Many thanks to Yen Press for providing a review copy

About the Mangaka

Sorry, but I couldn’t find anything out about Kim MiKyung. If you have any info please let me know through the contact me page above.

About the Manga

I believe this volume is miss labelled, since it’s not really part of the 11th Cat series, in fact only one story is about the series, the rest are simply collected shorts. I think calling it ‘The collected shorts of Kim MiKyung’ would have been more appropriate.

So if you’re looking for more 11th Cat goodness, your going to be disappointed. However, if your after more of Kim’s excellent story and art work, you’re in for a feast!!

The short stories are all bloody funny, and I was in fits by the time I finished the volume.

The volume comprises of seven short stories from various genres, some of them subtly funny, and others out right funny. Only the second story, 11th Cat Extra doesn’t contain any humour.

I like Kim’s art style, which reminds me of Bride of the Water God at times, it has a nice fluid and clean feel to it. The good thing about this collection is that we can see how her style has changed and grown over the years since her debut in 1997 with ‘Where is the Prince’, and it’s apparently one of Kim’s most emotional stories.

Overall I love this volume, and it’s going on my Essential Read list, I’ll pick up the actual 11th Cat series eventually and read that as well. However, this volume, should be considered a separate entity and can be enjoyed without having reading the rest of the series.

Yen Press did an awesome job with this as usual. Leaving the colour pages intact and the mangaka’s editorial at the end.

However this volume suffers from a sever gutter problem at times. In normal sized manga, knowing the reason, I can accept it. However in these over sized volumes I don’t see a reason for it. Just reduce the size of the panels slightly and the problem is solved.

As always the cover is nice and heavy and glossy, Yen is on of a few publishers to give all of their titles this treatment, and it’s great. Anything that increases longevity in the volumes is a plus IMO.

As I said in my last review, they seem to have settled on a lower quality paper now, which seems to be more inline with Tokyopop’s and Viz’s. While I can understand the need for them to do this, to reduce costs, it is a shame since we had the white paper originally. However I figured it would be gone eventually, since Yen are one of the cheapest manga providers out there, with their titles going for a mere £5.99 (Same as Viz’s shojo line).

They also include a preview of Very Very Sweet, which piqued my interest. After reading the synopsis on the site I was interested, but not overly so. however after reading the preview it got me wanting to read it

Where to Buy 

As always the Book Depository and Waterstones carry it in stock. However remember to use Waterstones where possible to help support Yen in their UK releases.