Kitties, a gangster manga.
Creative Staff:
Story/Art: Atsushi Okada
Translation: Caleb Cook
Lettering: Rochelle Gancio
What They Say:
Protecting your turf, keeping other guys from pawing at your girl, showing everyone who’s boss…it’s all in a day’s work when you’re a street thug—er, a street cat!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Nyankees starts off as G Gundam, with the main character asking where another certain mysterious character is. Unlike G Gundam, Nyankees resolves who that is, and finds them, by the end of the volume. It’s also about turf wars, gangs, and respect.
The main character is Ryuusei, a down on his luck dude who’s great at fighting and just wants to find this other dude with a scar over his right eye. He runs into the leader of the town, Taiga, and his gang, and beats them all up. In typical shonen manga fashion, he is first beaten, then eats some food, then beats them all up. He was just hungry after all, greatly lowering his fighting potential.
After beating this whole gang, including Taiga, he is named leader, a position he has no interest in. But he gets caught up in their turf war anyway, where the group from the next town over is trying to press into Taiga’s territory. And then this rival gang kidnaps the one woman in their group, Mii, in an attempt to lure them into their territory. The gambit works well enough, and they show up, thus revealing the dude with the scar that Ryuusei has been looking for.
The manga itself is incredibly enjoyable. Stand alone, it’s a great gangster manga that’s simple enough to follow easily and not too text heavy all while keeping their fights short enough to stay interesting and drawn well enough to be relatively impressed.
Also, and I don’t know if you know this, but they’re all cats. This is a manga about cat turf warfare, and it’s awesome.
The extra layer of cat gimmickery makes this manga a highly enjoyable comedy. It turns effortlessly from cat to human form (they’re drawn as both, and panel-to-panel will switch back and forth), which keeps the manga interesting reading through what is so far a basic but enjoyable gangster story.
In Summary:
I came into this manga assuming I would love it, and I was correct in that assumption. The premise of a gangster kitty manga was just too good to pass up. The manga itself does not disappoint, with its artwork being just straight up funny switching between human and cat forms of the characters and relatively simple story and hook.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Yen Pres
Release Date: January 22, 2019
MSRP: $13.00
