The Complete Chi's Sweet Home Part 3 manga collects together the seventh, eighth, and ninth volumes of the Chi's Sweet Home manga into one larger trim size volume.
The Complete Chi's Sweet Home Part 3
Written by: Konami Kanata
Publisher: Kodansha, Ltd.
English Publisher: Vertical Comics
Release Date: July 19, 2016
Just like the original pressings of Chi's Sweet Home, this omnibus release is a full-color manga, and the orientation is "flipped" (so it reads like an American book instead of a traditional Japanese manga).
At the beginning of this omnibus release, Chi tries to become friends with another cat named Cocchi. Chi also has adventures when her adoptive family buys a widescreen HDTV, when the father of the family buys and brings home a goldfish, and when she becomes sick for the first time after eating rotten meat that she found lying on the ground. The most important of these adventures is when Chi gets sick, because this is the first time that Chi, along with the Yamadas, have had to deal with this happening to her. Even though the Yamadas are panicking, they still manage to figure out that they need to take her to the vet after reading one of their cat care books. The first sickness is a milestone for a family, whether it's a kitten or a human child.
In the second part of the omnibus, Chi spends time with Cocchi, and the two cats begin learning how to cooperate with one another. When Cocchi mentions that Chi is a cat, she doesn't believe it because she thinks she's a human like her adoptive family. However, Chi becomes confused later when she overhears her family using the word "cat" when they're talking about her. This seems to be setting the stage for Chi to learn the truth about herself at some point in the series.
In the final third of The Complete Chi's Sweet Home Part 3, Chi's adoptive family becomes more protective of her in response to Chi getting outside and developing conjunctivitis from dust she got in her eye. They try to turn her into an indoor cat, and Chi doesn't like this development at all. When her adoptive father tries to talk Chi for a walk on a leash, Chi escapes and tries to find Cocchi in order to play with him. A lot of this section focuses on what Chi is up to after she escapes, as well as on the Yamadas' search for Chi. I thought this particular storyline was handled realistically, and I was very interested in seeing what happened to Chi as she was trying to find Cocchi.
The Complete Chi's Sweet Home Part 3 also includes some bonus material at the back, and I recognized most of this bonus material from the individual releases of the Chi's Sweet Home manga. It includes thoughts from the editors of some of the international versions of Chi's Sweet Home, Chi giving a guided tour of Paris (the Chi in the feature is a stuffed toy version of the character), a Chi's Sweet Home origami page, and a feature about the Chi's Sweet Home promotion at Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in China.
There were also two new bonuses included in The Complete Chi's Sweet Home Part 3. The first is an announcement about the then forthcoming CG anime series for Chi's Sweet Home that is accompanied by a short manga featuring Chi finding out about the anime. The only problem with including this short manga in this omnibus volume is that it provides a spoiler for how Chi's Sweet Home ended. If a reader reading this omnibus has never read the original individual manga releases, this bonus manga basically gives away the ending.
The other new bonus is another short manga featuring FukuFuku, a cat character from one of Kanata's first successful manga. It's a quick read, and it shows FukuFuku doing something useful in the midst of causing some mischief. The FukuFuku short manga that appeared in both this release and in The Complete Chi's Sweet Home Part 1 omnibus were decent enough, although I think that Chi's Sweet Home is a little stronger.
Chi's Sweet Home continues to be a quick and easy read, even with three volumes included in this omnibus edition. Readers who have read and enjoyed the previous two Chi's Sweet Home omnibus releases should continue to enjoy following Chi and her story.
Additional posts about Chi's Sweet Home:
No comments:
Post a Comment