Mono Volume 1 Review
From the creator of Laid-Back Camp, this is a series which is also happy to take a big bright look at the great outdoors.
It begins with two schoolgirls, Satsuki Amamiya and An Kiriyama, who are the only members of their school’s photography club ever since an elder student graduated. As a result, Satsuki in particular is in a funk, mainly because nearly all of her photos were of said elder student. To make things worse, she bought a camera online which turned out to be a scam, leading An to help her track the scammer down. Turns out that it wasn’t a scam at all. The seller, a manga artist called Haruno Akiyama, had just forgotten to send it, thanks to a combination of illness and approaching deadlines. She hands over a 3D camera to Satsuki and the trio become friends.
Haruno, meanwhile, has her other problems. One minor issue is that she’s a terrible driver, but her big issue is that her editor has commissioned her to make a new manga, but it has some strict requirements. It has to be a four-panel yonkoma comic, and it has to be about a bunch of high school girls. Inspired by Satsuki and An, she makes a comic based on their love of photography. An buys an action camera, and together the group travel the local area. The club members take their photos, and Haruno draws her manga based on their experiences.
Later, due to their small membership, Satsuki and An find themselves having to merge with another group at the school, the film study club, whose only member is Sakurako Shikishima. She is more than happy to go along with the change, forming the cinephoto study group, and soon she joins them on Haruno’s trips. Often accompanying them is another friend of Haurno’s, motorbike-riding Kako Komada, who makes a living from making motovlogs. She gives the gang new ideas for places to visit.
A few things are worth highlighting. First of all, you don’t need to have read Laid-Back Camp to enjoy Mono. This is my first time reading the work of manga artist Afro, and this series is certainly good. As you can probably guess, the best bits are the wide landscape shots taken by the members of the club. If you are familiar with Afro’s previous title, one major difference between the two is that Mono is drawn in a yonkoma style, but this doesn’t appear to detract from the story itself. The characters are entertaining, and there are plenty of comic moments. Aside from Haruno’s terrible driving and her attempts to improve, one recurring gag is Haruno’s pet cat which despite being a house cat, has a habit of wandering off on its own and ending up in the remote places the gang are visiting.
Regarding the production, the translation from Amber Tamosaitis is good as is the lettering from Chiho Christie. There are some colour pages at the start of the book, providing some even more wonderful landscape art. There are also nine pages of translation notes, providing useful information on the places the group all visit, which are based on real-life locations.
Mono is certainly a nice, heart-warming manga in its own right, and also makes me want to dive into Afro’s back catalogue and investigate their most famous work. Laid-Back Camp is also released by Yen Press, and the anime is streamed via Crunchyroll. Mono has its own anime coming out in 2025.
Our review copy from Yen Press was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.
