Pretty cute. A traveling librarian and his apprentice, a half(?)/full(?) oni boy with a small horn on his head, and creatures that pop out of books make the first volume interesting.

Now, Kiichi's been ostracized for a while now do to his demon-like appearance, but after he saved Gan, the first boy to shun him, everyone loves him now??? I understand people are fickle, but y'all didn't even try to add some development there. :/

Mototaro's designed to have that aloof air of coolness,(cliche or not) I love characters like that. Kiichi's a little bit of Naruto and koolaid, but without the annoying dattebayo/believe it and prankster vibe. Hanna, the apprentice, seems like an ageless little kid. She's childish, but I don't think she has an exact age.

There's nothing groundbreaking, but I like it. I'll read the next one when I go back to the library. ( )

Kiichi is boy, shunned in his village for being part demon/oni. When he meets Motaro, a traveling librarian with magic books containing creatures that can leave the books and come alive, Kiichi asks to come with him in order to learn more about onis and himself.

The world and storyline of this manga so far seem entertaining. The idea of magical books and daring traveling librarians is endearing, and in the second half of the volume the world-building starts to have even more to it than I anticipated, introducing other aspects to the...er librarian world/culture. While some of the explanations or aspects of the world came off a bit silly (in particular, the idea that normal citizens are not allowed to keep books so far comes off as random and a lame attempt to add some cheap moral ambiguity to the librarians' job), it mostly presented a world in which I was interested to see a story unfold in.

However, this manga came off as aimed a bit too young for me. The dialogue and character motivations, personalities, and simplicity of the events goes beyond what I'm used to reading in most shounen or shoujo (which can sometimes still be complex enough to entertain me despite my being older than their target audience), and were simple and straight forward to the point of being too much so to grip me. This manga could very well still be very entertaining for children, though I do hold that the best kids' entertainment doesn't need to dumb itself down to the point of turning off adults. ( )