It was a pleasure to work on this charming Kuroda book with editor Eric Searleman. I think we won an award from MangaCast on this one, too.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #746472 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This is a fun, unusual manga in the vein of television shows like Veronica Mars. Nico Hayashi is a 14-year-old girl who masquerades as a dating service/phone sex operator just for the anthropological fun of it. She winds up getting embroiled in a scheme working for a kindly, aging gangster to find a kidnapped boy. After her initial success, the gangster keeps her on as an investigator on cases ranging from mysterious telephone pranks to strange soccer shenanigans. Along the way, Nico picks up an older, nerdy man—dubbed Robo for his love of robot action figures—and he becomes both a somewhat grouchy sidekick and comic foil. The 13 excellent short stories stand alone but also contain ongoing themes and subplots. Kuroda writes funny, convincing dialogue to complement his suspenseful, mystery-of-the-week yarns. Working in a naturalist style, with broad brush strokes and evocative backgrounds and layouts, Kuroda is clearly influenced by such American indie cartoonists as Paul Pope and Gilbert Hernandez. Nico is an engaging protagonist, making this a rare comic that offers as much to older teens as to adults. (July)
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Customer Reviews

Naruto fans need not apply
"Sexy Voice and Robo" is quirky, fascinating and fun. The entire story could be transplanted to the West Village of New York and work just as well - place is not the issue. It's a story of character. And the characters carry the story.

If you're looking for the usual kind of manga, you'll probably be disappointed. This is for people looking for something a little different...or maybe a lot different. The art sits somewhere between American comics and manga, but the sense and sensibility are pure Japan.

Mixed emotions
I have mixed feelings about Sexy Voice and Robo. It didn't pull me in, but at the same time it kept me reading (without cliffhangers) and it has its moments.

The story follows 14 year old Nico. Her part time job is doing phone companionship. It's not so much phone sex, as phone chat with women, but lonely men tend to call in and the subject of panties comes up frequently. She sees the job as training to be a spy, and tries to recognize voices which she's gotten quite good at. Her skill of recognizing voices and meddling in the world around her soon lands her another job running errands to a mysterious older man. Meanwhile, she gets 25 year old "Robo" who collects toy robots (her nickname for him much to his chagrin) to run errands for her by telling him what to do via phone and then meeting him in real life as his phone girlie's kid sister. He's lonely and a tad socially awkward so he's easy to string along.

The graphics were OK. The quality of drawing varies widely from frame to frame, but characters can be distinguished, and that's what matters in telling a story.

The story lines for each chapter were self contained and had very little overlap. Main characters reappear, but each chapter has Nico going off on a new mission. Her missions have a playful quality in that she's practicing to be a spy and wants to do good deeds for everyone she meets. They range from serious missions like preventing the assassination of a soccer player, to lighter self-assigned missions like reuniting her boss with his 1940's girlfriend. From story to story we learn a little bit more about Nico and Robo.

Overall, this is worth looking at. It didn't pull me in, but some of the stories and mood linger.

One of the freshest mangas I've read in quite a while
Lately, I've been despairing of reading anything good, and after reading glowing reviews for manga that I later purchased and then set aside, I was growing increasingly frustrated.

At some point, I kept on seeig this pop up in my recommendations, and on Listmania!, so I decided to give it a go. It helped that the hook was original, and the writer is just skilled enough to pull it off too :). Apparently, our heroine is just a little bit based off a friend of his (unnamed) that claimed to pretend to be a dating service at the age of 14.

The other characters are a hopeless otaku by the name of Robo, and a mysterious old man that hires hre. She solves cases, but the plot thickens near the middle, and her actions start to have consequences.

It's a good read, pick it up sometimes. If you're like me, it might take you a couple tries to look past the art, but it's well worth it. Also, his art improves later in the book.

Beware, though, it ends with a cliffhanfer ... and he doesn't appear to have written the second volume in the series yet. (Or, possibly, it just hasn't made it overseas.)