"Today is always the most enjoyable day"

[larryhammer]

More Yotsuba&! moments:

• When we first meet Dad's friend Jumbo, as the adults talk over her head about the logistics of moving in, Yotsuba looks up and says, "It's been a while since I've seen you -- my how you've grown!" To which Jumbo responds, "Heh. Where'd you hear that one?"
  
  
• I love Jumbo's comebacks about his height. He probably has a store of them, to pull out as needed. "My father's ancestors were giraffes," indeed.
  
  
• Life happens around the edges of chapters. We never do get a story about badminton, just snippets of "special training" threaded around the main action. Small things reappear in the background, like Yotsuba's drawings and stuff she picks up and rewatching nature documentaries.
  
  
• Do you really want to eat a piece of doughnut that sat overnight in a five-year-old's shorts pocket?
  
  
• Yotsuba even puts energy into her sound effects. Going down a waterslide, Ena's swish is in hiragana and Yotsuba's in katakana -- which in contemporary usage has an emphasis similar to italics.
  
  
• At her first fireworks show, Yotsuba is woken from a nap by the opening BOOM: "Are we under attack?!" Seeing for the first time the father next door: "Who are you? Friend or foe?" On meeting a policewoman, Yotsuba secretively shows her a loaded water pistol, then slips it back in her bag: "You follow me?" She is, in fact, a demented little girl.
  
  
• Partway through the zoo, Dad announces, "Soon we'll be at the elephant. It'll be big." Yotsuba: "How big? As big as a cow?" Beat while Dad looks at her -- then he points: "About that big." Followed by a half-page drawing of her face, total astonishment.
  
  Perfectly rendered.
  
  
• Two words: Flower Cupid.
  
  
• Two more words: "Enjoy everything"

---L.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I love the flower cupid--it's one of my favorites ♥

[larryhammer]

It's one of everyone's favorites.

It's also one of the best-structured stories: every single thing in it is pointing towards that final frame, and her making a conclusion that Dad doesn't have the background for.

---L.