I'm the Catlord's Manservant Vol. 1
- WRITER
- Rat Kitaguni
- Artist
- Rat Kitaguni
- Publisher
- Yen Press
- Price
- 13.00
- Release Date
- 2021-04-27
Yukiharu Izumi's parents are dead, but he does not miss his father one bit. His dad was absent from his life, and seemingly an upsetting presence in his mom's. Now Yukiharu's house has been torn down, he's burdened with his family's debts... and his landlord has given him a key to a house inhabited by five shapeshifting bakeneko cat monsters. It turns out his dad's absences and debts were due to spending all his time serving these catlords. By the end of I'm the Catlords' Manservant's first chapter, Yukiharu is now stuck serving his new masters' whims -- they're just too adorable to turn down.
Square Enix's Monthly G Fantasy magazine specializes in titles that are technically shonen but often lean towards more shojo or fujoshi-leaning styles; Black Butler, Saiyuki and Horimiya are some of the magazine's biggest hits. I'm the Catlord's Manservant fits this trend of shonen in touch with its feminine side, resembling more than anything an all-boys supernatural twist on the shojo classic Ouran High School Host Club.
Like Ouran, Catlord's Manservant follows a schlubby poor protagonist dragged by debt into working for an eccentric "harem" of sorts comprised (mostly, in Catlord's case) of people they go to school with. One of the bakeneko catlords, the fancy cat Kyou, is even a professional host himself. While this isn't explicitly romance/Boys Love, there is some clear fujoshi-friendly ship-teasing and chemistry between Yukiharu and his bakeneko classmate Akira, whose cat-boy cuteness might be hiding some dark secrets teased in this volume's final pages.
The humor in I'm the Catlord's Manservant is fine. Nobody will be calling this the funniest manga of the year, but it's certainly a smile-worthy read. There's a lot of screaming and annoyance-based humor which could grate, but it works because it fits with how annoyingly cats would behave if they were people. The gag with Akira not understanding why Yukiharu does not like it when he brings him mice in class is maybe the funniest part of this first volume.
I'm the Catlord's Manservant is overall in the solidly OK range as far as manga goes -- it does exactly what it sets out to do without ever truly excelling at anything. Yen Press's Volume 1 release also feels a little cramped in the printing; putting the bonus comics inside the covers at least makes sense as far as saving paper logic goes, but translation notes for later chapters showing up after the first chapter is kind of confusing. Basically, if you want to smile at some cats who sometimes look like pretty boys, you can do a lot worse than this volume.
I'm the Catlord's Manservant Vol. 1 is now available from Yen Press.