The Spring 2024 Manga Guide

Friday at the Atelier

What's It About? 

Tamaki, a woman who's grown tired of her life, is one day asked by the famous painter Shunsui Ishihara to become his model. Not just any model, that is―a nude model. But when she accepts without hesitation, Ishihara is taken by her peculiar response and somehow falls for her...!? The misaligned love life between an oblivious girl and a handsome but extremely self-conscious artist begins here!

Friday at the Atelier has a story and art by Sakura Hamada. English translation by Matthew Alberts. This volume is lettered by Alexis Eckerman, and published by Yen Press (May 21, 2024).

CW: This manga contains visible, frontal nudity (nipples).

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Is It Worth Reading?

Lauren Orsini
Rating:

Do you ever have such a crappy day at work that you say, “I'm gonna cover my naked body with fish for the first guy who asks?” Tamaki had exactly that kind of day, and she's such a space case that she decided to go along with it. Even Ishihara, the surrealist artist who requested that she model for him, is shocked that Tamaki agreed. He is so self-aggrandizing that he assumes she recognizes him as a famous up-and-coming artist. The pair strike up an unlikely working partnership that transforms into the slowest slow burn I've ever seen. Ishihara is too proud to admit he fell for Tamaki at first sight, and Tamaki is too spacey to see that Ishihara's accusations that she is in love with him are usually just confessions.

Your enjoyment of Friday at the Atelier will depend on how you feel about the tropes it employs. Ishihara's adoration of Tamaki is very much based on the old chestnut of “you're not fawning over me like absolutely everyone else; therefore, I must have you.” Meanwhile, Tamaki is oblivious to the point that it's hard to determine how she feels like Ishihara. She is often nude in front of him without thinking anything of it. At one point, Ishihara declares that Tamaki is being lewd by putting her socks on first when she gets dressed after modeling. But Tamaki doesn't think anything of it. If she felt anything at all for Ishihara as a love interest, wouldn't she start to become conscious of him viewing her nude body at least by the end of this volume? Both leads are engaging characters, but I can't see that they have much chemistry with each other.

As befitting of a manga about an artist, there's a finesse to this manga's paneling. It blends Ishihara's surrealist tableaus with more ordinary aspects of this couple's life. Additionally, I enjoyed this manga's gourmet focus on eating and enjoying food. (Tamaki may be a model, but she sure can go to town on a Swiss roll cake!) Tamaki's spaced-out, dreamy expressions and Ishihara's transparent emotional denial that shows on his face make it so I can tell what these characters are thinking even before I read the dialogue. It's lovely as a slice of life, but by the end of the volume, these two are no closer to hooking up than they were at the start.

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Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

I admit to being extremely confused by how Yen Press rates its books. Like Sex Ed 120%, Friday at the Atelier comes with an “explicit content” warning on the cover, and also like that series, there's nothing inside that merits it. The “worst” thing we see are female nipples; protagonist Tamaki models nude for an artist who puts fish on her naked body (in a nonsexual way, possibly the weirdest thing I've ever had to type), but we don't even see her groin, much less any pubic hair. It's a fully nonsexual story that happens to contain female nudity, and I'm not sure that that's something that anyone needs to be protected from.

Rant aside, this is an odd story. It follows Tamaki and Shunsui as they interact with each other during her modeling sessions and occasionally outside of them. They met by chance when Tamaki was desultorily considering suicide (how serious she was is unclear), and Shunsui trips and his groceries contained the exact kind of fish she was thinking about eating. As a renowned surrealist painter, Shunsui is consumed with the desire to paint Tamaki and the fish, and they fall into a relationship from there. Shunsui is a textbook tsundere, loudly and repeatedly proclaiming that he won't fall for Tamaki while doing just that, while Tamaki lets life move her from place to place. She takes everything at face value, so she remains oblivious to Shunsui's feelings for her, but more than that, she doesn't appear to care about much of anything besides food. There are hints that this is due to being constantly told that she's not good at anything, but that's not explored in the book.

There's a dreamy quality to the story that makes everything feel a little unreal. Only Hirano, Shunsui's manager, feels like a real person, and I think that's deliberate. It may be making a statement about the ephemerality of art and its creation, or it just could be showcasing how Shunsui and Tamaki are a little socially awkward, and that it could be either deep or shallow is one of the more interesting elements of the book. It doesn't contribute to readability, but it also helps it to stand out, particularly when compared to other artist manga, such as Blue Period or The Essence of Being a Muse. Even after thinking about it for an extended period, I still don't know if I enjoyed reading this or if I want to read a second volume, but I can say that if you're looking for something off the beaten path, this fits that bill and is worth flipping through.

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Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. Yen Press, BookWalker Global, and J-Novel Club are subsidiaries of KWE.