The Fall 2024 Manga Guide

Mono

What's It About? 

The Photography Club is in danger of shutting down?! And the Cinema Club too?! Fret not, for they shall merge and become…Cinephoto Club! Now, club members Satsuki, An, and Sakurako are asked to be the main characters for manga artist Haruno's latest work that's centered around action cameras. The girls head out to capture the lovely sights of Japan, exploring gadgets around them, and of course, chomp on the local delicacies along the way!

mono has a story and art by Afro, with English translation by Amber Tamosaitis. This volume was lettered by Chiho Christie. Published by Yen Press (November 19, 2024).

Is It Worth Reading?

I know the Cute-Girls-Doing-Cute-Things subgenre of slice-of-life 4koma is contentious for some, but mono here comes to us courtesy of Afro, creator of the superlative iyashikei entry that is Laid-Back Camp. And from the fertile mind of that artist (who enjoys eschewing capital letters) comes…something that really, really feels like more Laid-Back Camp. I guess if you've nailed down a niche it's fair to stick to it, but from its opening pages of cozy rural backdrops to the temperate tour the story ends up taking audience members on, it's hard not to see mono as more than an expansion pack for the cozy camping series.

Granted, it doesn't necessarily start that way. mono is the story of girls in a photography club. Their method of interacting with the outdoor world around them is through novel digital cameras with 360-degree lenses and portable action-shot ability. It's a neat enough focus for a manga like this, letting the panels break into some neat panoramas occasionally. The schoolgirls' antics are backed up by the story of Haruno, a cool manga artist who may or may not be Afro's self-insert. See, Haruno winds up producing a 4koma manga in-universe, basing her characters' antics on those of the Cine-Photo Study Club. Swaths of the story (such as it is) are given over to Haruno's antics, along with her friend Kako, to the point that one wonders if this series is about photography or simply manga metatext. And that's before mention of a certain "camping-themed manga" sends Haruno and the other girls on a tour of all the notable landmarks and activity spots in the area around Mt. Fuji and heeeeeey wait a minute.

It's at this point that mono truly turns into a rehashed Laid-Back Camp rerun, concocting different reasons for the characters to go on different rural sightseeing tours. The photography stuff falls wholly by the wayside by the second half here, with the club girls decidedly playing backup to ruminations on the power of scenery and real-life basis in manga and making readers want to go there. Haruno herself is an entertaining character—I respect any adult who can be motivated to down ten bottles of wine and splurge on fancy ham. But it's still insufficient to convey mono enough of its own identity beyond being Laid-Back Camp with characters readers aren't as endeared to. That's without getting into how dang crusty the screentones came through on the digital review copy read for this write-up, but hopefully that's not endemic to the final retail release. Afro's art is plenty cute otherwise, even if some of the girls can be hard to tell apart due to unfamiliarity and being squished down into these 4koma panels. Check it out if you've wholly exhausted your Laid-Back Camp reserves and desperately need more of a fix, but just know that its solid start can't cover for it coasting on motorcycle fumes in the back half.

Manga artist Afro likes a couple of things: motorbikes, good food, travel, and cute girls. It should be no surprise that their sophomore manga, mono, offers plenty more of the same. Because this manga ostensibly stars a high school photography club, the title refers to monoscopic 360 imagery, the type of filmography one can render with a panoramic camera or a drone. But as the manga continues, it seems as if Afro tired of this affectation and slid back into what made them famous: Laid-Back Camp itself. Much of the manga features the forgettable new characters embarking on a pilgrimage of Laid-Back Camp settings. Beautiful sketches that look as if they were taken with a fisheye lens break up this otherwise derivative 4-panel comic that, put simply, wishes it was just Laid-Back Camp.

Satsuki is a high school girl motivated by a crush on her photography club senpai to keep the club active after said senpai has graduated. She gathers a couple of other photography buffs to join her, but none of these girls are very memorable—I can barely tell them apart! Instead, the manga's most developed character is Haruno, an adult manga artist who serves as Afro's avatar. The girls meet her while shopping at Haruno's grandma's dagashi-ya, and from then on, the dynamic of the manga shifts from “photography club doing things” to “Haruno chauffeuring the club around to do research on her manga.” You guessed it, Haruno's manga is ALSO about cute girls doing cute things. The bulk of the volume features the characters traveling around Yamanashi to see where Rin, Nadeshiko and their pals camped. But lest you think they're fans of a fictional manga, Nadeshiko herself later pops up as a character here! So she's a real person in the mono universe as well as the star of a well-known manga in the mono universe? Don't worry about it! This whole manga is phoning it in, capitalizing on the success of Laid-Back Camp.

For all its flaws, there's a reason Afro's first manga did so well, and a major part is their knack for portraying locations and food in a way that makes you want to go there. mono was no different in that respect. I really want to visit the winery they go to! The 4-panel comics don't have much depth to them, but the interludes where Afro goes ham on gorgeous background art, dutifully rendered as if it had been photographed with a monoscopic view, is fantastic. Readers who are already Laid-Back Camp fans will want to check out this manga—and it's clear that Afro realizes that the Venn Diagram for fans of that manga and this one is a circle.