Yotsuba to!

Type: Manga

Score: 5/10

Jumbo don't deserve this disrespect!

Edit: Are we deadass right now?

I'm not quite the intended audience for this manga, I find slice of life horribly boring (too shounen brained as I've heard it put) and I despise children, but despite my better judgement I gave this manga a shot because of its absurdly high rating on MAL. After reading four volumes of this I think I can safely say Yotsuba is not for me.

I might just be some sort of grinch who hates sunshine and joy, but Yotsuba just being happy and enjoying herself wasn't enough to keep me coming back, especially when the humor felt very one note and repetitive, she misunderstands something because she's a dumbass, overreacts and that's about it. Yotsuba being an stupid little kid who overreacts constantly might be realistic, kids are awful after all, but it never really feels like anything was changing. The cast grows but it feels like Yotsuba at the start would be identical to the Yotsuba at the end as she doesn't grown in any meaningful way physically or mentally. This felt a bit off to me as growing is really the only thing kids are good at.

The aspects that keep this from being a not recommended for me are the side characters and art, I really enjoy the interactions between the supporting cast, it feels like a nice reprieve from the generally mind numbing content of this manga. The art too, while not stunningly beautiful like many of the manga it somehow manages to rank above on MAL (😡😡) is very charming and holds up a lot better than many of the other manga releasing during the same time period. Not just that, from what I've seen in the later chapters it's grown a fair bit (though Yotsuba does kind of look out of place sometimes, I mean look at this: https://i.imgur.com/xP6yTbt.png).