Moukin-chan

AustinDR Dec 28, 2021

7

Moukin-chan is about a young man working at a bird-themed cafe known as GWAHIR (whatever that means) sometime after first meeting one of the waitresses named Rui Mouhin. Rui is your average girl really: she works her part-time job; she goes to school; she can turn her head at a 180-degree angle. Wait, what?   So, yeah. Rui is not human. For one, she can walk on power lines like she was some trapeze expert at a local circus. She also had the strange knack of summoning birds of all species to her. And then the manga gets even more bizarre when it turns out that Rui's friends and her coworkers are all birds. Add in the story of the Grateful Crane and you have one of the most insane premises of a manga you have ever heard of. Yet, strangely, it is entertaining.   Alright, so starting off with Rui herself. She turns out to be a raptor, an apex predator i.e. a Blakiston's fish owl. Which makes a good bit of sense due to her being able to swerve her head and her incapability of making a genuine smile. Oddly, instead of deterring other birds, she instead is able to draw them to her due to her status as a top predator. She is cute, I'd admit, but she also comes off as bland when it comes to the rest of the cast. But for what it's worth, she does have some good chemistry with Kotori and wants to know more about him.   Kotori has an interesting case of character development. He initially started off as being short-tempered and wrathful with his group of friends sometimes slugging them for the smallest of inconveniences. I didn't really get the notion of him developing genuine feelings for Rui: rather, he seemed more irate that she would make a fool out of him. And then her friend Makimi makes him a servant and forces him through grievous work that...kind of breaks his mind and he becomes more sociable. He was rehabilitated, but at the same time, it didn't feel like it was an earned effort from his end.   His interactions with Rui are somewhat bland, but I appreciate that he is trying to get to know her more.   As for the remainder of the cast, they are a mixed bag.   There is Makimi Ono, a cassowary, which makes total sense due because cassowaries are demons on two legs if you've seen one in captivity or a nature documentary. Her backstory is interesting: unlike most wild animals, Makimi developed a deep respect for humans that she became one, but her "playful" battling with some humans ended with them getting badly hurt. So, she took that and decided to rehabilitate aggressors which is what she did to Kotori. She also holds no prejudice towards people and full-on supports Kotori's feelings for Rui.   Saya (a Japanese White-Eye) is likely the worst character in the manga. For the first ten chapters all, there was to her was her deep obsessive love for Rui that was truly off-putting. But she would also be on the receiving end of getting hurt whenever she oversteps her boundaries, so there's that. And then there was her backstory. Unlike Makimi's, Saya is an uninteresting character that I didn't really feel compelled to want to know more about because she was that obnoxious.   Their manager is an Emperor Penguin which by itself leaves the question of how the frick did an Emperor penguin leave Antarctica and ended up in Japan? There is an answer for it which leads to probably the most insanely interesting backstory out of the flock, though unfortunately, there wasn't much further elaboration. He also loves police officers to an unhealthy amount. Next door across the street is a crow that he knew of, and he is obviously unaware of the crush she harbors on him.   The art style is pretty good for the story it is trying to tell with special detail to the design of the feathers of the various birds featured in the manga. The shading is also done well; I like how Rui's hair appears to shine for instance.