Beastrings Manga Review

A popular thing for aspiring manga artists to do is get on Twitter-X and/or Pixiv, and start self-publishing their work. That’s how I was introduced to YAMAMOTO Shikaku-sensei’s artwork. I talked about that in a post in early 2018. Then when Yamamoto-sensei managed to get his work published in book form in Japan, I purchased a copy and reviewed it in 2022. And now, Yen Press has licensed and published Beastrings in English.

–> Buy Beastrings from Amazon.com!

Tiny Short Stories (Minor Spoilers)

As mentioned, Yamamoto-sensei started on Twitter/Pixiv. As such, there’s not a story per se in the Beastrings manga. Yamamoto-sensei did add a proper, prelude chapter to the start of the volume. After which, we get the four chapters with mini sub-chapters. Chapter 1 focuses on the barbarian mayor Tyler Takanushi and his two secretaries, the dark elf Lucy and the succubus Sara. Its fun seeing how they joined his team. Chapter one ends with a proper story.

Chapter 2 focuses on minor characters such as a humanoid, rooster gangster who adopts an orphaned human girl. Then there’s the humanoid male dog who helps a human girl, who then makes him her husband. Next is a humanoid female snake who ends up partnering up with a humanoid, male boar. The chapter wraps with a humanoid, female rat surviving with a male, humanoid cat. The theme is odd pairings working out.

Chapter 3 is about an ojousama elf witch and her male, humanoid, wolf butler. We get a bit of their back history, the hints of romance between the two, and a mission they go on together.

For chapter 4, young, orphaned, human, female bard named Aoi gets saved by a male, humanoid dragon ex-wrestler named Gar. She wants to form a band with him, but to keep him out of trouble with the cops, Aoi says she’s making a guild.

The manga wraps up with a new, epilogue story featuring most of the above characters on a mission.

Great Art, Difficult Narrative

There’s no doubt that the art of Beastrings (color or not) is absolutely amazing. Not only are Yamamoto-sensei’s character designs awesome, but his combining fantasy with modern day technologies works quite well. Anthropomorphizing animals to be a human proxy isn’t anything new. But here too, Yamamoto-sensei excels at this. On one hand, a dog, rooster, wolf, etc. look exactly like that.

On the other, because they walk upright and wear human clothing, they become proxy humans. As such, during the story when the humanoid dog gets forcibly taken (if you get my meaning), it doesn’t feel like bestiality. (The sex is implied, not shown, and afterward, the dog has a wedding band, and the girl has an infant she’s showing off.)

The narrative is the difficult part of the manga. I’m not sure how much originates from the actual Japanese and how much comes from the English adaptation. I suspect it is a bit of both as I could tell many instances where the original honorific usage was changed for your protection. Regardless, there were times when things didn’t feel to flow correctly in the English text. But that’s a minor thing on the whole.

Omake

There’s almost no omake content to speak of. Technically, the prologue and epilogue chapters could be omake since they weren’t originally published on Twitter or Pixiv. Beyond that, there are character bios for the characters with larger roles. Shame there wasn’t stuff on the minor characters too, but oh well. And, there’s a note from Yamamoto-sensei.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

In the end, I love this world of Beastrings. It is a world that I hope Yamamoto-sensei produces more content for. I’m glad Yen Press licensed it and I would happily purchase a second volume should one be produced.