We remember Hidamari Sketch (licensed in English as Sunshine Sketch), don’t we? Aoki Ume’s series about a bunch of women at a trade school apartment building was nice. It was cute and silly and extremely, bizarrely repetitive. In 8 volumes of manga covering the 2 years they’d be at the school, they must have celebrated Christmas 7 times, maybe more. It also had a serious problem. Hiro and Sae were obviously a couple only Sae refused to admit it. Hiro was painfully aware that Sae was pretending that they weren’t a couple and it became painful to me to watch the shenanigans of plausible deniability that no one wanted. I cannot have been alone in thinking that it would have been nice if Hiro and Sae just were a couple.

Apparently, no, I was not alone. The suspiciously-pseudonymous Umehara Ume (eyeroll) agrees, and so here we are talking about Roku + Ichi Gurashi (ロク+イチ暮らし) which is pretty much Hidamari Sketch with Yuri. ^_^

Suzume has arrived at a trade school to study early child development in order to work in daycare for little kids. In her apartment she meets several other students, among them Nanao, with whom she promptly falls in love.  Her taciturn neighbor, Kie is in love with Sae look-alike Ai, who is love with Kouko.  Sachi is not in love with anyone until she sees the landlady’s daughter, and Ai’s fellow business student, Shiori. 

Unlike, Hidamari Sketch, this is not a gag comic, so we get little vignettes that have dramatic, rather than comedic punchlines. Kie and Ai compete in a Mr/Miss contest in the school and, although Kie ends up finding strength to confess to Ai, she’s gently rejected, which gives Ai the impetus to confess to Kouko. They are a nice couple, so we’re happy for them, as we are for the others. The story ends with Suzume making us a promise that she’ll become a terrific daycare provider. 

It’s all quite sweet and cute. A little too tidy, but so was Cirque Arachne, which “fixed” a similar “problem” with Kaleido Star. When you’re fixing someone else’s mess, you can skip all the details and just get to the meat of the story and pair the girls up already. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 8 Fixed that right up
Characters – 8
Yuri – 8
Service – 4 That Mr/Miss contest was for no other reason but to dress Sae, erm, Ai and Kie up in wedding clothes.

Overall – 7

I’ll be very interested to see if “Umehara Ume” ever publishes anything else. ^_^