One Fine Day, Vol. 1

If you love fluff, slice of life, and general cuteness, this is the perfect manwha for you! It's about a novice magician and his "pets". Aileru, the mischievous magician (not the the main character) is my favorite character heheh.

Just how much cuteness can you realistically handle? That is the question you have to ask yourself before cracking the pages of "One Fine Day," the latest manhwa (Korean comic) collection from Yen Press.Because cuteness is what you are going to get here. And not a little bit. "One Fine Day" is a total cuteness immersion. There is not a page, not a line, not a word appears in this comic that is not designed to elevate the cuteness. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that you could lick the pages and have them dissolve in your mouth like sugar. You might think I am exaggerating. I am not.Check out this premise. A novice magician (so we are told...he never seems to do any magic.) shares his home with three animals, a mouse, a cat and a dog. The three animals can talk, and have two different forms; their normal cute animal form and a human form where they look like little kids dressed in those floppy animal pajamas popular in Asia. (The cat and the dog change outfits from time to time, always retaining their cute little ears when in human form). This friendly foursome gets together for all sorts of hijinks and adventures, for example baking cookies and doing the laundry."One Fine Day" was originally serialized in Yen Press' Yen Plus magazine, and is almost more like a series of newspaper comic strips than a typical comic book. Each adventure last 8-10 pages or so, and consists of action-packed scenes such as baking cookies together and having the mouse run across the dough to make footprints. The other two animals get jealous, so the magician has them all run across the dough, then bakes special cookies for each animal with their own footprint in it! Another adventure has them hosting a tea party for some fairies, and dressing up the mouse in a cute frilly girly dress instead of the usual pajamas.Because "One Fine Day" is a manhwa it reads left-to-right in the English style rather than the reversed right-to-left typical of Japanese manga. The book is slightly oversized, being a bit larger than a Japanese manga but not as large as an American comic. The artwork balances between being overtly stylistic (such as the magician's cute fuzzy hair, which is basically a collection of marker scratchings) and the traditional "manga style" of big eyes and small mouths. The artist uses a very loose line, focusing on the characters rather than complicated backgrounds.I found I could only take "One Fine Day" is short doses. When I tried reading it straight through the cuteness was just too much for me to take, and I got overloaded. However, because it is a series of unconnected mini-adventures, there is no problem reading a few stories here and there."One Fine Day" is listed as "All Ages," and that is absolutely true. This would be a great comic for a young child who has some decent reading skills. Especially if that child likes cute things such as a mouse, cat and dog all dressed up in cute clothes having adventures.

A cat left out in the rain is told by a dog and mouse to follow them. The cat complies and the three of them end up at a house belonging to a bespectacled man named No-ah, who welcomes the cat in as part of the family.One Fine Day is rated "All Ages" and really feels like a children's read. It has no central plot or real conflict, instead concentrating on sweet and cute things. The animals do have dilemmas now and then, but it's never anything serious. If someone older than a child were to read One Fine Day, it's probably because of how cute the art is. The drawings are rather enjoyable and the characters look precious no matter what.Sometimes the animals (Nanai the dog, Guru the cat, and Pritz Rang the mouse) are shown as exactly what they are. At other times, they're shown as semihuman. The cat has a boy's body alongside cat ears and a tail. The mouse often looks like a little child wearing a hooded costume. Whether they're shown as animals or semipeople, they're very adorable. No-ah sometimes refers to them as his "kids" and they can romp around and act like his offspring. Occasionally while playing, they'll make a mess and he'll have to clean it up. He's always patient with them, and though sometimes he can get exasperated, he keeps a loving home for his three companions.The book is divided into 13 days, or sections. Each day has its own little story going on. Names for these days include "Cookie-Baking Day," "A Lovely, Clear Day," and "Snowy, Snowy Night." The book is as fluffy and saccharine as these titles suggest.This could be a good book for youngsters to read. Each page has adorable drawings and some of the words are kind of big (from an early elementary school standpoint), so kids might learn to read new words. This is a Korean graphic novel, so it reads the same way as English books, unlike Japanese graphic novels, which read the opposite way. On the other hand, it might just be fun for adults to read One Fine Day to youngsters.The stories in here were previously published in the American magazine Yen Plus, so anyone who's enjoyed them there might want to own them in book form. However, this is volume one, so it's not every story made about One Fine Day.While having no main storyline, this graphic novel gets kudos for its artwork and the sweet nature of it that ought to attract young readers.-- Danica Davidson