Mamono-tachi wa Katazukerarenai

tl;dr: A manga that’s actually fully about cleaning with detail that manages to be decently interesting beyond that. This is a manga that’s mostly just about cleaning, and I think it’s incredibly solid for a manga about cleaning, though at the same time, it is just a manga about cleaning. There are other manga that have cleaning somewhat related to the premise, but this is the first manga I’ve read that’s essentially half a guide on cleaning, wherein the story is mostly just a series of episodes where they run into different situations that require cleaning in different ways and the more experienced cleaner explains tothe others how best to clean in detail. The information as far as I understand it from experience and a minimal amount of research does seem to be pretty accurate so there’s definitely some educational value there. Still, though this does definitely put it in an incredibly positive light, cleaning still isn’t exactly something I find all that entertaining. The premise surrounding the cleaning makes things a bit more interesting in that the one being taught cleaning is a dragon and the one teaching the cleaning is a sacrifice to the dragon that the dragon claims he still intends to eat at some point. The two have an interesting relationship that certainly changes and grows over the course of the manga but largely I found the chemistry between the two kind of strange and I couldn’t really get into it. There are also a host of side characters that the manga tries to flesh out, and though their stories are decent enough they’re all incredibly simplistic. There’s also a running theme about humans and monsters being in conflict that just need to better understand each other that’s pretty generic but works well enough to support the minimal amount of overarching plot the manga has. This theme and plot peaks in the finale where both the characters and the cleaning techniques from throughout the manga are brought together in an epic high-risk finale that’s still accomplished while still being centered around cleaning, which I actually found pretty impressive. This leads into an incredibly predictable and simplistic but reasonable satisfying enough conclusion. There’s also a good amount of comedy throughout the manga that’s decent enough but it’s largely all based on the same themes so it starts getting repetitive as the manga goes on. The art was reasonably good though outside of a couple it wasn’t all that creative with designs.