Basics

The Manga

Chi's Sweet Home is a slice of life manga about a kitty, Chi, who one day got lost while taking a walk with her mother and siblings, and ended up getting adopted by the Yamada family.

Each chapter is pretty short for usual manga standards, but are very enjoyable regardless. They narrate the little adventures Chi runs onto: meeting other cats and animals, learning about pancakes, finding places to sleep, fighting flowerpots....

Lots of the manga's dialoge are short, simple phrases, Chi is just a few months old! It's also one of the few manga in color, drawn fully in watercolors

If you own a cat, you will find so fun to read about a kitty who most likely acts like yours (lots of stories are based on experiences the team has had with their cats!), and if you don't, you still won't be able to resist Chi's charm!

Charm points

The story itself is simple but adorable: Cats being cats! If their silly antics weren't enough, all of them are drawn with very round shapes, which make them even more cute, expressive and appealing to see. The simplicy of the dialogues also makes it very easy to follow, you could even use it to learn another language!

But I think lots of the charm resides in the physical manga itself. All the colors (panels, cover, etc) are pretty pastel-toned, and the pages are yellow-ish instead of pure white, which makes it very easy on the eyes.

The pages are slightly textured, making it look as if the watercolors were painted directly on your book instead of being printed!

It has lots of extras! And not just interviews, concept art, collaborations... (just the "normal" extras are way more than I usually find!), each book has a cut-out toy on its sleeve! From simple puzzles to a miniature replica of the manga you have to built yourself

I'm not exaggerating when I say Chi's Sweet Home is the best manga ever: It's good for your mind (easy to read, no drama,
cuteness everywhere), good for your soul (gentle coloring & textures, a nice sensory experience) and good for your body (cut-out toys give you something to do after reading, more screen-free time yay)
Do yourself a favor and buy a volume... right now! Forget everything else, what you need in this cruel world is to read the adventures of a kitty cat and then cut & build (with kid-friendly scissors and glue, of course) a rubik cube toy of said kitty cat.

Me, Chi & the spanish edition

Maybe manga doesn't get translated that much over here, or maybe I'm just unlucky that most of the stuff I like don't get licensed until decades after its original release (Pokespe in 2015, Persona 3 in 2021, Mermaid Melody... 4 months ago!).
But luckily, Chi's Sweet Home was licensed relatively soon, so I have been reading it since I was little! I don't remember how exactly I found out about it, I think my sister bought the 1st volume because she thought it was cute and then I got hooked onto it.

So far, Chi is the first and only manga I have bought all the volumes of! I asked for a volume each year for Christmas, from elementary school to the end of high school! My first online purchase was, of course, Chi-related: a plush purse of the kitty herself!
Sadly, my mother threw it out when I was 13 because she said it was too childish... I'm still a bit sad over it, but she redeemed herself & bought me a ceramic bowl of Chi & her family last year, thanks you mom

The spanish edition of the manga is pretty standard, but I like two things about it:
The logo! It uses similar colors to the JP one, but it's square-shaped and... has a little Chi sitting on it! Later, the US version also added a jumping Chi in place of the apostrophe on its logo, but the spanish one was the only one who did it at first. I only found out about it recently, I had assumed she was there on every language!
(The Thai logo is also very cute btw! It's completely different than the other ones, uses rainbow pastel colors & looks like a Precure one instead :'p)

And the other thing I like is the special section "...'s Sweet Home"! Exclusive to the spanish edition, it was a place where readers could send pics of their own cats! I had so much fun reading about them.
Having a cat has been my dream forever, but this section made me even more jealous; I wanted so badly to be able to send pics of my kitty!! Currently, I still don't own a cat, but I got a bunny who acts exactly like one. I wonder if he would be eligible for it...

Here's a bad pic of that section, another spotlight on a manga full of little spotlights