Print Review-Inubaka: Crazy for Dogs
I love dogs. More than anything in the world I want a dog, but we live in an apartment and I don’t want to subject a dog to apartment living. The minute we buy a house with a yard, though, I am heading to the Humane Society with a leash and a check book.
Much as I love dogs, however, the characters in Inubaka: Crazy for Dogs, love them more.
Sugiri is eighteen years old and looking for her first job. Her overprotective parents have one all lined up for her; they want her to be an office lady in their small home town. But Sugiri is tired of being under her parents’ control. She desperately wants to work with dogs, but doesn’t know where to start looking.
Meanwhile, twenty-something Teppei is trying to make his dog shop in Tokyo a success. These two are destined to meet, of course, and it happens in a rather unusual manner.
Out for a walk with her beloved mutt, Lupin, Sugiri meets two guys who are cruising for chicks. They ask her to show them to a hospital. In a stunning display of naiveté, Sugiri and Lupin hop in their car. Of course the guys don’t actually want a hospital, and when they decide it would be too much trouble to seduce a girl with a (rather large) dog, they dump Sugiri and Lupin at a highway rest stop.
As luck would have it, Teppei is at the same rest stop. He’s taking his purebred lab, Noa, to a breeder so he can get some purebred puppies. But when Lupin gets away from Sugiri, the kids at the rest stop are treated to a sex ed lesson, and Teppei’s plans for a purebred litter are shattered. He’s furious, of course, but he also has a soft heart for strays. He drives her home. A few days later, Sugiri shows up at his shop. Teppei notices the puppies at the shop love her, and she seems to have a sixth sense that tells her what they need. He hires Sugiri, and, after all her money is stolen, she moves in with Teppei and his deadbeat roommate Kentaro, (another stray Teppei can’t seem to get rid of).
Sugiri’s instinct for dogs serves her well in her new job, though she finds it hard, too: she thinks of all the dogs as her pets, and finds it hard to let them go when they’re bought. In volume one the stories are fairly simple: Sugiri learns her way around the shop, resists Kentaro’s efforts to persuade her to work at a hostess club (where she’d make more money), and receives a disappointingly brief visit from her mother (oddly, we never find out what Sugiri’s parents think of her moving in with two guys in Tokyo). Most of the events in volume one are cute and humorous, though one story is about the death of a customer’s aged golden retriever (it’s a manga about dogs, so it’s inevitable one is going to die). There are hints that Sugiri’s parents’ over protectiveness stems from an incident in her childhood when she was kidnapped and somehow rescued by a dog, but little is said about that in this volume. As the manga progresses Teppei begins to notice Sugiri less as an employee and more as a girl-a pretty one. The romantic aspect is only to be expected from a shoujo manga; it may be predictable, but it succeeds in being cute and not too forced.
Yukiya Sakuragi’s art is typical shoujo: lanky guys and petite girls. Oddly, while the female characters are apparently supposed to be cute and slender, but they (especially Sugiri) are drawn with unusually broad shoulders-not CLAMP man-broad, but it doesn’t look quite right. Detailed attention is paid to the dogs themselves, more than the human characters, which cements my suspicion that the author herself is inubaka. Each dog is given a distinct personality purely through Sakuragi’s skill and care.
Time is taken out of the story to give detailed instructions on puppy care; in a few cases these digressions slow things down, but since a good chunk of volume one is dedicated to Sugiri’s learning how to care for the puppies and run the store, it isn’t too bad.
The characters are typical of shoujo manga. Sugiri is the sweet, affectionate, naïve girl; Teppei the cool, uncaring guy with a heart of gold, though his is considerably less hidden than it usually is in these characters. Kentaro is the likeable deadbeat buddy, though his role in the disappearance of Sugiri’s money seems a more serious transgression than the other characters seem to take it for.
Inubaka is a lighthearted shoujo manga, enjoyable if you don’t expect anything too deep. Its plot and characterization is pretty predictable, but the inclusion of dogs and the pet shop setting are fresh and interesting. Female dog lovers should take a look.
Details
Publisher: Viz
Author: Yukiya Sakuragi
Pages: 208
Format: Manga
MSRP: $9.99
Date of Publication: 02/20/2007
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