Yozakura Quartet Volume 1 by Suzuhito Yasuda amazon

I pre-ordered this because I thought the image of a pink-eyed girl with a guitar on the front cover looked sort of cool. I guess I was secretly hoping that she’d wack people over the head with the guitar; instead she uses a lacrosse stick. Unfortunately, someone using sports equipment in battle was not enough to sustain my interest in this manga. The Yozakura Quartet is a group of teens that have banded together to protect their town. Hime, the girl on the cover, is a superhero who is referred to as the Mayor. She’s joined by a psychic cat-eared girl, a girl with big boobs and glasses who can conjure up anything she imagines, and an ordinary high school boy.
This manga starts in the middle of the action, with no backstory or explanation as to why the 4 characters are hanging out together or why they have superpowers. I don’t need an elaborate origin story, but I would have liked to see the relationships and history between the characters fleshed out more throughout the volume of manga, especially since this was the first volume. The quartet deals with a demoniacally possessed serial shooter and a depressed kindergartener. The stories in this volume seemed disjointed, and I wasn’t surprised to read in the author notes that the chapters were originally published in a different order. I’m not sure if reordering them would have helped though. There wasn’t enough narrative flow and while I often don’t mind this in other manga. usually my interest in the characters keeps me reading. There wasn’t much to grab my attention and I had to force myself to finish reading this. The art is attractive, with a flat style that reminded me a little bit of the anime studio Bones.