Hakumei and Mikochi live in a little little house in the big big woods.
Hakumei and Mikochi are so small that they can use beetles as beasts of burden, a single mushroom can be a full meal, and the fish are bigger than they are! They live a quiet life in the woods with their friends, taking each day as it comes and enjoying it all the while.
The premise is certain to invite immediate comparisons to other stories with tiny people in it, such as The Borrowers. But Hakumei & Mikochi doesn’t feel very much like any other story that I can think of (also, they don’t have tails). Hakumei and Mikochi aren’t fairies, the other kind of “tiny people” that would usually appear in a setting like this, and the story doesn’t feel reminiscent of a fairy tale at all.
In fact, the story barely feels like a fantasy story despite its cast of clearly non-human characters, tools that reside on the border of technology and magic, and a setting that couldn’t appear in anything but a fantasy. Hakumei & Mikochi is a slice of life story, pure and simple, although honestly the story is a bit too simple.
There aren’t any overarching plots in this manga, as you would expect from a slice of life story, but there also aren’t any conflicts that last more than a chapter or two or even character-related drama. The story does have continuity, as some side characters appear in multiple, non-sequential chapters, but other than that detail you very well could skip around and cherry-pick what chapters to read based on what grabs your attention. I’m normally a fan of slice-of-life stories but Hakumei & Mikochi was too unstructured for me to really enjoy.
For me the art was easily what stuck with me the longest, although even there I have some quibbles. Manga-ka Takuto Kashiki gives every single character the exact same body type and face shape so the character designs begin to look dull very fast. The settings are rather detailed actually, especially since Kashiki doesn’t often skip out on backgrounds and most panels have a proper background (instead of filling the space with screen tones or leaving it as plain black or white).
But I can’t see Kashiki’s art making up for Kashiki’s story, and I don’t think the art is quite special enough for people to purchase the manga for that alone. Ultimately if you are a fan of very languid slice of life stories then this one might be up your alley, but for me it just doesn’t have enough spark to keep me coming back for more.