Beautiful Muco! GN 1
I enjoy dogs. They are typically stunning, majestic creatures who would sacrifice their lives for the smallest of things, yet I don’t love them because they frequently make an effort to be obedient. I adore them because, in our opinion, dogs have mastered the skill of finding delight in even the most unremarkable and basic aspects of life. I wish that in a society that is constantly rife with social, economic, and political instability, all I had to worry about was how sparkling my nose was. yet I digress. Although I’ve used the word “simple” to describe many things in previous reviews, Lovely Muco! takes the prize.
The short manga chapters in Lovely Muco! follow our young puppy, Muco, who is the devoted canine of a glassmaker who is attempting to make a life. The dog frequently describes what is happening with a simple mental process, but the appeal is in that. Have you ever seen the movie UP, in which the dogs had collars that allowed them to communicate, in which we observed their hyperfocus on seemingly random objects? This manga is essentially that, with the exception that only the reader knows what the dog is thinking.
This kind of manga shouldn’t be read all at once because it might be rather repetitive. Lovely Muco! is unquestionably one of those manga that feels better when read online or published once a week on a dedicated website. Before continuing with the rest of your day, you read a chapter to experience a brief burst of unadulterated joy. Nevertheless, Lovely Muco! justifies its simplicity because the entire thing is meant to be seen from a dog’s perspective, in contrast to the majority of other manga that are constructed that way.
Everything has this fundamental crudeness that appears flat with little shading. While Muco frequently alternates between the same three expressions throughout the book, whether she is excited, perplexed, or anxious, the human characters occasionally take on these hilarious proportions. Although the panel designs are fairly simple, I must praise the book’s lettering and the way it contrasts between Muco’s line of thinking and the way everyone else speaks in the book. The details matter.
The structure is more like a collection of moments strung together rather than building to a single, clear punchline. The fact that this dog’s owner is working to increase the profitability of his business in the background doesn’t really get played off as a big deal; it’s simply another day in this dog’s life. If anything, it serves as a pretext for setting up frequent interactions between the dog and her owner, and even while the relationship isn’t shown as being the ideal one between a child and his dog, those moments seem incredibly genuine. He finds her eccentric antics as annoying as he finds her cute, which makes their relationship feel much more organic.
As I hinted at earlier, it is challenging to endorse a collection of chapters that are organized in this manner. Since the humor is repetitious, it is advisable to take it in small bites rather than all at once. It’s similar to eating a tiny bag of chips after a long day at work; it won’t fill you up in the traditional sense, but it might make you grin since it feels like a brief respite. However, I believe that Lovely Muco! only succeeds in evoking that emotion because everything comes off as sincere and honest. Yes, it is simple, but there is a certain allure to that simplicity.
