Review by C.J. Bunce
Aka is a pre-school age girl in a fantasy town called Onobori in Kozue Amano’s 2022 manga series Colori Colore Creare, translated into English for the first time by Titan Manga. It’s available this week here at Amazon and in comic shops. Set in a cherry blossom-filed mirror-Japan land of make-believe, Aka lives with her father in windmill with a coffee shop called “Riposino” inside. She’s allowed to venture out only as far as she can still see the windmill, and her friends are the stray cats surrounding her home, including one who is particularly large.
Amano takes some inspiration from Italian culture in her fantasy world, hence the title concept of “creating colorful colors,” a father named Gino, “Riposino” means “nap” in Italian, and Aka’s journey has a stop in a town called New Venice.
If Aka is a typical “magical girl,” she’s a very young one, barely able to formulate proper words (“bweakfast” not “breakfast”) and just learning the most basic of concepts about eating, etiquette, safety, and friendships. So it helps that the first scene introduces a Mary Poppins-inspired “sensei” school teacher named Nodoka, who arrives on a flying motorbike. Nodoka accompanies Aka on her first journey beyond her neighborhood, in the company of a giant black cat named Kurocha who watches over Aka.
We learn that Nodoka is young, too, on her first foray to a town as the new “Guardian of the Young Leaves,” which seems to require all the skills of a pre-school teacher.
The story is even more rudimentary than a typical cozy tale, a look at a child’s first encounter with another friend her age. The look is all fantasy, but this first volume isn’t filled with magic like you’d find in Hayao Miyazaki’s anime worlds that seem to be the high points of the cozy fantasy genre. This is one of those manga stories that would benefit from the application of actual color. Aka speaks of color, sunny days, and rainbows, but it’s hard to capture that enthusiasm via only the medium of black ink on newsprint. Who is the audience? Possibly young readers to early teens looking for escapism.
In the first volume Aka takes her first steps into a larger world. Where will she go next? Find out in Volume 2, coming in November, and available for pre-order here.
For fans of stories of young magical girls (with cats) taking their first journey into a realm of whimsy and wonder, like Howl’s Moving Castle and Kiki’s Delivery Service, the first volume of Colori Colore Creare is available now here at Amazon.
