Review: SARAZANMAI - REO & MABU

Let's take a look at a much more recent manga prequel to the latest outing from one of anime's critical darlings.

SARAZANMAI: REO & MABU (Reo to Mabu: Futari wa Sarazanmai), written by Ikunirapper with character designs by miggy and art by Misaki Saitoh.  First published in 2018 and first published in North America in 2020.

PLOT:

Reo and Mabu were just another couple of cops working in Tokyo's Asakusa district when they discovered a baby on a plate named Sara.  Together they are determined to be the best possible parents to her as possible, even as they deal with runaway kids, random thefts, and Reo's quest to recreate all the delicious baked goods he encounters.

 STORY:

So you remember Sarazanmai, right?  That Kunihiko Ikuhara anime from a few years back about kappas, wish-granting dishes, complicated personal connections, and plot-relevant musical numbers?  Sure you do!  Well, what if you took the two otters-turned-cops from that show, removed most of the darker, more mystical parts of their backstory, and plonked them into a slice-of-life manga?

What, that's not what you asked for?  Too bad, that's what you getting here.

Despite the fact that Ikuhara himself wrote this manga (under an alias), there's very little here to connect this manga to the larger story of Sarazanmai.  Sure, there's Sara as well as a few visual references and Reo's insistence on naked baking, but otherwise these are largely stand-alone chapters about helping locals, eating sweets, and parenthood.  It's all warm and fuzzy stuff to be sure, but it feels so removed from the show that you could easily take the name off and let be a quirky, cozy BL manga.  Hell, even calling it a BL manga is a bit of a stretch.  Yes, I know that there are Plot Reasons that these two aren't particularly passionate, but most of the time Reo and Mabu come off more as friendly coworkers than anything else.  If you were invested in these two as characters, you're not going to learn anything here that you didn't already know from the source material.  It's all just so mundane.

ART:

Saitoh's take on the characters is pretty good, even if she draws them to be a bit sharper and scrawnier than normal.  That said, her panel and page layouts are pretty workmanlike.  It makes the book an easy read, but it's lacking the sort of visual whimsy or energy to bring some life to the material.

RATING:

I can remember part of the Saranzanmai fandom going nuts for this manga as it was coming out.  Having read it, I have to wonder what those fans saw in it.  It's not much of a prequel and unless you like your BL pleasant, bland, and chaste as a grandmother's kiss there's not much in it for the fujoshi either.  Your'e better off sticking with the show (or the fanfiction).

This book was published by Seven Seas.  It is currently in print.