Kon Kon Kokon – Volume 1

For the first of my reviews in my “revived” blog, I have decided that I will review some of the stuff that I bought while I was in a bookshop I recently found. Alas, I wasn’t expecting to buy anything but when I found the manga section they had (Rather rare to find large amounts of manga in Australia), I decided it was time to swoop and spent a fair portion of money on them. This title, Kon Kon Kokon was something that I had my eyes on for awhile but wasn’t able to find. Was it worth the money that I spent? Here is my review on it.

Artwork: First of all, I have to add that the graphic styling is the cutest that I have seen in my life. It has all been creatively done with all the main characters looking distinctly different from one another (There are no main overlapping features) and there has evidently been care in drawing them. There were some character designs that are similar toother Koge-Donbo mangas such as Kamichama Karin however this will be discussed at a later point in the review. In regards to the landscape, it gives off a sense of reality in that it does not go overboard with the landscape design and does not attempt to go “all out” like other mangas can do at times. In simple words, keeping it simple and stunning. The only overboard factor that was implemented into the art work was Ren going into other personalities when it came to Yokai.

Characters: I ask all readers a question, who would not like a cute foxgirl/miko in a manga? Not many of you I know. The characters also have various personalities which differ and each play a different role in the series. From the quiet ghost-loving Ren who goes crazy over anything regarding Yokai to Kokon who plays the carer role to him, althrough doing it in a manner which is surprisingly humerous. The characters suit the theme well, with none of them being overly “chirpy” while none of them are overly melancholic. In fact, I would put the character personalities on the same level as Pita Ten, but less tragic. Of course, this only touches the surface of the character designs. Another nice touch is that it displays that it runs parallel to other animes such as Kamichama Karin with characters named Kazune and Himeka, using the same character designs for them.

Storyline:

“Ren just wants to be one of the cool kids, but it doesn’t help that secretly he’s just a nerdy monster fanatic. That is, until a young girl named Kokon shows up. She claims to be a fox that he had helped years ago and now she wants to return the favor. With the fox girl Kokon by his side, will Ren be able to become the most popular kid in school?”

 This storyline sounds rather generic and that is why I was hesitant about buying it at first, but honestly the storyline works very well with everything else and is very successful. It has really made me excited to see the next volume whenever it comes out. The first volume comes with a total of 6 chapters, which begin to introduce all the 6 main characters, as well as revealing the potential that the manga has.

Extra’s:  This manga volume had a generous amount of added features including:

• The preview manga of the series, displayed in other mangas.
• Yokai Encyclopedia
• Translation Notes
• Plenty of cute artwork at the start of each chapter.
• Limited Edition Item (Which I could not send away for, me being in Australia)

Overall, there were plenty of extras to keep me happy with this.

Quality of Manga:  I cannot help but say this is definately the most high quality manga I have ever seen. In comparison to the normal soft-cover book covers which have the plastic-like cover to it, it was much superior with it being non-plastic like and more like a hard-cover novel, despite it being a soft-cover book (Sorry, that was the only way I could describe it). Inside was also well printed, however I must add that in my copy (Not sure about all copies), there were a few pages that seemed to have the speech bubbles going over the end of the page and missing a letter or two. No big deal as they were obvious words however it was a tiny little printing mistake that took it away from the perfect score. However, the simple quality of everything still gives it a very high score.

Other Bits of Information:

Price I bought it for: $AU21.95

Total # of Chapters: 6, not including extras

Total # of pages: 216, not including advertisments, 208 not including extras/advertisments.

English Publisher: Broccoli Books

Publisher Website: http://www.broccolibooks.com/index.htm

Producer: Koge-Donbo

Rating: E – Everyone

Overall Score:

Artwork: 5 (A)

Characters: 5 (A)

Storyline: 4 (B)

Extras: 4 (B)

Quality:4 (B)

Overall: 4.4 (A)

Overall Review: While this is definitely not for the manga-fan which only enjoys fighting manga, if you have an enjoyment of comedy or even cute anime, then I would honestly recommend purchasing Kon Kon Kokon if you have not already. While I was hesitant at first at purcasing it, despite me wanting it for ages, once I picked it up and read it, I found that it had brought back my passion for manga, which was taken over by anime for a while.