Books like Yotsuba&!, Vol. 6

Originally posted here at Anime Radius.Let's face it: Yotsuba&! will always be the sweetly endearing, slightly off-kilter, forever hilarious manga we've come to know and love. Kiyohiko Azuma has created a comedic juggernaut here, and there are no signs of it slowing down or shutting off any time soon. You would think that by volume five the jokes would slow down or stop being funny? You'd be wrong. Volume six is one of the funniest volumes by far, and introduces a new item into young Yotsuba's world that promises much more hilarity down the road: a bike. Yes, a child's bike with training wheels and a basket and a tiny bell - which means that Yotsuba is now mobile, ladies and gentlemen. The town she lives in is about to get a lot more hectic, I think.While some volumes have spread out the love evenly between the cast members, this volume is all about Yotsuba. It does not suffer from moving its focus back from its ensemble of characters back onto its main protagonist, especially when the adventures she gets into are so amusing and quirky and so very Yotsuba. Her curiosity about the world can make anything exciting - from drinking fancy milk to making a bookshelf. Her big bike trip to deliver Fuuka some milk turns what could have been a simple trip into a big, world-expanding adventure that not only lets us as readers see more of Yotsuba's world but also shows us Yotsuba's first proper rolling steps into city life and places new to her, like bridges and schools. Any slice-of-life manga that can make things like those interesting deserves all the gold stars in the world.The best thing about Yen Press' release of Yotsuba&! over ADV manga's handling of the series - that is, other than the superior translation and the honorifics being kept in dialogue - is that they add a preview of the following volume at the end of the book. For a series like this, it's almost a must. After all, once you finish one book, the only thing you want to do is get your hands on the next.