Tabako-chan

In a world where anything can be turned into cute anime girls (or in this case, cute manga girls), it was only a matter of time until someone attempted to make cigarettes cute. However, sometimes cuteness does not hide away the quality of a manga, which is the case in Tabako-chan.

My biggest problem with the manga Tabako-chan has to be the story. Throughout the manga, I kept asking myself the question "What's the point?". The story just felt boring, and didn't go anywhere. The characters didn't have any purpose or goal that they wanted to achieve. We were just following the characters mundane daily life. However, I wouldn't have had a problem with this if the comedy was good. The only issue is, that it's not good. The comedy is as boring as the story, and many jokes just felt flat. There were a few jokes that made me smile or laugh a bit, but in general, the jokes weren't that great. When a comedy manga fails to have good jokes, it usually isn't a good manga. And that is one of the biggest issues in Tabako-chan.

Remember when I said that there are cigarettes as cute anime girls in this manga? Well, at least the author managed to accomplish that. The character designs for the cigarettes were quite good, and I had no issues with them. Although the male character designs were generic, I didn't have any issue with those, and they were good enough. Overall, the art was good, and is definitely the strongest point of this manga.

If only the characters were as good as the character designs. Like the story, the characters were kind of boring to say the least. The human characters were incredibly boring, and had barely any personality. They just felt like placeholder characters that the author forgot to give any value or personality. Well, that's for the human characters. The cigarettes had a bit more personality, and was what really drove this manga. Alongside their cute character designs, they were fun characters as a whole. However, they still felt kind of bland. But at the very least, they were better than the human characters.

Overall, Tabako-chan is a very bland manga. Although there were some enjoyable moments, I sometimes felt bored while reading it. This manga definitely had potential, and could have turned into a good manga. However, it decided to jump into a cigarette's ashes and slowly burn away any chance it had to become a good manga.

Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I started smoking, but I'm not ready to risk my health for the sake of appreciating this manga. If you are interested in seeing cute cigarette girls, feel free to give this manga a shot.