For thirteen years, I lived with Grendel, a smart, stubborn Australian shepherd who treated me and my husband like a pair of unruly sheep. She woke us up at 5:45 am every day, herded us to the park, and marched us around until we were exhausted. She nipped our ankles when we left for work—we weren’t supposed to leave the farm, I guess—and had strong preferences about everything, from which routes we walked to which brand of kibble we bought. When she wasn’t trying to bend us to her will, she applied her formidable intelligence to foraging snacks; she had a black bear’s talent for opening jars and containers. I loved her dearly, but I admit that there were times when I fantasized about living with a dog who didn’t behave like the CEO of a small company.
With my current commute, I can’t own the happy-go-lucky dog of my dreams, but I can do the next best thing: read about one. That’s where Lovely Muco! comes in. It’s a gag manga inspired by the real-life relationship between Komatsu, a professional glass blower, and Muco, his exuberant shiba inu.
In every chapter, Muco makes a discovery—that her nose is shiny, or that Komatsu isn’t a dog—and becomes so consumed with excitement that she ends up in trouble. Muco’s reactions to everyday situations bring out her inner Gracie Allen; she’s less dim than dizzy, viewing the world with the peculiar logic of a canine enthusiast. (Muco may be the first dog to embrace the Cone of Shame as a fashion accessory.) As much as I love Muco’s antics, my favorite storyline reveals that Komatsu has more common with Muco than he might admit. Eager to grow his business, Komatsu hires his pal Ushiko to design him a website. Ushiko uses the tools that you’d expect—a digital camera, a laptop—but Komatsu’s reactions to these technologies seem more appropriate for someone who’d just spent the last 20 years living off the grid than someone making a living in modern-day Japan. His child-like wonder mirrors the way Muco approaches just about everything in her life, from tennis balls to car rides—a neat inversion of their usual roles of bemused owner and confused dog.
Takayuki Mizushina’s artwork is more gestural than literal, distilling each character to a set of bold lines and simple geometric shapes. Muco’s face, in particular, bears only a passing resemblance to a shiba inu’s; her head is shaped like a hexagon with two triangles perched on top, providing Mizushina an ideal canvas for capturing Muco’s over-the-top responses to everything. In many sequences, I was struck by how much her facial expressions reminded me of Domo’s, right down to the way she grimaces when she has an ephiphany:
What I like best about Lovely Muco, though, is that Muco’s thought process isn’t like Grommit or Snoopy’s. She’s not building wild contraptions or fantasizing about being a World War I flying ace; she’s just trying to make sense of the people and things in her environment. Her fascination with ordinary objects is a nice reminder that part of living with a dog—or any sentient creature—is recognizing how strange and interesting our world must seem to them, and taking pleasure in their curiosity and enthusiasm. Recommended.
PS: If you just can’t get enough shiba inu hijinks, you can follow the real-life Muco’s exploits on Twitter. (Hat tip to @debaoki for the link.)
LOVELY MUCO! THE HAPPY DAILY LIFE OF MUCO AND MR. KOMATSU, VOL. 1 • ART AND STORY BY TAKAYUKI MIZUSHINA • TRANSLATED BY CASEY LEE • KODANSHA COMICS 220 pp. • RATED 10+ (SUITABLE FOR READERS OF ALL AGES)
