The Fall 2023 Manga Guide

Stray Cat & Wolf

What's It About? 

Following the death of her father, Tamaki leaves her village to attend high school in the capital. Although she had intended to live alone, when she's offered a place at a stranger's apartment after collapsing in the street, well...did she mention he's pretty hot?!

Stray Cat & Wolf has story and art by Mitsubachi Miyuki. The English translation is done by Alethea and Athena Nibley and lettered by Rachel J. Pierce. Published by Yen Press (September 19, 2023).

Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Stray Cat and Wolf is one of those romances that I enjoyed despite myself. If you look at the surface details, it's kind of a red flag of a book: high school first-year Tamaki moves herself to Tokyo, gets evicted from her apartment, and is picked up when she passes out on the street by a twenty-three-year-old man. She ends up moving into his apartment, and they kiss and whatnot. In the wrong hands, this could be a perfect recipe for sleazy disaster.

As it stands, however, those elements are overpowered by the rest of the book. Tamaki was raised in a tiny mountain village by her grandmother, and since her late father never let on who her mother was, the rest of the village treated her as persona non grata. Ostracized her entire life, escape to a high school in Tokyo was the only viable option she saw for herself. She has few life skills or social skills and is just doing her best with what she's got. Rou, on the other hand, is a guitarist with an indie band and something of a serial womanizer. He was badly burned by trying to save a stray cat as a child, and a piece of him sees Tamaki in the same light – he even refers to her to his bandmates as his cat. (And his name is spelled with the character for "wolf." Look at that, we have a title!) But he knows she's not a cat, and he's not entirely comfortable with caring for someone permanently – and even less comfortable caring about someone.

That means this is a story about two people who, if not necessarily damaged, have a lot to work through in their lives and may find a way to work through it together. Yes, it's a little creepy that he's an adult and she's a teen, but the bigger point of the volume is how they can learn to communicate and figure out their own lives. I also like the detail that Tamaki is sound-sensitive to the point where it looks a lot like misophonia. Loud noises provoke a major reaction in her, almost a fight-or-flight response, and to be candid, I've rarely seen that depicted in a manga, at least not so realistically that I can recognize my misophonia in it. She can learn to work around her sound triggers, but it's really a thing that she has to deal with, and I'm always a fan of representation like that in fiction. Her social awkwardness is also well depicted; it isn't shown as "quirky" or some endearing character flaw but as something that developed throughout her life based on her circumstances. The characters make this one, and I'm looking forward to seeing how they grow – and what parts of themselves they just have to cope with.

Is It Worth Reading?

MrAJCosplay

Rating:

I'm conflicted on this one because, on the one hand, it does an outstanding job of establishing the bizarre chemistry between the two leads. Initially, I wasn't sure what to think about the setup because it just screamed uncomfortable with a young girl having nowhere to go and inadvertently finding herself in the apartment of a slightly older guy she didn't know. But I was shocked at how invested I was in the relationship between these two characters, and it's because it wasn't typical of what you see in a lot of other romance stories. There is much more of a cynical, jaded outlook from both of our characters, with one being so detached from reality that she jumps at the slightest noise. At the same time, the other seems overly cynical to the point where he wants to leave everything behind.

However, despite those cynical outlooks, they're still good people at heart, and you get a sense that these are the only two people who understand each other despite their different upbringings. This is an example of a chance encounter that builds upon itself with each passing chapter. It's also surprisingly adult, and I'm not just saying that because one of our leads likes to sleep around. That branch of cynicism ties over into the vagueness of the relationship between these two. It's not friends, but it's not quite a relationship yet either, yet neither feels comfortable being separate from the other. I enjoyed this dynamic and want to see where the relationship goes, but I also have reservations.

The biggest is the power imbalance between a first-year high school student and a 23-year-old man. I thought the story would go in a different direction once I started reading it, with him taking on an older brother type of role. But regardless, it rides that line of getting close to being too intimate with these characters. Stray Cat does a good enough job to inspire a curious peek, at least if you're looking for a slightly less conventional romance with a conventional setup.