A cute werewolf girl helps a timid human boy gain the confidence he’s always dreamed of having!
Yutaka Shinso is constantly worried about what other people think of him. Hoping to turn over a new leaf, he changes high schools, but there’s something strange afoot: vampires, ogres, and all manner of supernatural beings walk the halls! Yutaka is particularly drawn to Tsumiki Ogami, a confident and popular werewolf girl. Will Tsumiki be the one to help Yutaka overcome his insecurities?
After meeting Tsumiki on his first day of school, Yutaka decides he wants to be as self-assured as she is. But when Tsumiki invites him into her werewolf world, vowing to help him come out of his shell, Yutaka puts on the brakes. Tsumiki spends her days jumping out of windows, climbing mountains, and burying sandwiches to snack on later. Yutaka isn’t used to any of that. Can he overcome his anxieties and learn to howl at the moon?
[Thanks to Viz and Edelweiss for an ARC of this manga in exchange for an unbiased review.]
Monster girls? Popular genre. Unique girl meets a potato guy and romance eventually blooms? Popular genre. Here comes a book that mashes the two together in a combination that surprised me with how well it worked.
The first thing that struck me wasn’t Tsumiki, our titular wolf girl, though she’s pretty great. No, it’s that Yutaka, our audience surrogate/self-insert, has a little more going on besides having the cool girl fall for him.
Yutaka has deliberately chosen a school far from his home, one that also happens to have a significant mythfolk (the manga’s term for our monster people) population. He’s done this because he feels like he basically tried to fit in during middle school at the expense of being himself. He was in a friend group, but never really part of it.
Thus, he’s trying to find himself and figures that these mythfolk might be going through something similar. Possibly some are, but Tsumiki is entirely more put-together than he is. It’s not the most exciting characterization.
But it is some characterization, and that means a lot more than you’d expect. After admittedly enjoying The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses, a very similar story, I still can’t tell you anything about that manga’s male lead - he was a total nothing. Yutaka is trying to learn and grow and I’ll take that.
And Tsumiki herself is very cool; the mangaka knows exactly what she’s doing from the opening pages with the band Tsumiki uses to tie her tail down. By the time she’s showing off her destroyed socks, I was already pretty charmed by it all.
It doesn’t hurt that a lot of thought went into this on a number of levels. All the lore about how this world works is pretty clever and just enough without going overboard. There’s also some good character work - I was really impressed how things went with that initially obnoxious vampire.
The romance side is pleasantly understated at present. Clearly boiling beneath the surface, but not quite the focus. There’s a lot of table setting here and, honestly, I found it great. Yutaka’s visit to Tsumiki’s home was real interesting.
Honestly, I was hoping this would be okay, but I quickly found myself absolutely charmed by Tsumiki and the other mythfolk and pleased to see Yutaka had a point besides repping a y-chromosome. It won me over really fast.
There are a couple points where it flags a little bit; as good as the amusement park story gets, there are some instances there where the dialogue doesn’t flow well or, in the most egregious case, make a lot of sense.
4.5 stars - I’ll be extra generous, but not enough to round up. It gets a bonus for being just an enjoyable romp with a well realized world and some really interesting characters. A welcome surprise.
Thank you @NetGalley and @VIZMedia for the ARC. This a great start to a new Manga series that brings humans and Myth Folk together in a school environment. Yutaka is a human boy at a new school and is always worried what others are thinking about him. When he meets Tsumiki, girl werewolf, he can not believe that she wants to be his friend. As we see these two very different kids become friends, there maybe some bumps ahead. A fun read.
Its a cute start to a supernatural slice-of-life. The character designs are fun, although the characters themselves feel a little one-note. If you just want a chill school comedy with maybe a little romance, this seems like it will fit the bill.
Yutaka gets a fresh start at a school that is predominantly Mythfolk students, students with animal traits, often mythical elements. Yutaka himself has nothing remarkable about him, which he hopes will help him fade to the background. But he befreinds Tsumiki who is part werewolf, and Tsumiki's confidence and kindness doesn't let Yutaka be a background character. Yutaka reminds me of many struggling students -- his social anxiety and lack of confidence makes him a sympathetic character that many readers with identify with or want to hug. This is a sweet story about friendship and not letting our prejudices run our lives.
This is a librarian review. I try to leave notes on books I’m considering for a middle school library for others in the school library profession because manga is hardly ever professionally reviewed for us to properly vet before buying. I mainly just look for troublesome issues for younger ages, such as sexual content, language, or extreme violence. I just got this one today upon its English release. The book is rated for teens by the publisher.
This started out pretty cute, but unfortunately, I had to rule it out for middle school. It takes place in a high school and the sexual innuendo in one part of the book is a little too much. There's a section where the boy protagonist, Yutaka, is walking with Tsumiki to find a place to eat lunch. Down an alley near the gym, they hear two other students talking, one of them saying, "Ugh, again with taking my clothes off..." It then pans to show a vampire student (who is characterized as a womanizer) having unbuttoned a girl's shirt to access her shoulder and neck, but you can see a bit of her bra. She ends up getting upset with him for "just [wanting her] blood" and not actually being romantically interested. Then Tsumiki decides to let him have her blood since it is lunch; this upsets Yutaka, who sees Tsumiki in his imagination getting rather steamy as the vampire student drinks.
You could possibly get away with this in high school. But for HS librarians: I'd be careful and wary of future volumes and what they may hold given that this was in the very first volume. Anyway, I'd say this is definitely inappropriate for middle school ages due to this section.
I recently read RURI DRAGON, another Viz release that follows an average human girl (Ruri) who wakes up one day to discover she has monster features. I didn't get the hype. It was ok, kind of boring, and Ruri herself came across as an indifferent and cheerless girl. Spending time with her was depressing.
I feel like TSUMIKI OGAMI is the flipside of the same coin. NOT-SO-ORDINARY LIFE instead follows an average human boy (Yutaka) who begins going to a high school where many of the OTHER students have monster features. There's a vampire who is more complicated than he first seems, an invisible boy, an octopus girl who pitches baseball, etc. Enter Tsumiki Ogami, a vibrant werewolf girl who quickly picks Yutaka to be her friend. Yutaka struggled to fit in at his old human school. Now he's really out of his depth, but his curiosity about Tsumiki and her bold personality help him start to open up. She's the type of character you want to be around and I loved everything about her, right down to her trademark giant sneakers.
This manga takes place in a world where mythical creatures were confirmed to exist in the not-so-distant past. Now, mythfolk live amongst normal humans, slowly acclimating to life co-existing. Yutaka, our main character, is a human who has joined a school that is populated with both humans and mythfolk, in hopes of changing old habits and making new friends. In comes Tsumiki, a mythfolk girl who is a werewolf! This is a fun slice-of-life that shows two different people with different challenges learning how to grow together as separately. I enjoyed Tsumiki's easygoing attitude, she steals the show in this manga and it makes sense that it would be named after her after reading. The supporting cast is endearing and funny, I'm excited to see their characters develop more in future volumes. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who loves a lighthearted slice-of-life manga. Thank you to Viz and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!
Tsumiki and Yutaka are fun characters that you can't help but fall in love with the first volume of this new manga series about the fantastical world in which mythological creatures and humans coexist, even in high school.
Yutaka is a people-pleaser who moves schools in the hopes of gaining a few life lessons and his new school is full of myth creatures including Tusmiki who is a werewolf. She keeps her tail secured to her leg but it's impossible to find socks that don't have holes or shoes that fit her bit feel (toenails included). Yutaka befriends Tsumiki who is a cool character and she lets him into his world that opens up his own in new, cool, and interesting ways. He gets to visit their wolf den and feed off of her impressive esteem. Fantasy seemed real whether they were having lunch (and a vampire needed a sip of blood or playing baseball and the pitcher was a kraken) that entertained. Plus, I always love manga characters with a good fashion sense and this one has that too.
I was gifted this by VIZ Media and Book Influencers in exchange for a review, and I’m so grateful that I was! This book was absolutely not on my radar – I spend all of my free time looking for new shoujo and horror to read typically, that when I do spot a non-shoujo non-horror manga, it’s typically a josei. Shounen romance is typically the furthest thing from my mind when i’m on the hunt for something new to read.
I was pleasantly surprised when I began reading this series though, as while Tsumiki is a little bit glamorized, it isn’t to the degree that she’s unpalatable to me. My main gripe with most shounen romances is that they depict women unrealistically, and I don’t have that complaint here! Rather, I enjoyed all of the characters introduced in this volume.
You can read my full review of this volume on my blog here!
Thanks to Viz Media and NetGalley for an ARC of this manga!
It's a slice of life manga that takes place in a high school. The world in which the story takes place, is home to humans and "myth folk." The story focuses on the high school life of the human male main character Yutaka Shinso, his new friend the werewolf female main character Tsumiki Ogami, and their various other classmates.
This volume is a solid start to the series. My main complaint is that compared to the main characters, the side characters are very bland. However, since this is volume one, I assume that the audience will get more details about them later.
In terms of the art, I believe that the style works very well with the story.
I'd recommend this manga to anyone who wants a cute slice of life, school life, and/or friendship story.
Cute series. Myth folk have integrated with humans. Yukata Shinso, a human, has transferred to a school where they go, mostly to get over the habit of obsessing over what other people think of him and to find a direction in life. It’s not going well, but then he makes friends with his classmate Tsumiki Ogami, a werewolf, who doesn’t care at all what people think of her. She promises to soul search with Yukata. Little by little, he stops being so self-conscious, and the myth folk learn new things too.
This was good, wholesome, and cute slice of life with low drama. It mostly follows Yukata at school and with Tsumigi, as he learns new things. I’d read more. Art was good.
I received a free copy from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
The male lead is your standard unremarkable except he has trouble associating with others and noncommittally ends up ghosting everyone. He changes schools for a fresh start, and also monstergirls(and boys) ("mythfolk") happened and the school he picked happens to have the highest amount of them.
Ogami is the cute tomboy wolf-girl that everyone loves that connects with him and they hang out at school and later visit her family. The story rushes the romantic tension out pretty quick, which at least saves me the trouble of bailing later. Part of the story focuses on the different mindsets/views between humans and mythfolk.
I would have enjoyed it more if it was more platonic and the characters were the opposites-attract helping come out of their shells type.
Not bad. It’s got potential, for sure. There’s a mix of moments I quite liked (cool moments with the interesting werewolf community and stuff + the theme park chapter), and moments I didn’t like as much (the first couple chapters with the vampire dude).
A decent amount of this is just kinda standard SOL manga stuff, which doesn’t do much for me nowadays to be honest. But the ‘myth-folk’ stuff helps to spice up the chapters a bit, which the author will then use to put a spin on some SOL tropes or do something unique which is good. The art’s also pretty good throughout this whole volume, I’d say.
So, nothing revolutionary for me personally, but a solid SOL series with some potential for sure. Might get the second volume when it comes out to see where it goes.
This was cute, but so plain that I have almost nothing to say about it. I feel like it contributes nothing to the genre. I thought and felt almost nothing while reading this besides "that's cute", which is alright, but it wasn't exactly stimulating or really even entertaining. Everyone is just very plain, which is a bummer, because I feel like there's a lot that can be done with a school that mixes mythfolk and humans. But the "interesting" just wasn't there.
The art is very cute though. I really like how she has really big shoes like a Sonic character, and I like how her ears are on the sides of her head, that's cute!
Yutaka Shinso has self worth issues. He always is worrying that he is screwing up which affects his interactions with others. After switching to a new school - this one with mythfolks such as werewolves and vampires - Yutaka Shinso ends up next to Tsumiki Ogami in class. She manages to gradually get around his shell and get him more involved in school and carrying about others rather than just worrying about their scrutiny. It will be interesting to see what mischief Yataka and Tsumiki get into next!
Thanks Netgalley and Viz media for the chance to view this title!
I adored this first volume! It was beyond cute and I'm adoring the unique personalities of all our characters. I really appreciate that we aren't just sticking with our two major protagonists and are seeing their friend group grow. Their friendship and possibility of future romance is have a very sweet build up, and I love the complicated dynamic their new vampire friend has with relationships of all kinds. I was smiling the entire time I was reading this volume, and I'm looking forward to continuing the series.
I'm so stoked this is getting published (especially since the Viz app still hasn't backloaded the first few chapters).
I enjoyed the explanation for myth folk and loved seeing them visit Tsumiki's home. So far, myth folk seem to be integrated into society without too many restrictions (besides the amusement park one). I'm really curious is any of the teachers are myth folk and if so, how they blend in society.
Seeing the easygoingness of the students, this will be a very cute slice of life story! I cannot wait to dive into the next volume. Thanks to Viz Media for the DRC~
Thanks to NetGalley & VIZ Media for the early copy in exchange for an honest review.
What a fun story! I like the worldbuilding with the "myths" or "mythological creatures" that are regular students at school. It's weirdly cozy and relaxing with how mundane the myth kids are.
Tsumiki is great and I vastly prefer her over the boring protagonist but he's just there for exposition, ha. I also like the vampire kid too.
I really liked this! This was a really fun start to a manga centering a world where different types of "mythfolk" (werewolves, vampires, etc.) exist and were only revealed to humans pretty recently. I thought the main characters were interesting and funny and I liked the art. I can see a lot of teens really enjoying this, especially any paranormal and/or romance lovers. Thank you to VIZ and NetGalley for the ARC!
Thank you to NetGalley and VIZ Media for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Yutaka is a regular human in a school with many mythfolk, and is introduced to various classmates, especially Tsumiki Ogami who is a werewolf. Yutaka finds himself to be introverted and anxious, but with Tsumiki's friendship and assurance, they both learn about themselves and encourage each other. I enjoyed this manga and find Tsumiki and the group of friends to be so fun!
It's cute, fun, and wholesome. The series has nice art and interesting character designs. There's not too much in the way of story progression though... The author is setting up a potential romantic relationship between the MC and Tsumiki, but neither of them are particularly aware of their own feelings still as of Chapter 52 (Volume 5?)
What a delightful surprise this is! Rather than being about fetishizing the "mythfolk" like many other series do, Tsumiki Ogami instead uses their obvious differences as a way to talk about anxiety and how being popular (or "popular," as the case may be) comes with its own issues. It's a charming combination of silly and thoughtful.
2.5 stars, rounded up. I'm not really the target audience for this sort of book and storyline. Hard to tell if it is because I was reading an ARC of this or not, but the artwork also wasn't my favorite thing. Felt a little bit sketchy and rough to me at times. That cover is pretty fantastically designed though.
Your work is good in the characters are cute it’s interesting to see how the 4 o’clock creatures were mixed in and regular society and the relationship between the main character in the werewolf girl is cute though I’ve read with thousand stories like this and a lot more better our stew on an average this is just OK
Very cute manga about a human boy who switches school and becomes friends with a werewolf girl and learns more about her and her daily life. He also meets and becomes friends with some other humans and non-humans at the school. It's so cute and fun but also has some sweet sides. Definitely a fun read read and one I want to continue reading.
Very cute! I like the premise a lot and I love the characters. I ended up liking Senga a lot more than I thought I would! The art style is cute and the slice-of-life style plot is heartwarming.
Thank you to Miyu Morishita, VIZ Media and Netgalley for the ARC.
Please release more middle-grade manga. These books are perfect for kids just entering a new stage in their life and might feel like an outsider. The art style is young and silly. I whipped through this because it was fun, I want to see more manga like this!
This was delightful. The coolest detail Miyu does is have Tsumiki tie her tail to her leg because of those stupid school uniforms. There is an amazing resolution to this at the end when she plays softball. Can't wait for volume 2. Thanks to Net Galley for the ARC.
This was such a fun read! I had no idea what to expect and was pleasantly surprised. I love books set in schools for supernatural beings. The author did a great job showing the quirks of each type of being and mashing it with teenagers. So cute!!