Yotsuba&!: Difference between revisions

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It stars a [[Cheerful Child|cheerful]], [[Genki Girl|energetic]] five-year-old girl named Yotsuba Koiwai, who moves into a new neighborhood with her adoptive father. She doesn't know very much about the world around her and is incredibly curious, but her father and their new neighbors (the Ayase family) are willing to help her out. Or get dragged along in her wake, as the case may be. She does, technically, know the meaning of "restraint", but she has [[Malaproper|trouble pronouncing it]].

Ten volumes have been released thus far in Japan. It was formerly licensed in English by ADV Manga, who brought out five volumes intermittently, but now by Yen Press which picked up with volume six (as well as reprinting the first five). The odd title comes from how [[Idiosyncratic Episode Naming|every chapter]] ([[Odd Name Out|but one]]) is named "Yotsuba & ''Whatever''," where ''whatever'' is the new thing or concept she encounters that day, and the exclamation mark comes from her way of [[Genki Girl|throwing herself full-throttle]] into anything she does. The series has been described by one reviewer as "printed joy" and rightly so. Azuma somehow manages to create a series that's both [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|feel-good happy]] and [[Crowning Moment of Funny|side-splittingly hilarious]]. Not for nothing is the series motto "Enjoy Everything."

 

 

 

* [[Adult Child]]: Much of the grown-up cast, to an extent, but Yanda is the most childish of the bunch.

** Yotsuba's appearance in particular develops between Chapter 1 and, for example, Chapter 27, so that she looks more like a 5-year-old, with shorter, more shaped ponytails. By around Chapter 53, the shape of her eyes have changed still more, along with some of her casual expressions.

** By volume 6, Yotsuba no longer has any whites in her eyes on the front covers of the books.

* [[Beam of Enlightenment]]

* [[Beat Panel]]: Usually from Dad.

** Never touch Yotsuba's candy. Ever.

** Jumbo seems to have a few. What triggers them? Well... no one knows really.

* [[Bland-Name Product]]: Averted several times, more often than not -- for example, Koiwai gets a package from amazon.co.jp, complete with the distinctive logo.

* [[Blank White Eyes]]: Eventually happens to just about everyone around Yotsuba, and to Yotsuba herself, occasionally.

* [[Blush Sticker]]: Yotsuba, appropriately enough, gets two bright circles on her cheeks when her reading ability is praised -- but it also once happens with Jumbo, when he thinks he's about to meet Asagi.

* [[Broken Glass Penalty]]: At one point, Yotsuba kicks a soccer ball out a closed window by accident. Her dad spanks her.

* [[Cast of Snowflakes]]

* [[Cat Smile]]: Two from Fuuka and one from Yotsuba.

* [[Children Raise You]]: Slacker dad Koiwai calls himself "irresponsible," but he all but admits that raising Yotsuba has forced him to get his act together, at least a little.

* [[Cicadian Rhythm]]: Subverted in the first chapter when Yotsuba climbs a telephone pole and pretends to be a cicada. Later [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshade hung]] when she develops an obsession with ''tsukutsukuboushi'', a late-summer species said to bring the end of summer, to the point that she thinks they are summer-ending fairies; she then dresses up as how she imagines they look and claims she can end summer herself.

* [[Continuity Nod]]: All ''over'' the place.

** Pay particular attention to the "Yotsubox" in the corner of the tv room, where Yotsuba keeps, er, treasures picked up in previous chapters, and which accumulates drawings of people she meets.

** Yotsuba's stool for pancake-making is the little thing Koiwai made to practice for the bookshelf.

** Torako actually kept the dirty ball Yotsuba gave to her as a souvenir. Awww...

* [[Cuteness Proximity]]: Yotsuba's dad appears to have a mild case at the zoo, around the guinea pigs.

* [[Department of Redundancy Department]]:

'''Asagi''': You keep piling on the new information there. }}

* [[Despair Event Horizon]]: When {{spoiler|Duralumin's voice box is broken}}, Yotsuba almost goes catatonic with grief.

* [[Emoticon]]: Suggested by Asagi to Yotsuba while serving as "e-mail". Her expression at the end of the chapter is a dead-on visualization of the O____O emoticon.

* [[Engaging Conversation]]: Wait until you grow up before marrying Fuuka, Yotsuba! We know cake is nice, but...

* [[Episode Finishes the Title]]: The title of each chapter of ''Yotsuba&!'' follows the structure of "Yotsuba & [insert word here]".

** Yotsuba's cute enough normally, but when she dresses for a [[Festival Episode|festival]] with bunny hair ties for her pigtails, the [[Kawaii]] is turned [[Up to Eleven]].

** The kerchief in the Flower Cupid's hair.

** Miura gives Ena two flower-shaped hair clips as a souvenir of her trip to Hawaii.

* [[Everything Is Worse With Bears]]: Subverted with several teddy bears, including Yotsuba's "beddy tear", Duralumin.

* [[Explosive Overclocking]]: When Yotsuba wants to hit every button in an elevator, Ena warns her she's going to cause this.

* [[Face Doodling]]: Yotsuba on Dad.

* [[Festival Episode]]: A couple: the town fireworks festival, Fuuka's [[School Festival]], and a local [[Shrines and Temples|shrine]]'s festival.

* [[Floating Timeline]]: While each chapter takes place on a specific date, which in 70 chapters has run from mid-July to mid-October, [[Word of God]] is that each chapter is set in the year it's published. This allows Azuma to keep technology and pop-culture references current, instead of stuck back in 2003 when he started.

* [[Free-Range Children]]: Yotsuba has no trouble darting around town without supervision. However, aside from a couple famous episodes that have made this almost a trademark for her, the series averts this in that she usually ''is'' supervised (either by Koiwai or an Ayase).

** Deconstructed, even. At the [[Festival Episode|fireworks festival]], because Yotsuba hasn't realized the potential dangers of getting lost in a crowd, after she runs off (the panel after being told not to let go of Koiwai's hand, naturally), Koiwai has Jumbo, Ena, and Miura hide to teach her a lesson.

* [[Genki Girl]]: As Asagi puts it, Yotsuba's default mode of travel is "run".

* [[Giving Someone the Pointer Finger]]: Yotsuba, underscoring that she really is a small child.

** Dad also uses it once, in an appropriately dramatic way.

* [[Goldfish Scooping Game]]: At the town [[Festival Episode|fireworks display]], where Yotsuba gets to play more than the usual three times.

* [[Gratuitous English]]: Yotsuba especially but then, her father lets her watch adult gangster movies.

* [[Hair Colors]]: Yotsuba's is green, which really stands out in a series otherwise relentlessly grounded in the real world.

* [[Image Song]]: Two CDs have been released, both entirely instrumental. One follows Yotsuba through the course of a imaginary typical day, and the other through winter. Both are excellent.

* [[Incredibly Lame Pun]]: Fuuka's weapon of choice. Perhaps fortunately, most get [[Lost in Translation]].

* [[Inside Shoes]]: When Yotsuba and Dad go to Fuuka's [[School Festival|school's culture festival]].

* [[Iyashikei]]

* [[Rock-Paper-Scissors|Janken]]: Played by Yotsuba and Dad with the loser getting swatted with a rolled-up newspaper if they don't cover their head with a basin in time.

* [[Japanese Holidays]]: Yotsuba has so far been involved in O-bon and Respect for the Aged Day. Fuuka's school's [[School Festival|Cultural Festival]] and the autumn Danjiri Festival also sort-of count, though they're not technically ''holidays''.

** Asagi is a minor example. She doesn't pass up opportunities to mess with her sisters (especially Fuuka) and Yotsuba, although she does realize when she's gone too far -- for example, after seeing Yotsuba's reaction to swiping the strawberry from her cake, Asagi quickly returned it, much to the dismay of her mother, whose strawberry she had already eaten at that point.

* [[Joshikousei]]: Fuuka and her classmates.

* [[Kawaiiko]]: Flower Cupid - [[Subverted Trope|subverted]] by Yotsuba's packing heat when she goes out.

** Yanda permanently ensures the wrath of Yotsuba by taking a bite out of her ice cream.

** Torako, oddly enough, also gets one of these: when she first meets Yotsuba, she blows smoke in the girl's face. It's a bit at odds with her later portrayal.

*** She may have done it to demonstrate that [[Smoking Is Cool|smoking]] is ''not'' as cool as Yotsuba thinks.

** One is concerning Yotsuba explaining what her dad's job is. In the ADV translation, Yotsuba thinks he's a 'trainspotter' when she's suppose to say 'translator'. The joke is that the word 'honyaku' means translator and that Yotsuba said 'konnyaku', a type of gelatin-like cake made from a yam-like plant. In a later chapter, Fuuka sounds like she was making a non sequitur about Yotsuba's dad's konnyaku business being a trade secret when the reality is it's a callback to Yotsuba's earlier misunderstanding.

** Another is when Jumbo refers to Torako as a 'she' when he was looking at her photos of the hot air balloon event. This is problematic because the running gag is that Jumbo has never met Torako before and assumes that she might be Asagi's boyfriend (note that Yotsuba keeps referring to her as Tora, which is gender neutral). This can be explained by the fact that the Japanese language does not have third person gendered pronouns.

* [[Mundane Made Awesome]]?: EVERYTHING in Yotsuba's world is awesome. From delivering milk, to riding a bike to going to the supermarket, each trip is like an Odyssey to Yotsuba.

* [[Mundane Object Amazement]]: Yotsuba can be amazed at just about anything -- if she's never met it before.

* [[No Cartoon Fish]]: More like No Cartoon ''Animals''; most of the animals are photorealistic, though the fish, in particular, are ''disturbingly'' so. The main counterexample are the dogs, which tend to the cartoony, particularly those dogs Yotsuba barks back at.

** Actually a slight subversion when she does it. She really means that he has died and gone to heaven, though he's most definitely not dead. The first time she does it, Fuuka calls her on it, saying "No, no, no. Dad is ALIVE. He's working right now."

* [[Nobody Poops]]: Averted. Also, mentioning a bodily function makes Yotsuba burst into the giggle-fits you'd expect from a five year old.

** Ena and Miura help Yotsuba wash Duralumin after being stolen by a dog. They forgot that the stuffed bear was supposed to talk and only remembered after taking it out of the washer.

* [[Opposite Day]]: Yotsuba never spent a chapter playing the Opposites Game, not even once.

* [[Parental Abandonment]]: As Jumbo puts it, "Yotsuba was an abandoned child"; all Koiwai has said is that while he was traveling overseas for his work, he found himself taking care of her. Yotsuba herself remembers only living with her adoptive grandmother and, before that, on an island that's "to the left". The Ayases have no idea what she means, either.

* [[Parental Favoritism]]: More than either of her older sisters, Ena is Daddy's little girl.

* [[Seinfeldian Conversation]]: Chatting with Yotsuba sometimes turns into this as her energetic little mind bounces from one thing to another.

* [[Sempai-Kohai]]: Dad's ''kohai'' Yanda, whom Dad lets visit even though Yotsuba instantly hates him with a hatey hate.

** One chapter, Yotsuba watches ''[[Pythagora Switch]]'' on the TV. In a later chapter, a "father switch" from the show is on the kitchen table; it [[Continuity Nod|eventually]] shows up in the Yotsubox.

** Yotsuba makes a sly shoutout to [[Gamera]] in the lead-up to the balloon festival.

* [[Shown Their Work]]: Comes up in the most unusual places. The bears in the teddy-bear shop are based on actual designs. The ridiculously-expensive Steiff one even has the trademark button. (The one Yotsuba chooses to be Juralumin, however, is a generic.)

* [[Shrines and Temples]]: Both of them: Yotsuba visits the grounds of a hilltop shrine a couple times and participates in her town's autumn ''danjiri'' festival, pulling a portable shrine through the streets. Koiwai takes Yotsuba to a temple and uses a guardian ''niō'' statue to [[Scare'Em Straight|scare the "lying bug" out]] of her.

* [[Sick Episode]]: Yotsuba, on the day she was supposed to visit a farm, no less. Meltdown ensued.

* [[Skintone Sclerae]]: Yotsuba as of volume 6.

* [[Sleep Cute]]: Yotsuba, Koiwai, Ena, and Fuuka, on the train back home, after a long day at the [[Beach Episode|beach]].

* [[Smoking Is Cool]]: Why Yotsuba thinks Torako is awesome, even though her father told her that smoking is bad. Then again, Yotsuba claims that Koiwai used to smoke...

* [[Something Person]]: Koiwai sometimes transforms into Yotsuba's nemesis, Boxerman -- by putting a pair of boxer shorts over his head. His special ability is being unable to tell up from down. "Curse you, Boxerman!" After Yotsuba saw men in fundoshi at a [[Festival Episode|festival]], Boxerman acquired a rival, Barebuttman. Still later, Koiwai becomes yet another foe of Yotsuba's, [[It Makes Sense in Context|Pancake-Loving Man]].

* [[Spit Take]]: Yotsuba's dad does a big one when Yotsuba hands him "milk" she made with toothpaste and water.

* [[Strong Family Resemblance]]: Miura and her mom, lampshaded by Yotsuba.

* [[Super Sentai Stance]]: Parodied with Yotsuba, Fuuka and Koiwai in the [[Beach Episode]].

* [[Sweat Drop]]: Another thing that happens to just about everyone around Yotsuba.

* [[You Gotta Have Blue Hair]]: Yotsuba's only, and it's green -- everyone else's is normal.

* [[Youkai]]: Yotsuba is terrified of the tengu attendants at a [[Festival Episode|cart-pulling festival]], even though she more-or-less understands they're humans in masks -- and even ten-year old Ena also finds them startling, despite teasing Yotsuba about it. The scariest is {{spoiler|Jumbo}}, whom Yotsuba calls the "[[Boss Battle|boss]] tengu".

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Iyashikei]]

[[Category:Manga]]