Manga editor Suga Asako comes home to find herself broken up with. She decides to find herself a new place to live – one where she can be by herself as she puts her life back together. When she finds a sweet little house with a garden, she quickly signs the lease. After she moves in, she finds the lease said, “monthly rent, includes garden and landlord,” which means that the solitude she sought is not part of the bargain. Instead, she now has a live-in landlord.

The landlord also seems to be not entirely coping with life on her own. Kitano Miyako turn out to have an unusual backstory – she’s a former pop idol group leader who has recently left her group!  Together Asako and Miyako start to rebuild their lives, figure out how to co-exist and how to just exist in the first place.  Monthly In The Garden With My Landlord, Volume 1 is a sweet, awkward, story of people who are not themselves irredeemably broken, but are patching themselves up from broken situations. 

I wanna touch on the idea of “Yuri” in this manga. We do learn that Asako had a girlfriend, and that she’s got a weakness for pretty faces. For me this clearly sets this in a “Yuri” setting, rather than a “lesbian” setting. But also, it’s not like people who meet immediately tell other people everything about themselves. I also know what is to come, so I have a different expectation than people reading this for the first time. Based on this volume only – do you think you’d call this a Yuri manga?

I adore this story, honestly. It rides the lines between healing slice-of-life, realistic romance and wacky situation comedy with a very sophisticated style. Every volume has been better than the last. In fact, Volume 3 was an apex of adults having meaningful conversations. Yodokawa’s art is stylish and fun at the same time. There’s shockingly little tension in this story…even when the situation could have been used to make us worry, we’re given the punchline early, so we know it’s not much of a threat.  This makes for a very relaxed and easy read.

The team at Yen Press has done a clean job of localization. I very much like Stephen Paul’s translation in all things, except the title. I assume they chose “Monthly In The Garden With My Landlord” because it reads smoothly, but…does it? No one says anything like that, ever and  it misses the joke. Yes, I know it is not at all productive to whine about translation. I’ve just been finding Yen’s titles a little reductive recently. I think they could do a bit better.  In this case, it kind of shifts the tone of the story to begin with, eliding the humor. That’s only problematic in the sense that this is a comedy, first, and everything else second. Elena Pizarro Lanzas’s lettering is as good as the Yen house style allows. I’ll always ask for letterers to be given time and money to retouch where feasible. Fine technical reproduction and editing as always. ^_^

A cute, slightly wacky, slight realistic and ultimately, healthy, story that I highly recommend.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Service – 0
Yuri – 0.5 but hang on tightly….

Overall – 8

The short extra chapter gives us our first hint that this story might include romance. But first, Volume 2 will delve into the mystery of Miyako’s history and…it will be great. ^_^ We’ll be getting that next spring – which isn’t as far away as it seems. ^_^

Thanks very much to Yen for offering me a review copy of this, I had picked it up anyway for myself, but I appreciate the kindness! Keep up the great work.