Pupposites Attract Volume 1 Manga Review – Review

For whatever reason, there’s much more of a history of cat manga in English translation than dog manga. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t any—Doomsday With My Dog and Inubaka: Crazy for Dogs both have English editions, and that’s not even counting series like Yuzu the Pet Vet with its periphery focus on canines. (We perhaps should refrain from raising the specter of Guru Guru Pon-chan.) However, a stark difference immediately becomes apparent when you compare that short list with the sheer number of cat titles Seven Seas alone is translating. Fortunately for us dog people, Kodansha has shown up carrying the stick labeled Pupposites Attract, a cute romantic comedy based on the joys of canine companionship.

The story in this first volume is fairly slight. It follows a petite woman and her huge dog as she meets and interacts with a large man and his tiny dog. The canines in question are a Rottweiler and a Pomeranian, which makes for a striking visual difference, one furthered by the fact that Chiharu puts Tsubu in spiky collars while Kiyotaka dresses Monjuro in ruffled bibs. Both accoutrements are at stark odds with the dogs’ personalities, though—big, buff Tsubu is a shy scaredy cat, while fluffy little Monjuro is the world’s most outgoing, energetic dog. This goes for their people as well: Chiharu is tough while Kiyotaka is shy and retiring, making this a story that trades in opposites in more than just its punny title.

Whether or not creator Hono Natsuna intended it, the story does a very good job of quashing assumptions about both dog breeds. (They say in their author’s note that although they love dogs, they don’t have one.) Although Rottweilers can be aggressive, they were initially bred as herd dogs or working dogs who pulled carts in their native Rottweil, Germany—and some of what we interpret as “guard dog” behavior today is more herd dog mentality, though they can be territorial. But a breed is not a monolith and ultimately it all comes down to training and personality. Tsubu was raised by Chiharu and her father, the latter of whom works as a dog trainer. Tsubu is well-behaved and very obedient because he was trained by someone who knew what they were doing. Monjuro, on the other hand, is a toy breed (meaning tiny) descended from the Spitz dog family—and while Spitzes probably were working dogs at one point, for centuries they’ve been bred as lap dogs, which is about as far from a working breed as you can get. More importantly, Monjuro has been raised by someone without dog training experience, and as Chiharu notices, it’s more like Monjuro trained Kiyotaka than the other way around. To be clear, both of them adore their dogs, it’s just that their experience as dog owners is vastly different, something that’s nicely shown in the pups’ behavior.

Frankly, the dogs are more interesting than the humans in this volume—although they aren’t uninteresting as characters. It’s more that they’re a bit predictable, from their seemingly opposite looks and personalities to their jobs. Chiharu feels like she gets more page time, although that could simply be because she’s the more striking character; Kiyotaka is so shy that he almost disappears off the page even when he’s the focal point. That works with the idea of opposites that the volume is trading in and it’s certainly an interesting angle to take. It also feels like the creator is simply more invested in Chiharu and Tsubu than the other dog/human pair.

As with any comic that uses actual, recognizable dog breeds, the dogs must be well drawn, and in this, the book is an unqualified success. If you’re older, you may notice that Tsubu’s tail isn’t docked (amputated); that used to be the breed standard for Rotties, and fortunately more humane practices prevailed—today the practice is outright illegal in many countries, and you rarely see it anymore. The story is also good about acknowledging people’s reactions to the two dogs, with strangers being more likely to want to interact with Monjuro than Tsubu—something Chiharu, portrayed as a very responsible dog parent, mentions a few times.

But all of these details are just the icing on the cake—Pupposites Attract is simply at its heart an ode to the love between people and their dogs. There are short sections of the book that are from the pups’ perspective—and those are delightful without being too cutesy—serving to let readers know that the dogs love their people just as much as their people love them. This is the dog-person equivalent of many of the cat-person manga out there—and if there’s a dog-shaped space in your heart for a new manga series, this is worth your time.