A Man & His Cat Volume 14 Review

Retired concert pianist and widower Fuyuki Kanda – the proud owner of exotic short hair Fukumaru – has still not managed to overcome his inability to perform on stage. In an attempt to come to terms with his fears, he decides to disguise himself (a wig, facemask and dark glasses) and go to play on the street piano on the observation deck of a building downtown. Just his luck, then, that Hikaru, a precocious young pianist, is there first (he has a very high opinion of his own abilities!) and is ready to challenge any other would-be pianist threatening to steal his thunder. Each performer is only supposed to play for five minutes and poor Kanda soon feels overwhelmed. He starts to reminisce about his teacher, the formidable red-haired Margarethe Dressel, who took him on as a boy, much to Hikaru’s disgust. So he – and young Hikaru – are astonished when one of the passers-by says, “I’d like to hear the rest. Little boy, won’t you play it for me.” Looking up, he recognizes his teacher – and his nerves disappear. Regaining his self-confidence, he delivers a performance of the third movement of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata that enchants all the passers-by. And then it’s time to catch up! He invites Margarethe back to his house to meet Fukumaru (she has many cats herself) and young Hikaru tags along too. Is this the beginning of Kanda’s renaissance as a pianist on the concert stage? Margarethe has some harsh advice for him – but it’s part of the rigorous self-assessment she puts herself through as well.

More of the same? Well, yes – but Umi Sakurai manages to keep it fresh and involving. She continues to manage her increasingly large cast of musicians and their cats with ease, delivering more moments of feline hi-jinks combined with touching human dilemmas. My only slight quibble? Surely Geoffroy’s delightful kittens wouldn’t have stayed so small for all this length of time? It helps us to identify them alongside the other cats (kittens = small, Fukumaru and Marin = large and roly-poly) but it’s stretching the bounds of possibility a little too far. (Although, I suppose in manga/anime about children such as School Babysitters, the cute nursery-age tinies stay small for many volumes, so maybe it’s the same creator’s license here…)

The flashbacks to young Fuyuki’s relationship with his flamboyant red-haired teacher and what he came to learn from her about life as well as playing the piano are fascinating. But in case it seems as if the human drama with Kanda and his charming but exacting teacher Margarethe Dressel is going to dominate this volume, the cats soon take over again. When Teruaki Kuju turns up, excited at the prospect of starting lessons with Geoffroy, he’s about to start to play for his new teacher when who should he discover sleeping on the piano keyboard but Fukumaru? Geoffroy insists that they mustn’t disturb the sleeping cat and even starts to demonstrate how to play around Fukumaru – but then the kittens appear and take up the rest of the available keyboard space. The humans have to admit defeat but getting the chance to talk together as they wait for the cats to move on helps to break the ice as Geoffroy begins to tell Kuju about his parents.

And then, Marin and the kittens spot another cat in the garden. Fukumaru (who’s been feeling under the weather) joins them and recognizes the scruffy-looking cat as his and Marin’s big brother. They call out to him but their big brother only turns away and limps off. What can have happened to him?

Expertly translated for Square Enix Manga (as usual) by Taylor Engel with lettering to match by Lys Blakeslee, this is another attractive volume to match the earlier ones with colour images at front and back, a guide to the main characters and a one-page strip by Sakurai celebrating her tenth anniversary as a published mangaka! There’s also a preview of the first pages of Volume 15 to whet your appetite (it’s due out in April) and there are several amusing and mischievous 4-koma gag manga sprinkled throughout the volume (usually depicting the antics of the cats and the efforts of their owners to understand their puzzling behaviour. Cats…)

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).