Tokyo Tarareba Girls was hilarious and heartfelt at the same and just an overall emotional rollercoaster. I will definitely be reading more from Akiko Higashimura in the future.

In a lot of East Asian cultures, it a very serious expectation that women are to be married in life, with hard dates such as 25 or 30 as expectations for a woman to settle down, regardless of their current position in life. It’s something I’ve never really agreed with but Tokyo Tarareba Girls uses this cultural cornerstone to introduce you to Rinko and company, a group of 30+ old women living Tokyo who are yes, unmarried.

A lot of people who aren’t familiar with the culture over there might completely disagree or perhaps misunderstand the background for this book, as well as the impact that Tokyo winning the right to host the Olympics would have on women like Rinko and company. If you’re interested, I encourage you to understand and embrace the cultural differences, because once you get past that part, you’ll find a manga that is lighthearted and funny, with a lot of relatability if you’ve been in any situation the girls have.

Based on Akiko Higashimura’s previous works you can get an idea how the overall story arc is going to likely go, as her previous works such as Princess Jellyfish give us a similar story. A character who is commonly seen as the underdog rising to a place of security and happiness with the help of her friends and other, external influences. This first volume of course doesn’t go that far, but by the end you get the feeling about what might be happening. Overall, the artwork is well done, the story and characters are charming in their slightly exaggerated responses to the stressors of daily life. It shows off some unfortunate but sobering details about the workplace for a woman some might consider “past her prime” such as being overlooked for a position for a younger woman, or perhaps a person that does something slightly more underhanded to get the position.

It’s a dog eat dog out there, Tokyo is no different, if you’re interested in a slice of life focused on a slightly older group of people, it’s hard to go wrong with Tokyo Tarareba Girls volume 1.

Realizo esta reseña honesta sobre Tarareba Girls gracias a Netgalley.♥

Hola!
Aquí Karly! con mis comentarios sobre Tarareba Musume (titulo en japones)!
El manga trae los primeros 4 capítulos de una historia sumamente divertida y con personajes muy épicos.
Tal vez si eres del tipo de chica que esta en contra del sistema en cuanto la imagen de como una mujer debe ser, esta historia es para ti.
Este tomo comienza con la historia de Rinko una chica de ya esta entrada en los 30 y sufre bastante por sentirse "ya grande" y su frustración de no haberse casado aun. Así que entre anécdotas de trabajo, escuela y amistad, nos va introduciendo al mundo de las soltería en japón junto con sus amigas, en una de esas un chico apuesto/rubio se queja sobre ella y sus amigas y les comenta la razón de su soltería, a lo cual ellas comienzan con su propósito de conseguir marido.
Me gusto bastante, las protagonistas son reales, sensibles y muy chistosas, lo seguiré leyendo por que también quiero ver el dorama y ver que tal adaptaron el manga..

Bai.

<center><img src="http://lady-business.org/bookcovers/cover_tokyotararebagirls1.png" alt="Cover of Tokyo Tarareba Girls"></center>

<blockquote>"I spent all my time wondering 'what if,' then one day I woke up and I was 33." She's not that bad-looking, but before she knew it, Rinko was thirty-something and single. She wants to be married by the time the Tokyo Olympics roll around in six years, but...that might be easier said than done! The new series by Akiko Higashimura erupts with sharp opinions on girls and tons of laughs!!</blockquote>

<em>Tokyo Tarareba Girls</em> is from the same creator as <em>Princess Jellyfish</em>, and follows Rinko, a 33 year old writer for web series, as she and her two best friends resolve to get married before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Not that they have partners in mind at all – they're just going find a husband <em>somewhere.</em> From there, it spins out to show all of the ways that these three women struggle with dating despite their otherwise successful lives, and show the way that as Rinko's personal and professional lives spin out of control, she clings even tighter to her goal of getting married.

<cut>I realised slightly too late what my mistake was with <em>Tokyo Tarareba Girls</em>: I am too ace and too suspicious of marriage as an institution to make a good audience for a story about desperately wanting to get married. Especially the sort of desperation that the three main characters show here – they want to <em>be married</em>, and don't much care about who they get married <em>to</em>, so I was periodically squinting at this book like "... I don't understand why you're not happy with your wonderful friends and the job that you're proud of." I assumed that it was different cultural pressures, and my confusion is just my repeatedly forgetting that specific context – look at all of the infrastructure the women find <em>specifically for finding husbands</em> – but sometimes it feels <em>cruel</em> in its treatment of the main characters.

The depiction of the what-ifs and maybes that plague the three of them is very solid, albeit usually and ridiculously represented by drink-induced hallucinations of food (no, I don't understand why, even though the notes explain the pun) and Rinko's arguments with herself about what she wants feels very familiar. The scene where she tells herself that if she'd wasted less time hanging out with her friends, she'd probably be married by now felt guility familiar; as someone whose anxiety has <em>also</em> pointed out that time spent hanging out with friends is NOT TIME SPENT PRODUCTIVELY IN THE FACE OF CAPITALISM (... so my concerns are SLIGHTLY different to Rinko's), I can relate. But her friendships are really good – she and her friends are believably different from each other, and their raucous plans with each other makes me happy! I'm just disappointed that the series seems focused on making their friendship and active lives seem like a bad thing? I would <em>definitely</em> recommend reading <user name="hippogriff13">'s <a href="https://ladybusiness.dreamwidth.org/276327.html?thread=1519463#cmt1519463">assessment of it</a>, especially because she points out that in the serialised run of <em>Tokyo Tarareba Girls</em>, the artist/magazine editors had the gleefully doomsaying bar snacks <em>ragging on actual readers who wrote in for advice.</em>

I think that the other part of my problem is that a lot of the humour is based on Rinko's embarrassment, or on people doing exaggeratedly absurd things (like proposing to someone that you met for MAYBE FIVE SECONDS) and that isn't funny to me. I have an embarrassment squick, and while there <em>are</em> ways to tell stories about stumbling back into the dating scene and disasters cascading, <em>Tokyo Tarareba Girls doesn't manage it.</em> Especially because the main male character... Ugggggggh. Every scene he's in, he undermines Rinko's job and social life, and it struck me as unnecessarily cruel. I could see why they clashed, but I just wasn't emotionally invested beyond "Can the two of you please just stop?" ... Also don't get me started on the ending of this volume, because I was NOT expecting that. Or I was, but not how it went down, not at the end of the first volume, and I was holding out hope that it wouldn't.

Basically, <em>Tokyo Tarareba Girls</em> is genuinely not for me. The art is good, as you might expect from the creator of <em>Princess Jellyfish</em>, but I won't be reading on.

[This review is based on an ARC from Netgalley.]

<Em>Edited 02/05/19 to fix broken links and correct <user name="hippogriff13">'s pronouns.</em>

A manga for the slightly "older" woman - at least by the way the book itself defines older. The three main characters are all 33 years old, which for them, means they are now over the hill and their prospects for marriage are extremely limited. They spend most nights getting super drunk at the local pub and complaining about life until a young male model calls them out and makes them feel bad about their life choices.
As they try to figure out how to get married before the 2020 Olympics, we see the sad duality of their lives - they are great women, beautiful. with great jobs and their own money, but they feel their lives have been a waste because their society tells them they should have been married with kids 10 years or more ago.

Adorable, thoroughly enjoyed this! Different from my usual read but loved it, will definitely broaden my reading choices

I enjoyed reading this. While not really my genre, I did enjoy the characters and story in this one.

With the end of the beloved, Princess Jellyfish, many people were waiting to see what this author would publish next. Well, we now have another delightful manga to add to our collections. Tokyo Tarareba Girls is similar to Princess Jellyfish in that it is another example that manga is not just for children and youths. The characters are relatable, and adorable. The artistic style is beautiful and unique. If you are an adult, looking for a manga tailored to the issues that adults sometimes face, look no further than this manga.

I received this ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I didn’t really like this book.

There was too much going on in this for me to keep interest and follow along. Especially with all the complaining the characters do about their love lives and about being in their 30's. I'd like to think that my life won't go down hill once I hit my 30's... but with the bleak outlook this book presented it contributes to the opposite. Some of what Rinko, the main character, reflects on is interesting... like how she believed that if she put in good work that she'd get ahead, but was then overlooked for a job because of someone younger than her who was sleeping with the producer. Her close bonds with her friends is also refreshing. I'm interested enough to read the next volume, but we'll see where it goes from there.

I did like this basing it off the fact that the plot is a bit different than most popular manga, and that the main character is a lot older than the norm. The story was funny and did have it's emotional moments! Some that I feel could be very relatable especially in terms of being stuck with your life and career.

My main problem with it was that I felt a lot of the same situations kept repeating themselves over and over again in each chapter. This made it a bit too predictable and kind of boring after a while, since you could kind of guess what Rinko would do after being faced with a new problem in her life. Things do change up a bit in the final chapter of this first volume, leaving you with a cliffhanger that does make me want to read the other volumes just to see how everything turns out.

I also did appreciate the author adding bonus content with a disclaimer to explain she doesn't feel like all women need is a husband to fulfill their lives. That this is at the end of the day something that was inspired by some friends in her own life. Although a lot of people may find issue with the main character's obsession with finding the right man, I am hoping to see a bit of character growth later on in the series.

I loved Tokyo Tarareba Girls volume 1 and I can't wait for more! The characters are great and the plot is hilarious (if sometimes a bit insulting towards women). 4/5 stars.

Enjoyable beginning to a story about single middle aged women with careers. It was a very enjoyable read with the cliffhanger sure to get readers to continue with the series. Like many manga, it does sometimes feel like the same scenario repeating itself but the humor within it makes up for that. The audience for manga in the US tends to be teens so in a library setting it may not get as much attention as other items.

It's comics like this that make me wish I was in charge of ordering the adult graphic novels for my library and not just the children's and teens. I found myself laughing out loud so much while reading volume 1 of Tokyo Tarereba Girls because it is beyond relatable to its target demogaphic. I do think that the lack of translating the title is to the series' detriment; Tokyo What-If Girls sounds just fine and makes more sense than leaving it in Japanese. I will do everything in my power to get our adult services staff purchase this for our collection (and I can't wait to read more of the series!).

I never thought I will find story about 30 something woman in a manga. I usually find it in some movies or TV series. My Bad. It is been so long since I read Shojo Manga. For years I only read fantasy and detective genre.

Talking about the main character, at frist I was little bit annoyed. She was so desperate and fragile. In a same time I also feel pity to what happen to her in this first volume. I wish something good will happen to her in the next volume. I wish there is good development in the installment. I'd love to read the next volume. I wish I have that chance.

I just found out that this manga has been adapted into Dorama. I hope it is as hilarious as the manga version

A group of three girls get together to gossip, vent, and drink and before they know it their lives have passed them by. Now, in their 30s and single, they're stuck on the 'what if's' of life.

I was really torn on this one. I wanted to like it, and I hadn't read a manga in a while, but something just didn't sit right with me. I think the main factor was my inability to relate or like any of the characters. I found them almost too problematic but also kind of depressing. I enjoyed learning how other cultures view things and their lives but it kind of just stopped there.

For several pages, it's mainly just the girls drinking and complaining, and then the love interest I guess you could call him is such a major asshole it's hard to really root for anyone??

I don't know. As soon as it picked up it ended so I think it was just a miss for me.

When I came across Tokyo Tarareba Girls, I had just finished reading volume 1 of Princess Jellyfish. After reading both mangas, I would say that Princess Jellyfish is made for a young adult audience, and Tokyo Tarareba Girls is geared towards women in their twenties and thirties.
Ten years ago , at age twenty-three, Rinko went on a disastrous date with a shabbily dressed man who bought her a cheap ring. Since, then Rinko has given up trying to find a man to marry, and settled on becoming a well respected television writer. Now, she's thirty-three and about to embark on writing the script for a new web series, and spends every weekend getting drunk with her equally single friends. When it is announced that Tokyo will host the 2020 Olympic games in Tokyo, panic sets in on Rinko and her friends. Suddenly, Rinko is on the hunt for a husband and she vows to find a husband before the Olympics begin in six years. The man who gave her the cheap ring ten years before is now Rinko's fashionably dressed (but still single) coworker. Could he be Rinko's last chance at finding a husband?
Tokyo Tarareba Girls is a critique on modern women who believe they need to find a husband in order to be happy. Although many of the scenarios in this manga are exaggerated, the societal pressure upon women in their thirties to get married is very real, especially for Japanese culture. Rinko's story is not supposed to be a message to all single 30-something women to find a husband. Instead, it pokes fun at reality and shows what could happen when women become desperate to find a husband. It is more of a social critique by painting society how it is and not how it should be.
Throughout the manga, Rinko goes out drinking with her two best friends. They are called the "what-if" women as they try to plan a future for themselves as married women. Instead, they keep returning to the pub every weekend and lament about their lives. As they drown their sorrows, Rinko begins to envision the pub snacks, liver and codfish, speaking to her and giving her advice. These two are the imaginary mascots of Rinko's subconscious, pushing her towards desperation to meet a man. They tell her "What if! What if! If you let him get away you'll be... alone!!! forever!!" As the story progresses, Rinko becomes even more desperate as she tries to navigate the rough roads of love at age thirty-three.
Tokyo Tarareba Girls is from the same creator as Princess Jellyfish (my favorite manga of all time). Although they are completely different, and I have never been a thirty-three-year old "what-if" woman, I could really connect to Rinko and her misadventures. Not only is this manga extremely hilarious, it is also a subtle social critique of how women see themselves in society.
All in all, I would recommend this manga to anyone who loves comedies with a dash of disastrous romance.

Rinko, an early 30-something Japanese screenwriter for webseries, vows to marry by the time the Tokyo 2020 Olympics roll around. She regularly meets up with her best friends, also bemoaning their singledom, to gab over drinks and snacks. Akiko Higashimura paints a thoughtful and humorous picture of women who agonize over romance versus financial practicality. Around them, society and talking snack foods (alcohol-induced in Rinko's mind) poke at them for remaining single. However, despite her discomfort, Rinko doesn't exactly thrill at the idea of settling. Higashimura includes her own experiences at the end of the volume, as source material for the characters and scenarios. Readers will also gain insight on "career" women in Japanese society and anticipate how their journeys progress. Does getting what you want equal what you need?

I LOVE Akiko Higashimura, particularly Princess Jellyfish, so I was super thrilled to pick up this series. I almost wish I could reserve judgment until I read the whole series, though. I think Akiko's author's note/comic at the end helps contextualize the volume, but where the action leaves off it seems that the message of the book is kind of going counter to what she's saying in her author's note. This leads me to believe that the series OVERALL is going to reinforce what she says in the note, but this particular volume kind of showcases some retro "must have a husband" mindset. I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes, though.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley.

3.5 stars

Rinko and her friends are 30 something-year-olds who have realized that life has passed them by. They struggle with work and relationships all while wondering "what if?" What if they had just married that guy in college or had kept dating the plain coworker? They spend nights drinking complaining instead of doing something about it. They finally get a wake-up call from a stranger in the pub they frequent and have to decide how they're going to live their lives.

The cover drew me in with its colors and I loved the fashion used in the illustrations. It was funny and I found this graphic novel to be very relatable. There is a part where they talk about not knowing any of these new celebrities and watching old Friends re-runs instead of regular TV. I kept saying to myself, "that's me!" Although I'm ten years younger, not much changes. Everyone thinks "what if?" at some point and this novel just dives into the question.

I will say that I expected it to end differently. I thought it would be more about girl power and not needing a man to succeed. After reading Akiko's bonus story at the end I found that she had written it about her friends and is basically telling them that they should go after what they want. So if Rinko wants a husband she has to get up and go get one, but it won't be easy.