Binbo Shimai Monogatari
Encyclopedia
is a manga
series by Izumi Kazuto
. It has been adapted into an anime
series by Toei Animation
and was aired in Japan
from June 2006 until September 2006.
series Binbō Shimai Monogatari is written by Izumi Kazuto
and had been serialized in seinen
manga magazine
Sunday GX
by Shogakukan
from May 2004 to November 2006. Total forty-five chapters were run in Sunday GX
and four tankōbon
were released by shogakukan
. The first volume of Binbō Shimai Monogatari was released on August 12, 2005, and fourth and last volume was released on December 19, 2006.
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
series by Izumi Kazuto
Izumi Kazuto
is a female Japanese manga artist.-Manga:, published in Manga Time from 2003-2004.**Note: She published the manga under the name .*Volume 1: ISBN 9784832275096*Volume 2: ISBN 9784832275409...
. It has been adapted into an anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
series by Toei Animation
Toei Animation
Toei Animation Co., Ltd. is a Japanese animation studio owned by Toei Co., Ltd. The studio was founded in 1948 as Japan Animated Films . In 1956, Toei purchased the studio and it was reincorporated under its current name...
and was aired in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
from June 2006 until September 2006.
Plot
Binbō Shimai Monogatari's plot revolves around two sisters, junior high school student named Kyō and elementary school student Asu, who live together alone. Their mother died the same year she gave birth to Asu and their father ran away, leaving them with a large gambling debt. They work together to live their lives and go to school in spite of the difficulties they face, receiving help from the people around them from time to time.Characters
- Kyō is the older sister of the two at 15 years old. She delivers newspapers to make money for their small family unit and has also taken up a tutoring job. She is afraid of lightningLightningLightning is an atmospheric electrostatic discharge accompanied by thunder, which typically occurs during thunderstorms, and sometimes during volcanic eruptions or dust storms...
, but won't even let that stop her to take good care of her younger sister. Kyō promised her deceased mother that she would take good care of Asu and is doing everything in her power to live up to that promise. Her name is a homonymHomonymIn linguistics, a homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that often but not necessarily share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings...
, as kyō can be written which means "today".
- Asu is the younger sister at 9 years old. She does the shopping for the family and also takes care of the cooking and cleaning. Asu is extremely fond of her big sister and tries to do everything she can to make life easier for her, since she is as yet too young to work for money herself. Asu is quite skilled; she has been chosen as class representative and is frequently consulted by her classmates when they have trouble with their homework. She claims to be tone-deaf, but manages to sing after some tutoring from neighbour Masao. Curiously enough, she has one memory of her mother, who died when Asu was still a baby; she remembers her mother asking her to take care of Kyō while she was still carrying Asu in her womb. Asu's name is also a homonym, written it means "tomorrow".
- Genzō, the owner of the apartment building where the sisters live, is an older man who rarely smiles and appears gruff and forbidding. He is, however, very much concerned with the sisters' welfare and was the only one willing to take them in when their father abandoned them. In his own way, he tries to look out for the Yamada sisters. They apparently remind him of his wife Eriko and his daughter Mami, who were killed in an accident involving a truck. For all that he cares about the sisters (whom he treats like granddaughters), he still will collect the full rent every month.
-
- ,
- ,
- Kinko and Ginko are another pair of sisters. Kinko (golden child) is the elder, Ginko (silver child) the younger; Ginko attends the same elementary school as Asu and is also class representative, but considerably less popular, since her personality is more domineering than Asu's. Kinko is a member of her school's student council and Ginko expects that she will have to live up to her older sister's example. These sisters are both blond-haired and belong to an extremely rich family, with all the advantages thereof. However, their relationship is much rockier than that enjoyed by Kyō and Asu, since they do not always understand each other as well as they should; initially Ginko feels that she is a constant disappointment to her older sister and that Kinko must dislike her; Kinko in turn thinks that Ginko hates her. Eventually a troubled Ginko manages to understand her sister a little better and patch their relationship somewhat thanks to advice from Asu and her covert observations of the Yamada sisters' homelife - through a telescopeTelescopeA telescope is an instrument that aids in the observation of remote objects by collecting electromagnetic radiation . The first known practical telescopes were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 1600s , using glass lenses...
. At one time, the sisters kept a pet alligatorAlligatorAn alligator is a crocodilian in the genus Alligator of the family Alligatoridae. There are two extant alligator species: the American alligator and the Chinese alligator ....
named John in their garden, who had been visited with the indignity of a bow ribbon. Kinko has an obsession with acquiring bargains from shops and has charged Ginko with acquiring them after her school goes out. Since they are rich, Ginko is as baffled by this obsession as are the Yamada sisters.
- The sisters' downstairs neighbour is a woman who constantly wears sunglasses and is apparently abysmally bad at housekeeping. It is unclear what kind of work she does, but she is apparently well-off, as could be seen when Kyō found a wallet Ranko had dropped. Asu is the only one to have seen Ranko without her sunglasses, which make her seem somewhat suspicious. Asu claims the 'neighbour onee-san' looks like a nice person without them. When she learns of the sisters' situation, she warms up to them, even lending Kyō one of her suits and fixing her makeup when the elder sister wants to look a bit more mature for Asu's school's open house.
- Masao is another of the Yamada sisters' neighbours at the apartment building. He is an aspiring singer who has to live off part-time jobs and is struggling to make his breakthrough. Masao already has a loyal following of fans, which supplies him with food. An encounter with Asu and her request to him to give her singing lessons so she can pass a test at school motivate him not to give up his dreams of becoming a singer.
Manga
MangaManga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
series Binbō Shimai Monogatari is written by Izumi Kazuto
Izumi Kazuto
is a female Japanese manga artist.-Manga:, published in Manga Time from 2003-2004.**Note: She published the manga under the name .*Volume 1: ISBN 9784832275096*Volume 2: ISBN 9784832275409...
and had been serialized in seinen
Seinen
is a subset of manga that is generally targeted at a 20–30 year old male audience, but the audience can be older with some manga aimed at businessmen well into their 40s. In Japanese, the word Seinen means "young man" or "young men" and is not suggestive of sexual matters...
manga magazine
Sunday GX
Sunday GX
, often abbreviated as , is a Japanese seinen manga magazine published by Shogakukan.Like many other manga magazines, it's an "anthology magazine" with each issue featuring new chapters of several manga series...
by Shogakukan
Shogakukan
is a Japanese publisher of dictionaries, literature, manga, non-fiction, DVDs, and other media in Japan.Shogakukan founded Shueisha which founded Hakusensha. These are three separate companies, but are together called the Hitotsubashi Group, one of the largest publishing groups in Japan...
from May 2004 to November 2006. Total forty-five chapters were run in Sunday GX
Sunday GX
, often abbreviated as , is a Japanese seinen manga magazine published by Shogakukan.Like many other manga magazines, it's an "anthology magazine" with each issue featuring new chapters of several manga series...
and four tankōbon
Tankobon
, with a literal meaning close to "independently appearing book", is the Japanese term for a book that is complete in itself and is not part of a series , though the manga industry uses it for volumes which may be in a series...
were released by shogakukan
Shogakukan
is a Japanese publisher of dictionaries, literature, manga, non-fiction, DVDs, and other media in Japan.Shogakukan founded Shueisha which founded Hakusensha. These are three separate companies, but are together called the Hitotsubashi Group, one of the largest publishing groups in Japan...
. The first volume of Binbō Shimai Monogatari was released on August 12, 2005, and fourth and last volume was released on December 19, 2006.
Episode list
| Ep no. | Title | Original Airdate |
|---|---|---|