Ichiro Kuga didn’t originally intend to be a manga-ka for a living, but when his dad dies suddenly after his first work is published, drawing manga seems like the fastest way for a high school graduate to make a living while looking after two younger siblings.
But making manga is hard, so Kuga is glad when his editor finds an assistant to help him out, one young woman named Shiori Goshiki, even if it seems like she’s led an oddly sheltered life before this. As the two of them grow closer to each other, it seems as though both of their worlds will be broadening in ways they couldn’t imagine (and that might just provide inspiration for their manga!).
When I first saw the title for this series I thought that it was meant to be more metaphorical than literal, a broadening of horizons for all the characters involved as they begin new stages of their lives. A Galaxy Next Door is that kind of story but it’s also a more literal title, as Goshiki moves into another one of the apartments in the building that Kuga manages (an inheritance from his father) and Kuga quickly, albeit accidentally, discovers just why it seems like she grew up in another world. I was pleasantly surprised how quickly the relationship between Kuga and Goshiki developed in this first volume — I was expecting a far longer “will they or won’t they” (there’s even a one panel gag where Goshiki laments how they won’t be able to build up a relationship over 10 volumes like she wanted), but it seems like they “will”, after a fashion at least.
There’s a slight melancholiness to this story but it’s not an overpowering feeling; it seems as if enough time has passed that the death of the Kuga family’s father doesn’t sting quite as much and that Goshiki has resolved herself to hold no regrets as she goes out into the world. There’s also a lot of little moments of humor in the story, it’s definitely not Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun levels of absurdity when Kuga and Goshiki are creating manga but there’s still a lot of laughs; jokes like how a pen name doesn’t match the person’s real world image or the absurdity of some shoujo tropes might be staples but they’re staples for a reason! I do wonder what will come of the comments that Kuga didn’t set out to write a shoujo manga — he wanted to create a shounen-style series at first but his attempt at that flopped, so seeing him succeed where he once (commercially at least) failed before could make for a nicely satisfying storyline to match with Goshiki’s subplot of maybe drawing a series of her own.
With such a packed spring anime season ramping up, I don’t think that the adaptation of this series will be at the top of my to-watch list but I’m definitely interested in checking it out, or checking out further manga volumes, when I get a chance!