Next in that manga series about the boy who got hit by a car, switched bodies with a cat. Still has the rehash of the incident at the start of every chapter, but now it’s just a page or less, so not as annoying. Somehow, this volume wasn’t quite as amusing to me. Cute, but the jokes not so funny. Maybe I’m not in the right mood. Then again, there were a few stand-alone pages at the back I assume were supposed to be jokes, which I did not get at all. It must be a cultural thing that didn’t translate well.
Most of this volume is just everyday life, mundane little things. The boy-as-cat runs afoul of some mean boys on the street which makes him nervous, but then gets chased by street cats, who are much nastier. He tries to help his gawky girl find her misplaced cell phone (by posing with it and meowing) and then she is so startled by his cuteness, she drops it (damage). He decides he should be useful to her by protecting the household (in lieu of a guard dog) but can’t do that very well, so resorts to his former role of being “a healing presence”. Chika gushes over photos of cats posing in drawers on her phone, so he tries to do the same, with mishaps (being mortally embarrassed at opening her underwear drawer, and then getting accidentally shut inside a kitchen drawer). He tries to skip like a human, (to be seen in a cute pose) and is just clumsy. He tries to help a lost dog get found again. Through all this, musing constantly that he has to figure out how to become human again, while never really doing anything about it.
Then! in the final pages, he happens across a kid on the street- and it’s him. His boy self. Who just stares. Swats at dangling things on a shrub. Lies down suddenly on a public bench for a nap, and leaps up to grab at coins somebody drops. Another kid from school is there watching him and talks to him, but he doesn’t reply. Nyao-the-cat doesn’t get what’s going on, but I did- the boy- obviously- has the cat mind inside him. So he acts like a cat. Funny. And the volume ends there. Of course now it got interesting again, but my library doesn’t have any further volumes. I know there’s at least a fifth one.
Borrowed from the public library.
