The absurdity of CITY, where you’ll be greeted with an old landlady who must be a genetically enhanced supervillain, a family that owns a restaurant and gets weird stuff sent to them by their mom, and an old man spying on said restaurant for various reasons, is high. The thing that’s a surprising problem is that the humor is lacking in this first volume. The good news is it can get better. The bad news is it could stay the same. Because of how silly it all is, I hope it gets better!
There is a main character we follow in Keiichi Arawi’s CITY — Midori Nagumo, a college student who just can’t pay her rent. As she struggles to avoid her persistent landlady, a cast of characters appear, some with odder quirks than the others. From her best friend Niikura who aspires to be a photographer with the name “Michael J. Niikura”, to a girl who manages to give away artifacts and not find an appraiser to find out how much they’re worth, and to the entire CITY Editorial Department team that truly believes no one believes their horoscopes, Midori’s more than likely gonna interact with them at some point. She’s gonna enjoy or despise those encounters.
If you haven’t figured it out, CITY’s gonna be a mess of stories. We might find out if the city has a name (probably not). Also might figure out if the bird getting its beak stuck into a rock will matter to someone (also not likely). In truth, we’re just gonna get the bizarre. Not only are we gonna get weird situations, but from character arms moving around frantically to college girls making duck faces, the art is gonna be weird too. The good kind of weird of course, as Arawi continues to display fantastic character actions in this area. As you read this manga, whatever happens in the work will at least make you smile.
However, you may not quite laugh that much with it. The humor is not so great at the moment. Amusing for sure, but the set-ups lack punch right now. It doesn’t mean there aren’t some stories I liked. The one that’ll be memorable for me is the mangaka meeting with the editor as they tried to create a story. Let’s just say lots of tears flowed in that one. And the other one is where the family made their son put on a mini skirt. It was only hilarious because of how naive and dumb he was to believe in horoscopes.
But for the most part, CITY didn’t have much of a pay-off to its jokes, nor it was funny enough in general. It’s absurd in the ways I like, but isn’t able to create the moment that sets off the humor. I do think it can get better, and just the art alone keeps everything fresh. It’s just not off to a strong start with its first volume, and I’m looking forward to seeing how volume 2 shakes out.