at the end which helped). The second is that the women were just very silly and made very bad decisions throughout. I guess if you approach this with an ironic sense of humor the story is better; but I just thought the whole thing was silly. Again, there is an afterward that explains how the story is supposed to be funny and ironic.

Overall, while the illustration is well done, this wasn’t a story for me. I thought it was silly and that the women were just plain ridiculous. If you are a fan of light goofy chick lit you might like this…it definitely wasn’t for me.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– New Release Reading Challenge
– Goodreads Reading Challenge
– Graphic Novel Reading Challenge