A richly detailed walk among the tiny folk.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Takuto Kashiki
Translation/Adaptation: Taylor Engel
What They Say
Deep within a lush, green forest live Hakumei and Mikochi. Making their home in trees, using leaves for umbrellas, and riding bugs for transportation is just part of everyday life for these tiny pals!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I thought I knew what I was getting into before opening up Hakumei & Mikochi, because slice-of-life stories are common enough that I can pretty much guess at what level of story I’m getting. It blew all my expectations away by the end of the first volume.
This is a slice-of-life story about tiny people living in a world side-by-side with animals and insects in a very human-like society. This isn’t exactly the Borrowers, there are no full sized humans to be seen. Instead, the cherubic mouse-sized denizens have built their own cities and infrastructure. There’s a bit of Richard Scarry in how it all seems to work. The world building seems very extensively thought out. Focusing on two little ladies who live together in a house in the woods, the story follows their everyday life.
Hakumei is the red-haired rambunctious roommate, who makes her living doing repair work. She’s outgoing and carefree and seems to be relatively new to the area. Mikochi is quieter, more domestic, and makes her living crafting and baking. She’s a local and while she might live in the forest she’s perfectly comfortable in the city. Despite their appearance, they are adult women and enjoy a trip to the pub on occasion. This focus on more adult pastimes reveals its origins as coming from Harta magazine.
Conflict, when it does come, seems to be more of accidental problems that arise. The animal citizens are not carnivorous predators out to make a meal of our leads, but employers and generous market sellers. The cute house the ladies live in meets a surprisingly violent accidental demise and is rebuilt be a friendly neighbor. Mikochi loses her wallet, and Hakumei almost falls several stories during her repair job. That’s about the extent of the danger they face, although setbacks seem common.
Kashiki’s art is beautiful and richly detailed. Sometimes art this dense can be cluttered and hard to follow, but that’s not the case here. The level of care put into everything is astounding, even the animals look amazing. While the leads have simple looking faces, their clothing makes up for the difference in complexity. Plus, this is another manga-ka obsessed with food. You will get hungry reading this.
Yen Press is releasing this at their larger trim size, which is fantastic considering just how much art there is here. Sadly, there aren’t any color pages for this volume. (Yen isn’t leaving them out, they just don’t exist.) There is an author’s afterword and a page of translation notes for extras.
In Summary
Hakumei & Mikochi scratches an itch I didn’t know I had. It appeals directly to the grown-up little girl in me, who was taking her niece around town looking for fairy houses. The detailed, well realized and artistically rich fantasy world of this series harkens back to Wind in the Willows and the Borrowers while still putting a Japanese spin on everything. If you like comfy slice-of-life adventures with beautiful art and are the type of person who loves low key fantasy, shopping street fairs, and eating good food, you’ll want to snatch this up.
Content Grade: A
Art Grade: A +
Packaging Grade: B +
Text/Translation Grade: B +
Age Rating: Teen
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: July 24, 2018
MSRP: $15.00 US /$19.50 CAN
