Fantasy meet convention, convention meet fantasy.
Creative Staff
Art: Yasuhiro Miyama
Story: Mochinchi
Translation/Adaptation: Amber Tamosaitus
What They Say
What nerd wouldn’t enjoy exploring an RPG-style world? Not Mika Kamiya! She was just about to enjoy her post-Comic Market haul when fate whisked her away to a fantasy land. All Mika wants is to find a way home, so she’s hunting for spells-but rather than search all over, they’ll be coming to her to attend her magical-book-selling event, Magic Market! With a very “animated” catalog of guests, eccentric attendees, and out-of-control lines, what could possibly go wrong?!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
We are living in an age of isekai glut.
For a fictional genre that has its origins in Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz, in recent years it has become Japan’s escapist fantasy of choice. Don’t like your mundane daily grind? Can’t find a good job, girlfriend, or have the social skills of a raging misanthrope? Here’s the genre for you! All you have to do is die first and suddenly you’ll be reincarnated in a fantasy world where you’ll be the best at whatever because sure you are. You just needed your moment to shine, you looser.
A Witch’s Printing Office is both modern isekai and yet a call back to the more classic portal fantasy that used to be about a young woman trying to find her way home. In this story that young woman is Mika. She finds herself whisked away to a fantasy world right after attending Japan’s largest comic expo, Comiket. She didn’t even have time to devour her con loot!
This story skips the whole newbie in a new land introduction and skips right to Mika already established in her new life. She’s made herself some good friends, has a business, and more importantly has a plan to get home. She just needs to find the spell that will send her there. But how to find the right spell in an entire world of magic and monsters? Well, it would certainly be easier if all the magic users could just come to her. But why would they?
Perhaps a magic convention would work. One selling magical tomes and spells, the biggest gathering of mages the world has ever seen. Mika launches her very own convention, Magiket.
For anyone who has ever attended a convention or worked one, this manga is going to feel a bit too familiar. (Although if you’ve ever worked a convention it might trigger some PTSD.) The plot is mostly Mika and friends trying to organize and run their convention. The problems they deal with are the mundane (crowd control) to the slightly less mundane (a rampaging golem.) Some of the problems they encounter will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever attended and convention or expo while others are more of a direct riff on Comiket itself. The west doesn’t really have doujinshi circles or any independent comic expo of the size of Comiket. Our largest conventions tend to focus on more broad entertainment.
When the leads aren’t running a convention they’re back at home base, a magical tome printing shop. The one magic spell that Mika can cast is ‘copy,’ turning her into a living Xerox machine. Her shop has to deal with rush print jobs and a tight overhead, even though most of her raw materials literally grow on a tree.
The artwork in this series is fantastic. Everything is super detailed and there’s a tremendous variety of magical denizens of all body shapes and species. There’s a small amount of pandering regarding Claire’s bust size and one girl ending up in a chainmail thong, but it is equal-opportunity as later on Broadway loses his armor for no real reason. The world-building steers the story away from the gross and brutal, as it’s a time of peace and prosperity. I don’t expect any hard turns into a grim-dark gorefest.
Yen gave the book a nice matte finish cover that feels more leathery than the usual gloss covers manga volumes are usually given. Yen includes a color title page, like always. One strange thing is the translation notes for this volume come up after the first chapter. There’s an author’s note comic at the end of the volume which tells of how the book came to be serialized and how the author was given a crash course in the print industry. (All accurate, by the way, especially the cutting machine having two activation switches so you don’t lose a hand.)
In Summary
A Witch’s Printing Office is one part new isekai, one part old isekai, and all parts parody on the self-publishing comic industry of Japan. Mika only wants to find a spell to send her home, and it’s going to take a lot of hard work to find it. From dealing with the logistics of running a convention in a fantasy world to the logistics of running a profitable printing business, this is not your typical isekai fantasy. The artwork is strong, the humor mostly lands, and Mika is likable and relatable. Some of the Japanese convention elements are unfamiliar, but the vibe of the overall experience of convention madness remains the same.
Content Grade: B +
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: A –
Text/Translation Grade: A –
Age Rating: Teen
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: December 24, 2019
MSRP: $15.00 US / $19.50 CAN
