Title: Miss Ruki
Volume: Single Volume
Mangaka: Fumiko Takano
Translator: Alexa Frank
US Publisher: New York Review
Age Relevance: Adult, but perfectly fine for high school.
How Essential Is It?: Essential
Curricular Connections?: Feminism, Art/Illustration.
Reader’s Advisory Tags: Bubble Era, Showa, sophisticated taste.
Anime: N/A
Content Warnings: Very mild adult themes.
Publisher Synopsis:
A classic of Japanese manga, Miss Ruki is a warm and vivid portrait of the lives of two young women in Tokyo during Japan’s 1980s bubble economy. The titular Miss Ruki spurns the fast-paced consumer culture of the era in favor of a lighthearted life dedicated to her hobbies, her books, and spending time with her anxious but far more pragmatic friend, Ecchan.
Takano’s art moves with all the warmth, grace, and clarity of the everyday moments it depicts. Sweet and funny, these vignettes of a long-gone time still resonate today with readers and authors in Japan, with famed contemporary manga artist Keigo Shinzo noting, “To read it is to grasp something of the essence of Japan…. This is the kind of manga I want to draw.”
Miss Ruki is a vertical comic strip meant to be read right to left; each story begins in the top right panel and continues down the column before moving leftward.
Manga Librarian 