Wave, Listen to Me! Vol. 1 by Hiroaki Samura, 194 pages. GRAPHIC NOVEL. Kodansha Comics, 2020. $13.
Language: R (33 swears, 0 “f”); Mature Content: PG13; Violence: PG
BUYING ADVISORY: HS - NO
AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE
Minare didn’t know she was being recorded when she ranted to a guy at the bar about her latest dating disaster. However, once she heard her voice on the radio while she was at work, Minare knew exactly who was to blame and ran to confront him at the radio station. And that’s when everything starts falling apart.
I spent most of my time reading this manga in a state of confusion. Not only is the story all over the place, but the speech bubbles don’t make it clear who’s talking and several transitions are so rough I’m convinced panels are missing. Furthermore, Samura has given me no reason to care about Minare and what happens next in her life, so I’m saying goodbye to this series forever. The mature content rating is for groping and mentions of sex.
Reviewer: Carolina Herdegen

This was a fun one! Interesting, flawed, selfish, mysterious characters; a world (Japanese radio stations and curry shops?) I've never seen before; emotional ups and downs; food; ambition; aimlessness; an action-movie art style; and a story and people I found very interesting. Looking forward to reading more.

This is another title by the manga author who did the 'Blade of the Immortal.' I really loved their art style and general way of telling their story in their first title that I read, and that continued in this volume! The art style was consistent and iconic, and also portrayed the feelings properly. The story started out with a bang, pulling you into the story.

The main character, while at a bar and drunk, confided in a radio host. Later, the host broadcasts her conversation with him. He even shows her signature of allowance. She stops the recording and has to broadcast something, so she does. People actually liked when she spoke and she gets fairly famous from this incident.

I really enjoyed this one and can't wait until the next!

Thanks to the publisher for sending me the book via NetGalley!

An interesting beginning to a series, but unfortunately, the execution of the plot is very...rough. On one hand, it matches the main character since she has a rough personality as well (she's interesting and very feisty!). On the other hand, it's too disjointed and all over the place, which can make reading it rather disconcerting.

That aside, the typography here is wonderful, and the art is incredibly detailed. It's been a while since I've encountered this kind of art style as a lot of the new manga I'm reading have clean and minimalist styles. It adds another 'rough' facet to this manga, which of course, makes it more 'on-brand' and also stand out better in overall.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

This was a rough read for me. I’m all for an angry woman but we don’t ever see a transformation of her anger, it’s just what she’s lashing out at the moment and it makes it repetitive to read. She’s such a strong character but it’s frustrating that she complains so much and is so angry while doing little to improve her situation. Her interactions with Nakahara, especially later in the book, are frustrating because she comes across as such a bull-headed, angry character and then someone she has little chemistry with comes in to calm her down in an instant; it didn’t feel true to her character.

Although it will be part of a series, I feel like vol. 1 poorly set up what the rest of the series will be about. First, I thought it was going to be about Minare’s radio opportunity but then the majority of it ended up being about her at the soup shop.

I found it difficult to read the small text in some of the panels. Although, It was nice that footnotes were included about Japanese culture and references for non-Japanese readers.

I appreciated the author’s afterword recognizing some of these points and it gives me a little faith that vol. 2 will address a a few of these concerns. It provided me with the perspective that it was meant to be about love and radio and my hopes for vol. 2 are the expansion of Minare in the radio world and to learn more about Kanetsugu Mato.

I'd normaly passed an opportunity to start a manga like Wave, but fortunately I noticed an anime adaptation that just started airing and I had to pick it up. I got tired of classical shounens after years of reading them and decided to try something different. Something fresh.

Wave, Listen to Me! centres around our MC, Minare, who just got dumped by her boyfriend and is full of anger. Eventhough she has a job as a waitress, she gets an opportunity to try working in the radio. Sounds pretty interesting, right? I wouldn't say Samura's art style is pretty to look at, but it's certainly different. I didn't mind, because I got immediately sucked in the story. It's not definitely your typical slice of life. We follow MC's journey, watching her daily struggles with real life. I personally love Minare as a character. She is spiteful, sassy and very very lively. Definitely bonus.

I must also mention romantic plot, which is important part of the story. I am not a huge of love triangle because it brings unneccessary drama (sure, I know why author did it, but still...). I cannot wait where author brings us in upcoming volumes.

I'd recommend this to anyone who is looking for unique manga focusing on radio broadcasting.

Me and this graphic novel ebook did not get along at all. There were several reasons for it. The first is the fiction that "This book belongs to:" with my name and email address, when the book never has or ever will belong to me! It's set up as one of those so-called 'social DRM PDF' books, but it's never actually a download, so if you close your browser before having read all of it, it's gone, and you have to go back to Net Galley to get it back again. It's not social at all. It's anti-social and falsely criminalizes reviewers who do not get paid for this, but do it out of the goodness of their hearts. I've never shared a review book, and have no intention of doing so, and personally I'm going to to quit requesting for review any book that employs this system in future.

Another issue is that the book is almost 200 pages long, but this format offers no way to navigate it quickly. If you want to get to page 196, you have to continually swipe the screen bottom to top since this vertically scrolls. It's a nightmare when writing a review and trying to find a specific page to verify something. It won't allow any fast scrolling, so if you stop swiping, the pages stop scrolling.

When you get there, you're greeted by this: "The success of this book depends on influencers like you..." Good luck with that after my experience! Once at the end, the fastest way to get back to the beginning is not to swipe again, but to close the entire thing and re-download it from Net Galley. The fact that it is faster that way is the very definition of insanity gone wild.

The next issue is that this is a manga, but it doesn't start from the back and read to the front as these typically do. It starts from the front, but then the pages are backwards, as compared with the western way of reading, so instead of starting at top left, you have to start at top right and read right to left. Not being an avid reader of manga this is a chore I have to keep reminding myself of, but it's manageable. What really irked me though was the rampant racism of the illustrations.

When Scarlett Johansson was picked for the role of Motoko Kusanagi in the live-action Ghost in the Shell there was an outrage because the character was perceived as Japanese. I agreed with that outrage. I was also outraged that because she gained notoriety for her role as Back Widow, she became the go-to girl for a host of other action movies, leaving other, capable actors of assorted ethnic backgrounds locked-out of those roles. On the one hand I can't blame an actor for wanting to ensure their financial security, but Johansson has a net worth of well over $150 million and she had a steady movie career long before Iron Man 2 came along, so I have to wonder about someone who repeatedly takes roles that other, less financially comfortable actors could admirably fill.

But I digress. The point is that here in this comic book we have every single Asian portrayed with western features. I have to ask: where is the outrage? I'm quite used to the huge-eyed and pointy-chinned representations of manga characters, but these were drawn realistically, and with some skill, yet not a single one of them was Asian despite all of them having Asian names and the entire comic book being set in Sapporo, which is the capital city of Hokkaido, an island which is part of the State of Japan. For me this is wrong. What are they afraid of - that readers might be turned off a book because it has fur'ners in it? That might apply some forty percent of the people in the USA who support a clearly racist, bigoted, and divisive president, but it doesn't apply to people like me who enjoy and welcome diversity in our reading.

The content page of this comic was rotated ninety degrees for reasons unknown. It was in landscape mode even though the entire comic other than that was in portrait format. So anyway, the comic is about a woman named Minare who is pissed-off with some guy, and vents about him to a stranger in a bar. Rather than give her a look and move carefully away from her, the stranger invites her to his radio station and records her venting on air, and she becomes a celebrity. This is a tired plot that has been done many times before and this version brought nothing new to the story. In fact, for me, it was confused, rambling, and incoherent, and I lost interest in it very quickly. I can't commend it based on the third or so of it that I could stand to read. Sadly, there far too many loudmouthed jerks who become celebrities in real life without having to read about them in fiction. I can not commend this as a worthy read.

This was not my cup of tea. I didn't like the art style, and the story was told in a very disjointed way. A lot of references went over my head, and eventually I just got bored with this one. I could see other people enjoying this, but unfortunately this one was a miss for me.

Samura surely surprised me with Wave, Listen to Me! Interestingly so the manga is about radio shows (talk radio), which is very refreshing. Minare ends up blabbing her problems with her boyfriend to a guy when she's drunk and that ends up on radio show. She works in a curry restaurant and barges in the station only to be offered a talk show thanks to her peculiar voice and style. Of course this thing isn't all that simple and the setting is quite realistic albeit Minare is truly a character... The first first volume sets the thing and shows us how Minare struggles with her work and love life, gets fired from the restaurant and such. It's like a row of bad outcomes that somehow fit the situation and well, she is slightly immature and annoying too. For me the manga is a bit too much all over the place, but it can get better.

The art looks awesome and it's precise Samura surely. The characters have persona looks-wise and the panels are multifaceted and dimensional. The series looks great, but still lacks something. Not really the plot though, but how it's constructed here and perhaps this needs some toning down. Still, I'm very happy about the topic and how the female protagonist actually has balls. Such a different kind of manga!

I thought this story had an intriguing concept and I enjoyed Minare's passion. Typically, characters who complain too much irritate me, but Minare definitely has reason to be disgruntled. However, I was disappointed that the story mainly revolved around her job at the curry shop. Many of those scenes were tedious and felt removed from what I was expecting from this title. I also didn't enjoy the romance set-up between Minare and her co-worker who refuses to accept that she's spurned his advances. Attempting to create romantic tension between a clearly uninterested woman and a disrespectful man who won't leave her alone has never been endearing. I'm hoping that part of the plot fizzles out. Overall, I was interested in Minare's budding career as a radio star. I also enjoyed the artwork and probably will continue reading this series in the future.

This has a wonderful concept and some great artwork, but I'm having a hard time immersing myself in it at the moment so unfortunately I won't be finishing it for the time being.

This was very weird, and not necessarily in a good way. The storytelling was disjointed and I could barely follow it, the references to pop culture flew over my head (understandably, considering I’m not from Japan and no amount of footnotes will change that) , and honestly I just got bored. The art wasn’t bad, which is why I didn’t give it a 1 star, but nothing about the story really pulled me in and made me care. The main character whose name I never learned had the potential to be funny but just ended up being annoying in my opinion, and I wanted to stop reading a third of the way through. It’s clear that this manga wasn’t for me, and I don’t like to give bad reviews or low ratings but I’m afraid even reading to the end didn’t redeem how mind numbingly boring this was to someone who likes a lot of plot to my manga. As it is a bad review I won't be posting this anywhere but Goodreads out of respect for the artist.

Love and radio; "Wave, Listen to me!" is definitely quirky and overall enjoyable, it reads in one-sitting. I am definitely looking forward to the next volume.