A Pen, Handcuffs, and a Common-Law Marriage Volume 1 Review

Usually what attracts me to new manga series is the premise or perhaps the creators involved, but for this Yen Press title it was, in fact, the translator, Ko Ransom. Couple that with the fact this is a mystery series, and I was more than willing to give A Pen, Handcuffs, and a Common-Law Marriage a try.

The story follows forty-year-old detective Eiji Kirisame, a man who isn’t happy unless he’s got a case to work on and whom his coworkers tease for being all but married to the job. One day during what should be a routine investigation of someone causing trouble at an abandoned arcade, Eiji and his team witness what appears to be a suicide right in front of them. However, it’s not all as it seems, and there’s a witness who desperately wants to help Eiji reach the truth of the case.

This witness is 18-year-old high school student Tsugumi Kuchinashi, who is mute and uses a notebook and pen to converse. She thinks that the apparent suicide was actually a murder, and having been at the scene earlier than Eiji, she has relevant information to share. But given she can only communicate through the notebook and some quite abstract drawings, Eiji has a hard time following along. Still, her knack for solving crimes is second to none, and she soon proves herself a capable investigator.

Once the case is solved, Eiji finds himself presented with a problem in that Tsugumi asks him to marry her. And while he thinks he’s managed to dodge the matter by reasoning that they’re unlikely to ever see one another again, a few days later she turns up at his police station eager to continue the conversation. Matters only get worse when there’s a bomb threat and Tsugumi has an idea of the culprit’s intended target but refuses to help as long as Eiji refuses to marry her. Will his conviction break with so many lives at stake?

Obviously off the bat, we have a theme that is going to rub many readers the wrong way. Although Eiji has no romantic feelings for Tsugumi at all, the idea of a 40-year-old man getting married to an 18-year-old is uncomfortable. But although Tsugumi is pursuing him in this manner, it’s not to say she’s romantically interested in him either. In fact, her reasoning for pursuing him in all this is yet to be revealed. On the surface she plays a maiden in love, but I think in truth there’s something more to it. How that progresses is going to be a deal breaker for many, I suspect.

The other problem is that this seems like a series that is confused about what it wants to be, perhaps due to editorial interference! In the afterword, author Shinichi Sawaragi talks about this being a manga that’s half mystery, half romantic comedy. However, they like mysteries and, if left to their own devices, put more focus on those, while it falls to their romantic-comedy-loving editor to bring them back on track. That would explain why it feels at odds with itself at times, and perhaps it would have been better off leaning more heavily into comedy like Detectives These Days Are Crazy! does.

As far as the actual mystery element goes, I found this fairly interesting. The crimes and twists can be unrealistic at times, but how Tsugumi goes about trying to convey the answers to Eiji and how she reaches these conclusions are entertaining in their own right. What’s a little bit disappointing is that Eiji seems to have very little agency. For such a hard-working detective, he regularly seems to get stumped when it comes to the make-or-break moment, mostly to give Tsugumi a reason for existing. I find it hard to believe he struggled this much prior to meeting her, given his reputation at the station. I’m hoping as things go on, Sawaragi will figure out a way to balance this side of things.

We’ve talked a lot about Sawaragi so far, but this series is actually brought to life by a duo! The other half of the pair is Tank Gasuyama, who handles the artwork. By and large, I do like the artwork, although quite often pages are filled with speech bubbles with not a great deal of space for anything else. Character designs also vary quite heavily; I like Tsugumi’s, but Eiji’s facial structure feels a bit strange, as it does for some other characters in the work. There’s also not a lot to visually clue in a reader as to who a given criminal is, so we find ourselves in a similar position to Eiji, where Tsugumi has to explain it all.

Still, this has proved to be a popular series on the Japanese side, where it’s still ongoing with seven  volumes and recently had an anime adaptation announced. So, I’m hopeful that a lot of the problems I’m listing here are something that simply plague Volume 1 but get better as it goes on.

As mentioned, A Pen, Handcuffs, and a Common-Law Marriage Volume 1 comes to the West thanks to Yen Press and has been translated by Ko Ransom with lettering by Ivo Marques. The release reads well, and I think all involved have done a great job given the sheer amount of text and the presentation required to make it all fit when shifting from Japanese to English. There are no colour pages or extras to speak of, but there doesn’t appear to have been any in the Japanese release either.

Volume 2 of this is currently scheduled for an English release in October, and then there’s nothing further scheduled right now. I suspect we may only end up seeing a couple of these a year at this pace unless it speeds up once the anime is airing (that’s currently not dated).

Overall A Pen, Handcuffs, and a Common-Law Marriage’s first outing proves quite a mixed bag. There are some interesting elements here, but also a heap of problems that may well put prospective readers off before it has the chance to properly grow into its potential. With an anime on the horizon, it’s worth keeping an eye on even if you don’t rush out to buy it right now.

A free preview can be read on the publisher’s website
Our review copy was supplied by Yen Press
© Shinichi Sawaragi / Tank Gasuyama / HAKUSENSHA Inc