Dear Noman – Manga First Impression

I think it’s time I changed my opening paragraph for these as I’ve been sticking to manga impressions for a while now. I guess Dear Noman could count as both since it’s a manga from a pixiv toon. So that’s like a webcomic, right?

Ok so on a whim a few months ago I decided to just buy a bunch of volume 1 manga that I didn’t know anything about and figured if I found something I liked I would continue it. This has backfired horribly. Not only did I like most of the series I started but I absolutely loved receiving a box in the mail full of manga to discover and going through them one at a time in the evenings. It was like a different adventure every day!

So I did it again… This is not a cheap hobby by any means! I should just read digital versions. I really really should. And to kind of slightly justify it in my mind, I want to at least share my experience with you guys! Anyways, here’s what I thought of Dear Noman.

Why I Picked up Dear Noman

Ok, so this is embarrassing but I actually read the title as Dear Norman and I thought it sounded intriguingly calm. Sort of a My Dinner with André in manga form. Then, I read the first few pages online and I was hooked. Here they are by the way:

Official Summary

Ever since she was little, Mashiro has been able to see ghosts—of people, of animals, and of some strange creatures that don’t seem to be either. For years, she’s pretended not to see the eerie sights around her, but then a chance encounter plunges Mashiro into the world of the inhuman Nomans. An accidental kiss leaves Mashiro partnered with Bazu, a human-hating crow lady, as she joins the Boundary Preservation Society to help the dead that walk the earth move on…

My First Impression

Aww, this is so cute, like Natsume but with a little girl. No, wait this is more like Midnight Occult Civil Servants, still cool. Wait this is Yuri? It’s getting a bit muddled.

What I liked

I do like all of the genres. I found the quiet rural setting full of yokai attractive. It’s always a hit for me after all. I enjoyed the addition of an organized government workforce to deal with this yokai and hey, who doesn’t like a bit of Yuri here and there.

There are a lot of elements I like about Dear Noman. It’s not exactly as deep or emotionally resonant as I would have wished but I did get some heart squeezes. And there’s a fair amount more action than I expected. It kept me turning the pages and wanting to know what happens next.

Any drawbacks?

It’s a bit superficial. There are tragic backstories all around but Dear Noman doesn’t really give them room to sink in and take root. You can kind of see the stitch marks of what was a pixiv comic. It feels like it was put together a few pages at the time so the flow is different. Different isn’t bad, in this case, it just means that it’s enjoyed best by going with the flow. And it really doesn’t dive too deeply into anything.

When I looked up the details of Dear Noman for this post, I saw that it’s complete in two volumes. And I have to say although I wouldn’t have been in a hurry to continue the series (it would have been one of those books I put in my get more eventually stack) I am most likely going to finish it now. I do want to find out how this ends and a single volume is a pretty small investment for that.

Dear Noman is a cute manga about girls falling in love with each other. If you like PG Yuri and Yokai then you definitely should give it a try. Although I wouldn’t call it particularly special, I actually think this would make an amazing anime. Maybe a short program or if you flesh out some parts here and there, you could even get a very solid single-season run out of it. The narrative structure is something I feel would work really well in animation (better than in manga form).