Whoever Steals This Book Volume 1 Manga Review – Review

Fiction about fiction is a weird, woolly, postmodern fantasy genre I tend to enjoy. The best examples from the Western comic oeuvre I can think of would either be Neil Gaiman‘s The Sandman or Mike Carey’s The Unwritten. Both play with the structures and tropes of fantasy storytelling to construct something referential and fresh. Whoever Steals This Book perhaps doesn’t aim for the same literary heights or narrative complexity as its occidental cousins, though so far it’s an entertaining and attractive adaptation of its (so-far untranslated, Japanese language) source novel.

As this is the first of three volumes, much of the first two chapters are concerned with introducing the setting, characters, and central conflict. It does take a while to get to the point, and I struggled to pay attention to what is essentially a prolonged info dump about Mifuyu’s family and town history. This is all vital information, however, as once the first stolen book’s curse is activated, the world changes in weird ways to mirror the book’s story.

Whoever Steals This Book is split into multiple distinct story arcs, and this volume covers the three-chapter first arc and the first chapter of the second. Each arc, it seems, will focus on a different genre of book, with the first story-within-a-story an offbeat “magical realism” fantasy involving two brothers with the power to change the weather, a cat whose eye becomes the moon, and a famine caused by the rain becoming pearls rather than water. Each of these strange concepts overwrites itself into the real world, transforming Yomunaga and the people within it, who are forced to play character roles. Mifuyu and Mashiro must use their problem-solving skills, utilizing clues from the relevant book, to revert the world to normal.

While the art style for scenes set in the real world is perfectly fine, generic manga fare with cute big-eyed schoolgirls and fairly functional backgrounds, it’s the glimpse of different styles in the “story within a story” sections that stand out. The first arc’s “The Brothers of the Lush Village” switches the visuals to something that wouldn’t look out of place on the side of a Greek amphora, with deliberately simplified characters, archaic clothing designs, and more overt symbolism.

Arc two’s “Black Book” looks more like a hard-boiled detective story, with dialogue and noirish style ripped straight from one of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe stories. This unpredictable mash-up of genres and artistic approach keeps the manga interesting, even if the pace can sometimes seem a little languid.

Mifuyu is a relatively standard Japanese every-girl character who is diligent, more or less does what she’s told, cares for her family, and gets appropriately exasperated with her ditzy, book-obsessed aunt. Her aunt lives in a library and only reads, eats, or sleeps. I have never felt so brutally called out. That’s like my ideal life right there. The town of Yomunaga and the book-crammed Mikura Hall sound like my idea of heaven. Mifuyu’s disdain for books reminds me of my youngest son’s exact facial expression and withering tone whenever I return from a shopping trip. “What? Did you bring more books home? Daaaaad…” So, I suppose this manga may appeal to those who love books and those driven to distraction by obsessive, book-hoarding relatives.

The mystery behind the magical Mashiro will likely keep me reading for now. Is she somehow linked to the fox god that Mifuyu’s grandmother contracted with to curse her beloved books? At only three volumes in length, I expect the answers in Whoever Steals This Book will come soon.

Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. Yen Press, BookWalker Global, and J-Novel Club are subsidiaries of KWE.