I wouldn't normally do a post on a series or creative run that was still going, but Volume 15 came out this fall after a three-year gap, so who knows when this series will end?
Yotsuba&! is about a young girl (Yotsuba) and her father moving into a new neighborhood, and Yotsuba finding all sorts of things to be amazed and baffled by. It has an element of Calvin & Hobbes, the child finding wonder in things adults take for granted, but minus the wild sequences where we see things through Calvin's imagination.
We still see how Yotsuba's imagination works, but from the outside, same as her father, friends, and neighbors. When she pours a bunch of acorns in the hallway, then starts spinning each one and pretending they're having conversations, we don't know what she's seeing, but we see what she's doing, and that, plus her father's reaction, is where Azuma tries to bring out the humor.
Azuma writes Yotsuba with a good mixture of childlike innocence/ignorance, crossed with that ability kids have to pick things up from what's said around them, whether they understand the significance or not. When Yotsuba decides she's going to make a schedule, only to find she's already running behind by the time she finishes, she shouts at her father, 'Very sorry for being late! Please wait a little longer!' while her father wonders if she picked that up from him. When her grandmother tries to get her to help clean by saying it's fun, Yotsuba correctly notes that's something adults say to try and trick her. But she's not smart enough to see through it when her grandmother says that cleaning is fun. . . if you take it seriously.
But a main character needs an interesting cast to play off, and Azuma populates Yotsuba's world with people who are unique, with their own quirks or hang-ups and dynamics, but not so weird they seem unbelievable. Each of three Ayase sisters has their own personality, their own sense of humor, their own way of interacting with each other and their parents. Asagi and her mother tend to mess with each other, Fukka and her father share a sense of humor. Ena's the youngest and most able to understand Yotsuba, but also the most mature of the three somehow. Koiwai's friend Jumbo plays along with Yotsuba's humor and thinking, while Yanda pushes back against it to mess with her. Their exchange the first time he shows up still cracks me up years later.
I don't if it's Azuma or some unnamed assistants doing the backgrounds, but they're beautifully detailed and help to ground the characters in a world that's basically ours. Azuma, meanwhile, has a great grasp of body language and pacing. Knowing when to have characters jump from being totally calm to acting like maniacs and wearing boxer shorts on their heads from one panel to the next, or when it's better to do a slow, three-panel reaction with Yotsuba growing increasingly nervous as her father catches her in a fib.
It's just an extremely enjoyable series.
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