Tokyo Alien Bros.

Do you ever read a manga and think to yourself "this must have been drawn by a man/woman" and then turn out to be completely wrong? There's certain artstyles I'll always associate with either sex and I can't help it.. This was one of those manga. I even read beforehand that it was made by a man but I had to double check anyway. There's this specific blobbyness/cartoonishness/softness to his art that also reminds me a bit of western female hobby artists which I find kind of endearing. Like I swear I've seen fanart of xyz shows drawn in this style so many times before. Either way, I really enjoyed the art in this manga. It was cute and expressive and it served its purpose well, it added to the overall sillyness of the plot while also making the few nsfw scenes feel kind of sterile which imo fits the alien theme so well lmao.

The plot is about two brothers who are actually aliens coming to Earth and evaluating whether it's worth colonizing the planet or not which includes studying humans up close. One of the brothers is seemingly much better at playing human at first, while the other is unsuccesful in this task but slowly gets the hang of it. As you might expect, at a certain point their roles kind of switch which leads to conflict. Throughout the story they experience the good and bad sides of humanity, pretty standard for this kind a story but I love the light we live in a society aspect of it. Yeah I'm a sucker for those.

The two main characters were pretty well done imo, especially Fuyunosuke. Outwardly he's friendly, flirty, happy, helpful, smart - almost perfect. But inside he's kind of a sociopath, well - he's an alien that's his excuse. Personally I love the "effortless a bit goofy pretty boy is actually devoid of empathy" trope because it seems to be true so often lmao. He basically served as a foil to his brother at first and in the middle, but I feel like he broke out of that role eventually which was nice. Side characters didn't have too much depth to them, because it was a short manga after all, but I liked their variety. Somehow I get this weird feeling from the mangaka - like he enjoys life and people, from the way he portrays the side characters and the environment. Even though you only catch a glimpse of most characters you could imagine what type of people they'd be like irl. I'm being weirdly sappy but that's the impression I got from his other work too.

After a few weeks of not reading anything this manga felt like a little treat, it was short, silly and enjoyable!