Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san · review
Spoiler warning
This review may discuss plot details.
At first, the setting is really fun, and it's super interesting seeing the ins and outs of a working bookstore, and all the quirks of the business and the customers. The exploration of different types of manga and manga-buying customers is entertaining, and the novelty of Honda's skeletal appearance adds to the humour, especially as her character is constantly flustered or shocked by something, and she has to express that with the limited emotive potential of: the skull. As much as I did enjoy it, the manga quickly starts to feel like it doesn't have much to say. We see several versions of the foreign customerwho act in similar ways, we revisit the "lewd" manga over and over again to talk awkwardly about how they're sexual (wow), and it all seems to fall into a boring, repetitive cycle that isn't very much fun.
By the fourth volume, it's become ridiculous. The entirety of this volume is about, I kid you not, how Honda has no material left. I'm baffled as to why they bothered to publish it.
There's also a really uncomfortable anecdote in chapter 18 where employees talk about how rare it is to see children in the shop. They talk about being excited when they see cute kids, and there are some really off-colour jokes about how they're saying this in a non-creepy way. One employee corrects herself when she refers to a little girl she saw as a "loli". It's just like... ok? Very, very odd and uncomfortable little segment.
Overall, the manga has some fun moments, but it gets a bit tiresome in some aspects (especially in relation to going on about erotic manga that the store sells), and massively overstays it's welcome.
Maybe just read the first volume.