While Yen Press is still relatively new and unkown to most English-speaking manga fans, they have licenced and published some very interesting titles lately. One of these titles would be Ume Aoki’s slice-of-life four-panel manga Sunshine Sketch AKA Hidamari Sketch, which was released just a while ago.
Sunshine Sketch follows the lives of Yuno and her friends, Miyako, Hiro and Sae, who go to Yamabuki Art High School and live in Hidamari Appartment right next to their school. Every chapter focuses on one theme, such as the school’s opening ceremony, welcome party to Hidamari Appartment and going to a summer festival together. While the chapters have “plots” of their own, there isn’t many connections between the chapters, which is all pretty typical for mangas like this.
Compared to the most of comedy/slice-of-life mangas, the humour is rather subtle in Sunshine Sketch. However, I don’t believe for a moment that Sunshine Sketch was drawn with the intention of making the readers crack up while reading it. Instead the feeling I got from reading the first volume was happiness, which is far more precious to me than simple laughter.
I usually won’t compare manga and anime versions to each other, but this time I think it’s unavoidable. First of all the anime was made by Shaft and directed by Akiyuki Shinbo and Ryouki Kamitsubo. People like me watch and enjoy pretty much any anime that fulfils this criteria. While I don’t think the two versions of Sunshine Sketch are that different from each other, the fact that Akiyuki Shinbo brought his own unique style to the anime won’t change. So if you’ve seen the anime and ponder wheter the manga is worth reading or not, read it if you liked the characters, but I can’t guarantee you’ll like the manga if you liked the anime for its unique visual style and all that craziness Akiyuki Shinbo is known for.
Sunshine Sketch is simple yet brilliant manga that is guaranteed to make anyone reading it smile with happiness. If that’s what your looking for, search no further for Sunshine Sketch exists for that purpose alone.
