Cockroa-chan

[Lilyeth]

I really just hate how this series keeps doing like horrible things, I like the cute scenes but I'm never sure if it's some sort of round about way to imply its actually something horrible or if its meant to be sweet

 

[MelReinH]

Good thing real roaches don't look this cute. So conflicted reading this.

 

[NishaAzalea]

The amazing power to make people emotionally invested in anything as long as they are a cute anime girl!

 

[darktennisball]

Cockroa has a family. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s NTR 🤔

 

[GANJA_BaBa]

Why aren’t they translating the page after 19🤧

 

[Baba2000]

Only in manga will you find a cute cockroach

 

[RedGOAT123]

And here I am, with a bad case of cuteness aggression, and a crushed mouse. Ha.. Ha.. I'm going crazy

 

[bj2cplz7w]

I just read the entire book, around 126 pages. It’s not bad, you can get it on amazon.co.jp (it’s in Japanese only but using a combination of Google Translate and Microsoft Copilot, you can get a pretty high quality translation). I’ll post some of my thoughts below (spoilers)

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Spoiler: plot explanation

The main character is Cockroa-chan (officially her name is G-buri-chan, G-buri being a shortened version of the word for cockroach in Japanese). The book begins with G-buri: she’s naïve and overly optimistic, eats dust balls and stray strands of hair and can't resist human food. A new tenant moves in due to cheap rent (apparently because there are tons of pests in the house). G-buri is always thinking/hoping that the new tenant that moved into the apartment is finally going to be nice, but in reality, the tenant is constantly trying to kill her with sprays, poisoned baits, rolled up newspapers, etc. Even after “protecting” the tenant from an armed robber (who fled, apparently he has some phobia of roaches), the tenant still tried to kill G-buri with some poison bait. When that failed, the tenant gave up trying to kill her, at least just for that day (which she interpreted, quite erroneously, as some kind of affection).

There are a ton of unrelated or partially related side stories involving anthropomorphized ants, bees, mosquitoes, cicadas, crickets, centipedes and various other insects. Humans faces are never shown, just hands, feet which are giant compared to the insects. Humans are portrayed as mostly aloof to the world of insects and sometimes even sadistic (one human baits an ant to fall into an antlion nest).

The book wraps up with G-buri’s story. The tenant moves out and she’s alone again, with only one strand of the tenant’s hair as a reminder. Then one day, another potential tenant is looking at the apartment and it ends with G-buri again being naively excited about meeting a new human.

The story is done in a humorous, dark comedy kind of way. Most insects like humans but the affection is definitely one-sided in virtually every case. I felt the editing could have a little tighter. Even within chapters, scenes tend to start and end abruptly.

I think this would make a great anime series of short episodes (like 3-8 minutes long) or possibly a movie stitched together with the various vignettes. If you enjoyed the artwork, you’ll like the book. The kindle version was around $7.80 (1180 JPY)