The Fall 2024 Manga Guide

Monster Marriage Shop

What's It About? 

Monster Girls need love too in this matchmaking manga! A marriage advisor has his work cut out for him when he winds up the matchmaker for sexy, single monster ladies.

Professional matchmaker Nakao Yuto has helped scores of people find their perfect match. But as a hopeless mama's boy, he's never had a relationship of his own. Everything changes the night he stumbles upon Monster Town, a hidden enclave bustling with sexy, supernatural singles. From a werewolf bachelorette to an irresistible succubus, many beauties struggle with finding love. Yuto decides this is the perfect place to set up shop–and maybe even find action for himself. Except there's one major problem—local matchmaker and God of Love Cupid doesn't appreciate a mortal showing him up on the job!

Monster Marriage Shop has a story and art by Kaworu Watashiya, with English translation by Katrina Leonoudakis. This volume was lettered by Joseph Barr. Published under Seven Seas' Ghost Ship label (September 24, 2024).

Is It Worth Reading?

I want to start by giving some major props for Monster Marriage Shop's translation; it's appropriately hysterical. Someone clearly had a lot of fun while poking fun at the gaggle of hornball weirdos in Monster Marriage Shop. If there's ever a series where the phrase “big mommy milkers” can be used in context, it may as well be this one. I never expected to find a sex comedy manga that uses Sesame Street's A Postman Is A Person In Your Neighborhood, let alone a manga where said same song has a tragic reprisal later in the same chapter. It's a pity these books don't have Del Ray's translator's notes at the back of the book because there's a lot of smart writing here and it is effective.

Anyway, I'm really torn on Monster Marriage Shop. It's not even because of the sex-comedy stuff—I have too much smut on my shelves at home to get antsy at the sight of a guy getting mounted by a naked wolf girl. Rather, I'm weirded out that the naked wolf girl has eight nipples going down her chest (because she's a werewolf)—rubbing her belly might actually make her wet herself, and we're treated to a full-page spread of her popping a squat to literally mark her territory. Oh, and our protagonist explicitly has an Oedipus complex, and we even get a nice bingo card of all his other “dark” fetishes.

Monster Marriage Shop has some sincerely cute artwork and some genuinely effective moments, like Meisa the gorgon mourning her long-time friendship with a fellow fujoshi/doujinka and realizing that she's actually attracted to women, or the sad plight of the Mailer Daemon (that's “daemon” in the computer program, not the mythical kind). The cast is genuinely colorful and loveable, like Harnis the out-and-proud succubus sex worker, or Camilla the two-faced idol singer. But now and then, Monster Marriage Shop drops a line that ruins the fun. Maybe the series says something really messed up about the marriage prospects for sex workers (there are plenty of real-life sex workers who are happily married). Maybe someone reminds the female lead Ururu that she's not marriage material because “she's too much of a girlbossy ball-buster”. It's a shame that such a fun read consistently does something to fail the vibe check. We were having a great time before you drew the protagonist's dead dog as a naked dog girl with eight nipples.

There's a lot to like about Monster Marriage Shop, and if it wasn't so weird about stuff now and then it would definitely have been a highlight for me. And I imagine that if you can stomach that weird stuff, this might be a highlight for you—heck, it might even be better than Interspecies Reviewers. The writing is sharp, some moments are genuinely great and I especially love the art in Monster Marriage Shop. But something feels off here. I'm giving this a very weak recommendation, but don't let me stop you if you know what you're about.

Kaworu Watashiya's works getting released over here is probably always going to raise some eyebrows, thanks to the immortality of the situation that unfolded around Kodomo no Jikan. Maybe it's unfair for a creator to wind up with a reputation that precedes her like that. But it also means there's some built-in word-of-mouth marketing for Monster Marriage Shop and anyone who wants to check out (or pointedly avoid) more stuff from this weird, weird woman. At least everyone's of age in this series.

Really, Monster Marriage Shop is as aggressively sexual as you might expect, given its pedigree, but it's also absolutely its own beast (pun intended). Things open on extremely askew notes, introducing Nakao Yuto and his massive mommy's boy complex. It's a detailed, roundabout way of making him up to be an effective matchmaker while also being very up-front that he's some kinda freak. This is the guy who keeps a mental bingo card of all the cursed fetishes he could potentially develop, and there is some wild shit on there. Appropriate enough, then, that Yuto bumbles his way into Monster Town where a lineup of horny horror-show heroines just can't stop jumping tits-first into his bones. Monster Marriage Shop has energy, anyway, as a romp like this needs.

That energy does mean the volume can get away from itself more often than not, though. Asides and sub-plots will rise and fall within chapters with little concern for pacing and well-timed payoff. Punchline references to earlier elements will feel orphaned because the story shifted topics three times before you remembered Oh right, the werewolf girl was feeling insecure because she thought Yuto was fucking his pet dog. Whole chapters like one that opens with the rather clever concept of a literal "Mailer Daemon" will ping-pong between points such that what's ultimately supposed to be a bittersweet finish just falls flat.

When Monster Marriage Shop does actually manage its tone and pacing properly, though, it can go to some surprisingly effective places. A consistent element of the manga is how good-natured and non-judgemental Yuto is of these wild women as he advises them in their searches for love. The matchmaking thing isn't just a convenient framing device for scary-girl sexytimes, there's real advice about managing your expectations and goals when it comes to marriage, what your motivations are, and even deciding if it's right or wrong for you. It's refreshingly frank when Harnis the succubus (who is the best, by the way) gets told that she absolutely can keep slutting it up her whole life if she enjoys it. The story of Meisa, the BL doujin artist gorgon, actually hits that affecting, bittersweet tone. There's also a surprising amount of focus on class disparity in the world, and in general, a lot more going on than you might expect from another monster-girl fanservice book. Monster Marriage Shop can be messy at times because of all that, and it's not going to be for everyone, but the sheer amount I was able to write about it just for this little preview entry shows that it's interesting enough to check out, anyway.