Many thanks to Yen Press for providing a review copy

About the Mangaka

Not a lot if info available on Aoki Ume, or rather none :( From what I have found, this seems to be her first work. She does have a personal website with a cute Yuno on it!!

About the Manga

sketch_3

Dear gods someone save me!!! I think I cracked every rib in my body laughing over this volume!!

Oh man this volume was sooooo funny.

Aoki’s style has become sharper over the volumes, and the characters have cleaner feel to them. I also noticed the number of drawing mistakes were less in this volume.

4-Koma style is very restrictive in what she’s able to show, and the space to show it. Aoki uses this to her advantage and really does put on an excellent display. I especially loved her use of chibi’s, which while there were a lot of them, weren’t overly used.

She also makes excellent use of colouring, and wish she’d done more than just the first few pages in colour.

Story wise, well there is no story lol. Basically as in volume one it’s just a day in the life thing. In a way it’s not that different from GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class which I just reviewed. However the difference is in the way the mangaka’s focus the story. While GA sort of just meanders through, Sketch does have a bit of focus making it easier to follow and get into.

Aoki also has better humour that’s easier to understand and genuinely chuckle over. I found this to be a truly enjoyable volume.

The one thing I don’t like about this series (and 4-koma in general), is they’re to damned short. You just get into them, when they’re over, leaving you craving more. I found this especially true this volume, when I got to the end I found I was disappointed. Especially given that Aoki wasted two pages for a pointless afterword. She could have easily added another set of panels rather than the pointless stuff we got.

Sure I liked the pencil sketches she included, but since these volumes are short as it is, it feels like a wasted space to me.

Yen Press have once again done an excellent job with this volume, the colour pages are given the glossy treatment, and literally shine. (I really want to see Aoki do a full proper manga, as in not a 4-koma one.) The translation was smooth and consistent, and even the humour was translated over well. Which was something I felt was lacking in GA Design Class.

I do wish that Yen had merged two volumes into one though, 4-koma always feel a bit on the skimpy side.

Also there’s no info on if/when we’ll be getting volume four. Seems Yen Press only licensed the first three volumes initially.

Needless to say this series easily retains it’s place on my Essential Read list.

Where to Buy

This volume is due for release on the 21st April 2009

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