Manga / Kanamemo

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Middle school student Kana Nakamachi has just lost her grandmother, her only remaining family member. Fearing that the repo men will take her too, she packs up what she can into a knapsack. With just that and the clothes on her back, she sets off to find a place to stay. Meanwhile, the Fuhshin News office is looking for work, and the closest thing they've been able to find is a stray cat. With no one willing to take Kana in, she ends up having an unfortunate run-in with one of Fuhshin's employees, who's out for a bike ride, and gets knocked unconscious.

When she wakes up, she finds herself in the office. They're willing to take her in. The Fuhshin News is an odd place. With an all-girl staff full of oddballs, Kana tries her best to adjust and make her way in the world as a delivery girl.

Kanamemo is a yonkoma manga by Shoko Iwami, which was serialized in Manga Time Kirara Max from 2007 to 2013. The manga got an anime adaptation in the summer of 2009. US residents may legally watch the anime at Crunchyroll.

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Kanamemo provides examples of the following tropes:

• A-Cup Angst:
  • Subverted. Kana says that she would be quite patient and says that she'll grow up to be pretty tall and busty.
  • Played straight, however, for Mika on the 5th episode.
• Alien Abduction: No aliens or abductions have appeared in the series, but that doesn't stop Kana from thinking that they have.
• An Astral Projection, Not a Ghost: Kana meets a girl named Tono Mizuka and helps her to see and smell a Morning Glory before sunset and after her disappearing into thin air Kana mistakes her for a ghost, but later learns, that this apparition was in fact a "living ghost" of a girl (manager's classmate) staying in a hospital in the US and being unable to tend to her flower and only being able to "haunt" the house (which is marked as haunted on Kana's route booklet) between sunset and sunrise.
• April Fools' Plot: Chapter 26 of the manga has signs of this. It starts with Hinata and Haruka creeping out Kana involving demons. Hilarity Ensues.
• Art Shift: Yume's "recollection" of one of her childhood stories shifts into a crayon style drawing.
• Ass Kicks You: Haruka heard some commotion in the garden, came outside and cushioned Kana's fall from a tree with herself and used the opportunity to grope her, much to Kana's dismay.
• Bad Liar: Since Mika became Kana's friend, she "accidentally" strolls by the Fushin Gazette/News, even during a TAIFUN!
• Beach Episode: Probably the world's first musical pool episode. Even if the destination of Waterland is never reached, there are still plenty of swimsuits and fanservice.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. It's quite common for everyone to get dirty, considering they deliver newspapers.
• Berserk Button: Yume, of all people has this in the manga, for some odd reasons and usually Played for Comedy, but the most notable being in the 4th volume of the manga (first time the manga attempts a dramatic moment). Yuuki has another Clingy Jealous Girl moment with Kana, going as far as pulling her hair, and Yume tells Yuuki to control herself, with Yuuki responding with a hug to Yume. Yume's response? A slap, along with some yelling. Yuuki forgives both of them and promises to stop clinginess.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: When Kana gets attacked by a dog during newspaper delivery, Mika sees it and thinks Kana let the dog mount her (which is, of course, just a misunderstanding).
• Beware the Nice Ones: Interestingly, Kana herself in the manga.
  Kana: The senior members of the shop said that if that electric meter is spinning rapidly, someone is inside.
  Mika: It's clearly spinning.
  Kana: Hello! Please come out! And if you don't come out, Mika-chan is going to strip nude and dance around! (chuckles)
  Mika: WHO THE HELL WOULD DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT?!
• Big Eater: Surprisingly enough, Kana. Helps that she can cook.
• Big "NO!"
  • Done with Kana on the end of the 6th episode.
  • It's done by everybody (except Saki) in the manga on chapter 6.
• Bland-Name Product: A NTT Docomo cellphone becomes a "MTT Dacamo" phone.

• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Slight variation in the manga:
  Hinata: We got flashlights and candles?
  Haruka: I have them. (is shown to have a whip)
  Hinata: (throws a whip at Haruka) I don't need whips!
• Buffy Speak: Especially from Kana in the anime. Lampshaded by Haruka:
  Haruka: The way Kana speaks her words seem like you're drunk. If only I had such way with words...
  Saki: Well, you spoke Spanish once, didn't you?
  Haruka: I thank Ricky Martin.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Even though she IS an alcoholic lolicon grope-artist and also a complete ditz, she studies (most likely food-related) biology at the college, even creates new alcoholic beverages and other food-stuffs uses the newspaper staff as guienea-pigs.
• Butt-Monkey: Haruka.
• Cameo: The ending picture in every episode features fan art done by various manga artists, including Kurogane Ken, Miyabi Fujieda, and Kakifly.
• Captain Obvious: Done and lampshaded wonderfully on a chapter in volume 3, when the girls are finding a girl's cat:
  Yuuki: It's a cat with a mustache.
  Hinata: (deadpan) Why thanks, Yuuki, I realized that I was blind for a second.
  Yuuki: Well, answer me this; do you see stuff like this everyday?
  Hinata: No, but you didn't need to point him out. Who else thinks that was unnecessary?
  Mika: (deadpan) I think this comedy act is unnecessary. Can we just get the freaking cat already?
  Kana: She's right. We'll then check if that mustache is real or not.
  Mika: THAT'S NOT THE REASON WE— whatever.
• Captain's Log: The manga does a better job at this, since Kana has a diary early on, while the anime crosses Talking to the Dead and Monologue territory.
• Cartoon Physics: No doubt makes the charm of the show, with Saki's hair being alive one time, and pretty much almost anything involving Haruka.
• Cast Full of Gay
  • Four of the seven main cast members are shown to be inclined towards females, and none show any interest in males, not that they have many opportunities to.
  • The manga has 5 out of 7. Who's the other lesbian? Believe it or not, it's Kana.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Turns into more of a dramedy during the second half of the anime series.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Yuuki in regards to Yume. Well, she is not so clingy overall, but compensates for that with extreme fits of jealousy — which Yume luckily manages to defuse quickly.
• Cloudcuckoolander
  • Haruka. She's a Psycho Lesbian lolicon, gets drunk most of the time, and has really pervy imaginations.
  • Then there's Yume, who kinda overdoes it when it comes to sweets.
  Yume:No worries, nothin' like a little cat poop laser to solve the problem.
  • Kana, as well. She once thought her friends were kidnapped by hamster aliens.
• Comedic Lolicon: Haruka is a self-proclaimed lolicon with a fetish for girls younger than 15, and she tends to make advances on Kana, much to Kana's horror. It's all Played for Laughs.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: Kitaoka Yume is an apprentice at a local patisserie and adds sugar to absolutely everything she cooks, even if it's not supposed to be sweet. Other characters are not impressed, but Yume's desserts are actually very good.
• Curtains Match the Window: Every girl. Just look at the pic above.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: Kana
• Cute Kitten: Bunta, the kitten that Yume brought home, serves as the series' mascot and becomes a mainstay of the office. This kitten also serves as the default censor image. In which there are a lot of. See episode 5. Episode 6 ramps this up to eleven... in a scary way.
• Deadpan Snarker
  • Hinata and Saki. To the point that Word of God mentions that he enjoyed writing those two so much, he made them sort of wise-cracking duo starting in Volume 3.
  • The rest of the cast show possible signs of this, sometimes dragging the show closer to World of Snark territory...
• Deliberately Cute Child: Saki, outside of the office, is very skilled at putting on the "innocent elementary schooler" act.
• Depending on the Writer: Kana has a pretty bad case with this on the manga. She can be either be happy, easily panicked, nervous, confused and/or shy to slightly deadpan, snarky, a trickster and/or can even be a tease. The anime averts this... until the last episode were she goes on her trickster self with Mika. Makes you wonder, though, why doesn't she become a trickster to people like Haruka?
• Dirty Old Woman: Haruka may still be a college chick, but mentally she's already there.
• The Ditz: Haruka confirms herself as one on chapter 4 of the manga.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The opening is sung by Aki Toyosaki (Kana), Kaoru Mizuhara (Saki) and Rie Kugimiya (Mika), while the ending is by Yui Horie (Haruka).
• Double Standard: Hardly any male characters could be as blatant a lolicon as Haruka and get away with it with audiences (Hinata said in episode #4, that she's happy, that Haruka is female and Yuuki agreed to that).
• Downer Ending: Played for Laughs in episode 9.
• Face of a Thug: Whan Saki tried to have Kana make a win-customers-smile in episode #3. Her first attempt was the face of a demon (complete with Killing Intent leaking out, although only to people, who actually saw her smile), which made anyone, who saw it, nearly wet themselves. Saki used this to damage a rival's newspaper's sales (she sent Kana with her new friend Kujiin from the "Kajitsu Times" and it actually worked, frightening any potential customer). With training, she changed her smile into something with an cuteness-overdose.
• Facepalm of Doom: Hinata does that to Haruka to prevent her from jumping Kana (the non-lethal and non-super version, she grabbed her just by the face).
• Festival Episode
• First-Name Basis: Though it takes a full episode for it to happen, Kana and Mika do eventually shift to this with each other.
• Gangsta Style: Of the "bandana around mouth" variant done by Mika on chapter 22.
• Gayngst: Subverted for a change. What appears to be yet another unhappy ending for an anime lesbian couple, complete with talk of Yuuki "growing up" and coping without Yume, turns out to be nothing more than a misunderstanding on Kana's part of a matter involving a visit to the dentist and a return home for a memorial service, with Yume and Yuuki happily reunited at the end of the episode.
• Gratuitous English: While searching for subscribers, Kana and Mika encounter "Aran Smythee", who speaks English about as well as one might expect of an American character in a comedy anime (which is infernally bad).
  • Bonus points goes for the fact that the national anthem was playing was during that scene.
• Gratuitous Spanish:
  Haruka: VIVA LA TYPHOON!
• Gross-Up Close-Up: Episode 6 has one of these.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Haruka
• Hide Your Lesbians: Completely averted with Yume and Yuuki. They are clearly shown to be an item. Kana doesn't seem to think they're that close, though, which is quite confusing.
• Homosexual Reproduction: In chapter 20, Haruka deludes herself into thinking that Saki has gotten herself pregnant from someone in the staff of the newspaper (who are, as we know, all female); The panel is even called "Maria-sama", a reference to the Virgin Mary, who's first pregnancy also wasn't caused the normal way. (Although, in Episode 9 of the anime, there are no references to either someone of the staff knocking her up or to the Virgin Mary.)
• Hot Springs Episode: Public bath version. Includes Haruka trying to Skinship Grope Kana and Mika.
• Hypocritical Humor: Episode 5 has Yume hugging Kana at one point, of course, Yuuki being a Clingy Jealous Girl, scares Kana (and everyone else). A few minutes later, Yume scares Kana, with Yuuki then being annoyed with Yume for doing that.
• I Am Not Shazam:invoked Lampshades its title on an omake in the manga, also referring to infamous examples such as the Die Hard and Avatar examples:
  Kana: Supposedly it's a pun on the word memorandum, since "Kanadiary" wouldn't catch on, wouldn't you agree, Yume?
  Yume: I'm just worried that it's gonna have the John McClane or Na'vi effect.
  Saki: Ugh, I hate that.
• Imagine Spot:
  • Haruka. They're never innocent, and usually involve Kana. Her first one was wondering which anime archetype (a Dojikko, a Tomboy, a Delicate and Sickly girl or a Tsundere) would end up working at the office. In her ideal world, it would be all of them.
  • Kana has these, too, with a bit of Cloudcuckoolander.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Mika's marksmanship with a toy gun at a festival firing range is so bad, the bullet ricochets and hits Kana (thankfully the gun fires cork projetciles at a very low speed, so Kana is very unlikely to sustain an injury any worse than a light bruise), who is standing next to her (it was just an Eye Catch in the middle of the episode, though, so it may not be canon).
• Improbable Age: Saki Amano really is that young, and she's the one running the entire operation. It's immediately lampshaded by Kana.

• Konami Code: In the Manga.
  Hinata: DING! Full equipment!
• Lampshade Hanging:
  Hinata: It's a good thing Haruka isn't a guy.
• Late for School: Haruka deliberately attempts to invoke this from Kana.
• Lethal Chef: Yume is a pastry chef in training, and tends to put too much sugar into whatever she cooks. Yuuki is the only one who repeatedly tells herself she enjoys eating Yume's food because she's her girlfriend. When cooking something which really should involve sugar she does much better, except for one episode where she mistakes the salt for the sugar and makes salty cookies.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Haruka. Yes, even when sober.
• Love Bubbles: Caution: Yume and Yuuki in close proximity might cause severe drops in visibility!
• Medium Awareness: Kana shoos away the lily-bubble (those being a reference to her seeing in Maki more than a friend, as the Japanese word for "lily" is "yuri") in her background after staring in Mika's eyes for a while.

• Mood Whiplash: Plenty of slapstick humor and silly dialogue to go around - but we're frequently reminded that Kana is a recently orphaned junior high school student. Averted in the manga, though.
• Mr. Vice Guy: Hinata is both a valuable member of the Fushin News and a greedy penny-pincher who saves every last coin she can get her hands on. Partly because she's failed her college entrance exams more than once.
• Ms. Imagination: Considering how much Haruka has Imagine Spots.
• Musical Episode: For no apparent reason, episode four has everyone breaking out into song and dance.
• Negative Continuity: The end of episode 9 suggests that Haruka was arrested (Played for Laughs and/or Rule of Funny, possibly). It goes back to status quo in the next episode.
• New Transfer Student: Mika
• Nosebleed: Haruka get's this sometime, especially, when fantasizing about Saki or Kana, wearing as little as possible.
• Ojou: Mika
• Official Couple: Yume and Yuuki.
  • Additionally, Kana and Mika start going out in the manga.
• Offscreen Teleportation: Haruka and Yume do this every once in a while.
• One-Word Title

• Opposites Attract
  • Bubbly Yume and quiet Yuuki.
  • Good-natured Kana and sarcastic Mika have something of this as well.
  • On the manga (and on the 13th epsode of the anime), though, Kana seems to enjoy making fun of Mika for a bit.
• Out of Focus: The manga also focuses on Kana's school life. The anime has only bits and pieces.
• The Pollyanna: Parodied on chapter 14 of the manga: it's even called "I Can't Be a Pollyanna".
  Hinata: Delivering on rainy days really sucks. We have to wear rain coats, and get our feet wet.
  Kana: We can't dry our laundry, either.
  Hinata: The roads get slippery too, and then...
  Kana: It won't make things better if you keep talking about it. How about you stop thinking about the negatives and focus on the positives?
  Hinata: Like what?
  Kana: Like...
  (beat)
  Kana: Rainy days suck.
• Poor Communication Kills: Episode 10, no doubt. Kana thinks that Yuuki wouldn't live without Yume, with Yuuki going as far as being as over-dramatic, only to turn out that she had a denture problem.
• Potty Emergency: In Episode 7, Haruka has an Imagine Spot that involves young girls having these in a traffic jam on the news. She's drunk, but still...
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Where. To. Begin.
  • For starters, in the manga, Kana is able to get over her grandmother's death quite easily, while the anime has a more realistic interpretation of this, as well as better Character Development. She's also more of a Shrinking Violet.
  • Yume and Yuuki's relationship is more overt and noticeable, as they kiss on the very first episode, and quite often are implied to make out (in the manga they're implied to have an active sex life with each other).
  • The character of Marimo is added in the anime, a former employer who had similarities with Kana, only supposedly she was really clumsy and is a ditz (which is odd, because her both appearances has being well-mannered) It gave a bit of character development for Saki.
  • Mika gets to hang with the whole Fuushin News gang by the 5th episode, The manga didn't have her hang out with them until the 3rd volume.
  • The scenes in Kana's school are quite non-existent, as well as Kana's other friends (who, oddly enough, are in the opening), which probably explains why Mika appears so quiet.
  • The pop culture jokes are also pretty much gone, focusing more on the slapstick and clever dialogue.
  • Some of the episodes aren't even stories in the manga (episodes 5, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 12), some are taking stories from the manga differently.
  • In the manga gradually develops romantic feelings for Mika and even teases Mika sometimes. The anime reverses this, or at least plays up Mika's feelings for Kana while making Kana oblivious to Mika's feelings, in an attempt to make Mika more of a tsundere.
• Precision F-Strike: The manga has chapter 12 do this with Hinata, who can't seem to believe Saki's act:
  Hinata: (deadpan) You're making me sick with these awesome antics. What the the hell is this shit?
  Saki: Think about the money. You'll feel better.
• Prehensile Hair: Saki, but only in the second episode.
• Puni Plush
• Pseudo-Romantic Friendship
  • Mika forms a crush on Kana during the course of the series. It's rather one-sided for the most part, though. Saki had a similar friendship with Marimo, a former employee, and seems to have transferred some of her tsundere tendencies over to Kana in Marimo's absence.
  • Kana×Mika is far more blatant in the manga. Mika kisses her on the cheek in one of the early chapters, even.
  • Volume 3 has Mika kisses Kana on the cheek again, Kana tries to go kiss her on the lips. Mika stops her, though. Oh, they even mention they're on their first date.
  Kana: Er...sorry about that.
  Mika: Just a reminder; this is our first date. Nothing too deep yet.
  Kana: You kissed me on the cheek first, though. Twice.
  Mika: I had dibs.
  Kana: Bullcrap.
• The Quiet One: Yuuki
• Refuge in Audacity: Haruka's pedophile streak.
• Rubber Face: Kujiin to Kana.
• Rule of Funny: A grown, busty girl molesting little girls, a lesbian couple being really together, and a Kindergarden-aged girl being in charge of a delivery service. Yeah, it's weird, but really hilarious.

• Sequel Hook
• Serious Business: Pretend riding a bike, apparently, as Kana faints after getting hit by a truck...
• Shoe Slap: Saki the manager does that to Hinata and Haruka from time to time.
• Ship Tease: The last episode seems to be practically devoted to Mika's crush on Kana, but in the end she never confesses. In the manga though, the feelings are completely mutual and Kana is the more aggressive one.
• Shout-Out: The manga makes a surprisng amount of pop culture references to some pretty obscure stuff.
  • A simple version: chapter 24 makes references to Spirited Away and GeGeGe no Kitarō.
  • Space Cruiser Nyamato in a galaxy far, far away.
  • Kana and some kid she met at the Onbu festival wore Kamen Rider-esque masks [1].
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: Yume and Yuuki, most of the time.
• Sick Episode: A string of colds hits everyone at Fuhshin except for Haruka and Hinata. Yume and Yuuki end up proving that love really is the best medicine.
• Social Services Does Not Exist: So, a young girl loses her only remaining relative, and the only organization that checks in on her place is the repo men?
• Sound-Effect Bleep
  • Done... strangely in episode 13, as is Kana making random noises when Haruka asks her to badmouth her.
  • Instead, the manga does this (Hinata was apparently afraid that she would have to trade sexual favors to get a scholarship), which is immediately lampshaded by Kana, combined with Medium Awareness:
  Hinata: Do you know about me? I originally thought I would have to [beep] with [beep] to [beep].
  Kana: I cannot understand you with so many words ommitted.
• Spaghetti Kiss: Haruka and Kana in one of Haruka's Imagine Spots.
• Stat-O-Vision: Haruka has a loli power level scanner built into her glasses as revealed in the 5th epsiode.
• Super-Deformed: The ending theme.
• Take Our Word for It: We never get to see Kana's first attempt at a salesman smile: just everyone's horrified reactions, as if Satan himself would look in their eyes.
• Talking to the Dead: Kana converses with her grandmother at the start and end of every episode in the anime.
• Team Chef: Kana, taking over the position from Yume, who's not quite cut out for the job.
• Team Pet: Bunta
• The Tease: Curiously, Kana toward Mika.
• Terrible Artist: Subverted with Kana: The drawing of the ogara (obon offering) looked like shit only because she did it in haste, the portrait of her grandmother she made for art class looks very nice.
• Theme Naming: The surnames of the main cast all relate to a direction, with Kana's surname having the kanji for "center" in it.
• Three Is Company: After Yume leaves without warning, Yuuki's reactions to a cavity and a few Coincidental Broadcasts end up making Kana go crazy.
• Title Card: There are two types of them in Kanamemo:
  • One where characters are saying the title of the animé in voices conveying the mood of the characters in the title cards ** A robot named "Echizen Kaniko" (the Author Avatar), scrolling over the screen and commenting on the episode or saying some random stuff.
• Too Much Information: While playing a game of Sugoroku:
  Yume: Yuuki shall be more proactive in bed.
• Tsundere: Mika Kujiin, as her seiyuu should indicate...
  Mika: I don't give a frig!
• Tsurime Eyes: Hinata
• Unknown Rival: Mika Kujiin, who works at a rival newspaper office, considers Kana to be her rival. The feeling is not mutual. It gets lampshaded:
  Kana: Aren't you taking this a bit too seriously?
  Mika: It's a habit. Competition delights me.
• The Un-Smile: Kana is plenty capable of smiling normally, and does so almost by default. But when asked to make a big, kind, winning smile to attract customers, she initially produces a face too terrifying to show the audience. With training she overcomes this, but not before being used to scare potential customers away from a rival newspaper.
• Unwilling Suspension: Done to Haruka to prevent her from groping Kana.
• Wham Episode: Episode 8 of the anime introduces a character that wasn't in the manga, as well a bit of backstory of the Fuushin Gazatte before Kana came. Drama ensures.
• Wiki Walk: Yuuki indulges in one, right before collapsing from a fever.
  Yuuki: The real saying is "If the wind blows, the bucket maker has good sales." Which means that sneezing is proof of you being cursed by someone. In order to get rid of that curse, you need to obtain a straw doll. Additionally, you need long nails, which in turn leads to a lot of business for nail makers, causing a supply shortage. As a result, construction of houses becomes almost impossible, and everybody has to live in pit-like dwellings. That in turn leads to less wood being used, and less forests being cut down. Because the forests are being protected, the CO₂ levels are reduced, and everybody is happy because of an environmentally responsible lifestyle. (stutters for several more seconds until steam comes out her ears, then passes out)
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Saki, by quite a bit.
• With Friends Like These...: Haruka is somehow friends with everyone despite her pervertedness causing her being the Butt-Monkey. She deserves it most of the time, but still, you'd think Saki (who, before Kana came, was Haruka's frequent victim) would fire her after all that.
• Woman Child: While Haruka does have a few moments of maturity, and was even mentioned that she goes to college, we really mostly see her act like this.

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