In the six years since its US debut, Chi’s Sweet Home has inspired a cat comics movement. But critics and fans agree this full color, heartfelt Japanese original is the best feline graphic novel we’ve seen in ages.
Konami Kanata (jp. こなみかなた), is a Japanese cartoonist best known for her cat characters Chi's Sweet Home. Her works revolves around the daily life of house cats.
She went to Futaba-Kōtō Academy in Suwa, Nagano Perfecture. Her first published manga as a profesional manga-ka was the short story Puchi Neko Jamu Jamu in Nakayoshi Manga Magazine in 1982. The magazine is a part of Kodansha Publishing, in which she published her works ever since her first debut.
Each book in the series gets better. Chi goes on interesting adventures and learns a lot. The mix of characters is appealing, and even though I could predict some outcomes, Chi's Sweet Home - Part 3 holds water. I felt concern for Chi. I laughed just a bit. I understood cat behavior from a distance. -( I like most of the cats I've come to know)- The ending was sweet.
People around the world read these books! I bet it's fun to be a cat lover reading about Chi and her family.
I pay more attention to the words and I think I should focus more on the illustrations. It would be enjoyable to return to each book and only look at the watercolors.
One of the pull quotes on the back of these volumes calls them "relaxing." I don't know what is wrong with that person, but every single time Chi goes outside and has trouble finding her way home, I started to panic. She *always* ends up in a good place, but I get very nervous about lost/hurt/sick kitties.
Anyway, it's just as adorable as previous volumes and I am trying very very very hard to resist the urge to get Chi &co tattooed all over me so I can cheer myself up by just looking at my own arm.
I though it just fair to give it another five stars, since this volume sure is full of adventure as never before, and it also depicts some real struggles in cats' lives. Not everything is fun and fluffiness in this one, for sure... and any cat owner can relate to all those worrisome situations (particularly sickness and kitties running away).
Also, Cocchi gets some stellar pages here, and the ending was just so sweet...
The Complete Chi’s Sweet Home Part 3 was another wonderful bind-up following Chi on her many adventures.
Chi is an adventurous kitten who loves living with her family, the Yamadas. When Chi goes to play in the park she makes a new friend, kitten Cocchi. Cocchi teaches Chi what it's like living on the streets and the pair leave chaos in their wake.
This volume contains 54 chapters full of Chi's adventures. The storyline in this volume is much more linear than the first two and there are less slice of life chapters. A large portion of this book follows Chi and Cocchi playing. From destroying a shed to being chased by a dog, Chi and Cocchi go on quite a few adventures. This volume also has a few glimpses of Chi's mom and siblings who we've only seen hints of in the previous volumes. I enjoyed the story in this book and I'm curious what the fourth bind-up will bring now that Cocchi has gone home with Chi.
The art in this manga series is fantastic and I love the use of bright colors. Chi and the other animals she encounters are quite adorable. The author does a great job depicting the cats' movements, particularly the chaotic ways Chi moves when she's freaked out. I also really enjoyed the illustrations of Chi and Cocchi playing as they perfectly matched with how I've seen my own cats play.
Overall The Complete Chi’s Sweet Home Part 3 was another fun bind-up of this manga series and I will definitely be picking up the next volume soon. This manga series would be a great introduction to younger readers newer to the format and for any cat lovers.
As with the first two in this series, Part 3 jumps right in and Chi wastes no time getting trouble. From getting lost and dirty, and locked in a tool shed, to winning over the new kitten and playmate; this adorable series keeps on generating smiles. There is also the question of whether Chi will get reunited with his family. They apparently live not to far off but they just keep missing each other. Will Chi even recognize them? Suspense!!
The cuteness overload continues! This time around Chi continues on his outside adventures with his kitten pal Cocchi. Not much of the big grey cat anymore. Chi gets chased by a man, learns how to live on the street and finally is able to leap tall buildings and land on his tiny feet! What new adventures wait for him in volume 4? I can't wait to find out! All around great book from beginning to end!
Once it is cute cats doing cute things. I think I did like part 1 more, but maybe that's because I slightly prefer the parts with Chi and the Yamadas. Regardless, very cute, read it with one of my cats curled up to me and she agrees it's adorable too (well, she would if she could.) The watercolor art is really pretty, too - high quality for sure.
Super awesome!!! I love following Chi on her adventures around town. Now that she’s been hanging out with Cocchi it’s even more fun! Need more Chi! The worst is waiting to get the next volume from the library!
Whether tagging after new friend Cocchi or getting into more mischief at home, Chi continues to delight. It's fun to watch her horizons expand as she learns more about herself and the world around her, and the illustrations are adorable as always.
This was a rollercoaster of a read. From the scary moments when Chi got sick to the happy moments that she spend every moment of her life to even some sad parts that the family had to decide on, I was hooked. Chi is such a precious kitten.
The sweetness continues in Part 3, but don’t mistake this manga as the book version of an ice cream cake buffet. While there is ample sweetness and cuteness, the series takes on mature themes as well, presenting them in a clear, simple way for young readers. Besides the fact that, yes, Chi is irredeemably cute, she is also learning how to make her own way in a world she has not long been in.
In this installment, new friend Cocchi dilutes some of Chi’s boundless cheer, providing a more skeptical, gruff counter to naive, trusting Chi. And if all those bittersweet illustrations of Cocchi waiting for Chi at the fountain in the park fail to stir the heart, then either you are 1) a (bad) dog who has miraculously gained the power of literacy, or you are 2) a tin can that has miraculously gained the power of literacy.
Adorable! You can never have too much Chi in your life. I'm excited to see what happens to Cocchi in the upcoming volumes. (And maybe I'm thinking a bit too realistic, but shouldn't some of the cats/kittens in Chi's Sweet Home be neutered? Uh. Like really soon? Unless you want to have whole new litter of Chis in the future. Nevermind, this is a manga, it doesn't have to be 100% realistic).
I don't really know why I'm giving this book a five star rating, but I've read so many mediocre books this year that I think I'm allowed to think a book is better than it is. My average rating for this year is so much lower than it was last year, and it's because none of the books were really that good, except for the The Legend of Zelda books, which were perfect. But thankfully all the books in this series have been pretty much perfect anyway. You honestly can't go wrong with cat comics, and you can't go wrong with cats in general. They're cute, they have lovely personalities, they are great companions, and they're a lot of fun to hand out with. I am very happy to call myself a cat person, and that certainly didn't make a difference to my rating. I don't think I would have liked the book nearly as much if it had been about dogs. Dogs just don't have the charm and spunk that cats have.
I thought that this book might of been the book where Chi would at the very least meet one of her siblings, but it looks like Konami decided to put all of that stuff in the finale. But Cocchi did get to meet them, and I think he's starting to put things together regarding Chi's family. Although it appears that Chi and Cocchi aren't actually from the same litter, they are practically siblings now. I hope Cocchi is here to stay because Chi needs another kitty friend in her house. My family has always had at least two cats so that they can keep each other company, and seeing as the Yamadas were keeping her as an indoor cat it was extra important that she would have something else in her life to keep things interesting. But to be fair the Yamadas are new cat owners and this is a fictional story, so there's no reason to be upset about it. No kitties were harmed in the making of this story.
I like how these books have gone from being all about Chi to being about all the animals in the area. We have Chi, Cocchi, David, Auntie Calico, our KING Blackie, and all of the other neighborhood kitties. I'm enjoying meeting all of these new characters and I'm looking forward to learning about some of the characters we haven't seen nearly as much of, including Chi's family and Auntie Calico. I also wouldn't complain if we saw more of Mee because I love rabbits, especially Holland Lops. I think this book would really benefit if we got to meet some new human characters. I love the Yamadas, especially Kento, the dad, and Yohei, but it would be really great if we met some more of their friends and family. What if Yohei had a grandmother who was super obsessed with Chi and tried to knit her sweaters or put her in those cat costumes? What if Yohei's group of friends tried chasing her around whenever they were at the house? What if there was a friend who hated cats (as if you can hate cats) and Chi slowly changed their mind? That might be really interesting to see in the story.
I just will say that I feel like this book is supposed to be a relaxing, fun read, but I found it to be so stressful for absolutely no reason other than because I would get so stressed out whenever Chi would run off. Just like with my kitty, Chi doesn't want to leave her family, she just wants to have fun outside, hang out with her kitty friends, and enjoy herself. But whenever the Yamadas couldn't find her and had to go searching for her. Chi don't scare your family (and me) and come home before it gets too cold and dark outside. There were so many times when she got stuck in places and she theoretically could have gotten really hurt if she hadn't have been conveniently found. Chi you need to stop getting into trouble because you are stressing me out!
I've been loving this series so much, and even thought the next book is the last book, but at least there is another series as well as other cat comics from Konami. If I wasn't such a cat lover I might say that I'm set when it comes to cat comics, but in reality I don't think you could ever have enough cat comics. I've been having a lot of fun with all these cat comics and it's been great to have these books that are consistently good and I don't have to wonder whether I'll find it interesting or not.
Any flaws that I had with the past two books really just got washed away by the fact that Cocchi is just a good character. Making a really fun foil to Chi without being an antagonistic person and a negative way is a very interesting character dynamic, Cocchi is by all means and antagonist, but in cheese story it is such a low-tier thing to be an antagonist but by being an antagonist all that means is that you have opinions that are not Chi's, this book is probably the fastest one to read so far, book one and book two take a little bit longer to digest because there's a lot more being given to us. But book three just hasn't flow so nicely, especially with the introduction of just having Cocchi exist besides Chi in multiple ways.
It does bring up the whole family angle which I kind of don't care about, I don't care if she ever finds her mother, and I don't know why these relative cats are still there besides the fact that the mother is obviously trying to find her. But we've seen multiple times that the other two especially the one that looks like Chi is in danger. The cat that looks like Chi is constantly jumped grabbed and bothered. And the mother is obviously struggling to take care of her kids. So while I understand the Japanese family angle it really doesn't go well with the story. But it makes a lovely red herring and if they keep it up with the red herring angle I would love it.
I have now officially burned through the three volumes of Chi that are available and I have a problem, you guys. These books are just too adorable. Too damn adorable. Also, I am way too much of a cat lady to handle them. They seriously make me all mushy and home-sick for the cats. AND they make me want a kitten, even though I just got one in like May and the last time I mentioned it Hubby actually scolded me. He literally said, "Bad Rachael! No!"
If you've ever had a kitten, you are bound to recognize Chi's adventures. The first time she sees a fish. The first time she falls from a height. Trying to play with other cats who may not want to play with her. I love it when she gets distracted by something like a ribbon or a ball when she's mad. These comics seriously manage to capture the essence of kitten.
Man, my cats are going to hate me when I get home tonight.
I read this volume in one setting and couldn't put it down. It just kept putting a smile on my face.
Chi and Cocchi's relationship made me so happy! The way they would wait for each other to play - my heart! I also love how Blackie is there to help and swoop in if needed, but still lets Chi be Chi.
I still have a slight panic attack when Chi goes outside and gets lost. She always ends up in a good place but still... I just want her safe but still able to explore!
This is just a super cute and adorable manga and I can't wait to get my hands on more.
Mya! Once again Chi doesn't disappoint! She's so cute it's guaranteed to make you smile.
In the 3rd Collection Chi gets up to lots of mischief both in and out of her home.
I have to say Chi's family is also very cute, especially the father, some of the expressions he makes are hilarious.
I'm a bit sad thinking that the 4th volume, which I have ready to read (actually I've borrowed two copies, because I left one at home, how unnecessary LOL!) is the last. I want to keep following Chi's adventures!
Loved this installment! Being a cat owner, it's very relatable. Some of the situations Chi gets herself in makes me laugh. Moving and encountering stairs for the first time, a new town to explore and new cats to meet then she realises she recognises some places, just from a different angle.
I love the illustrations in this book and even better that it's all in colour, really adds to the story and feel of Chi's life and adventures.
Can't wait to see what happens in the next book! Love Concchi's and Chi's friendship and hope to see more of their adventures in the next book!