A Man & His Cat Volume 13 Review
Fuyuki Kanda’s pianist friend (and rival) Kanade Hibino has inherited Marin, Fukumaru’s exotic shorthair sister, from his mother – and as he’s off on tour, he asks Mr. Kanda to look after her. But when Mr. Kanda tries to get Marin out of the cat carrier, there’s a problem. She’s so big now that it takes a major effort to extract her. Hibino confesses that he might have been overfeeding her. “She’s so cute when she begs that I end up giving her things…” Mr. Kanda remembers that when Hibino’s away, Marin tends to go off her food as she misses him… but when it’s the cats’ mealtime this seems to be no longer the case. She scoffs her own food, then steals Fukumaru’s and the food for Geoffroy’s five rescue kittens. However, Fukumaru is very much aware that Marin is pining for her owner so he sets out to find some cat treats for her in the kitchen to cheer her up. Soon the kittens come to assist – with predictably chaotic results!
Nevertheless, all’s well (on the whole) in the Kanda household but when Mr. Kanda goes in to the music school to teach he discovers poor Yoshiharu Moriyama, his younger colleague, in a state of despair. It turns out that two of the new members he’d recruited for his band have dropped out – and he needs to show up at the agency with the whole band the very next day or the contract will be cancelled. Mr. Kanda determines that he’ll do all he can to help Moriyama find two replacements but as night falls, they’ve only signed up one. Just as Mr. Kanda is on his last legs, a young man appears before him. “You don’t know a thing, huh?” he says with a strange smile. “I ditched Moriyama at that show. I’m one of his former bandmates.”
And so Mr. Kanda gets to hear the whole sorry story as to why the bandmates let Moriyama down so badly. But why has this original member turned up? (He’s the drummer.) Does he feel remorse for what happened? Was he strong-armed by the others into quitting? Is he back – and if so, can he be trusted not to bail and let Moriyama down again?
The balance between the ‘Man’ content and the ‘Cat’ content of the title tips toward the humans in this volume. Apart from the chapter devoted to Marin and her weight gain, Moriyama’s crisis in trying to establish his band dominates the drama – and the revelations about the members of his original band make painful reading. Just in case we’re left feeling depressed by the attitude of the original band members that good-hearted Moriyama genuinely believed he was working with as a team, Umi Sakurai restores our spirits with Chapter 109 ‘The Joy of Work’ which has all the cats engaging in play with their humans. Well, it’s supposed to be play but Mr. Kanda and Geoffroy are trying to devise ways to keep Fukumaru and Marin (a) out of the fridge and (b) working/playing hard to get their daily rations in the hope Marin will become more active and lose weight. When Sorako (Kanda’s entomologist daughter) joins in the fun by showing the cats a live cockroach she’s captured, the cats get really excited – and the roach gets out! There are other fun chapters here, especially one involving Mr. Kanda’s old friend Kobayashi – and a different fantasy bonus story called ‘A Mage And His Cat’ in which the mangaka has some fun with her favourite characters in a very different setting.
We’ve almost caught up with Japan as Volume 15 is due out in June – and the US version of Volume 14 is promised in December. This thirteenth volume is another very nice edition from Square Enix Manga, with four colour plates at the front and two at the back (always a welcome addition) and a sneak peek at Volume 14 at the end. There are the usual amusing 4-koma snapshots of cat life involving Fukumaru between chapters. And there’s an afterword from Umi Sakurai, this time nostalgically remembering her first work to be published: Oblivion Days, ten years ago.
Another very enjoyable volume in this saga of pianists and their feline pets has been translated for us as before by Taylor Engel, who still excels at rendering Japanese catspeak into English. “I want mew to eat mewr fill, Sis,” Fukumaru says to Marin. “If mewr’s tummy’s full, mew’ll cheer up.” And all the different cat and human dialogues are expertly conveyed again throughout by Lys Blakeslee’s lettering.
If you’re a fan of Fukumaru and his kindly musician owner, you really won’t want to miss this latest episode in the ongoing saga of A Man & His Cat.
Read a free preview at the publisher’s website here.
Our review copy from Square Enix Manga was supplied by Turnaround Comics (Turnaround Publisher Services).
