It’s been a while since a manga made me laugh this much. And yes, it was laughter through tears. The main character is Little Miss P (in Japanese: Seiri-chan), or Miss Period, who surprises the protagonists with her arrival (of course) at the least appropriate moments.
The protagonists are girls and women of different ages and life situations. On the one hand, Little Miss P is brutal, because she is unwanted, causes pain and annoying contractions (here visualized by her huge fist), but on the other hand – she comforts the women, sits with them at home and at work, she can also talk back to men who mock their friends about being so over-the-top about “nothing serious”.
The chapter which made me laugh the most was about a husband comes home from work and complains about having to eat the same dinner yet again … and Little Miss P decides to make him experience a period so that he would understand the pain and fatigue it causes. Another great chapter is set in the past, when women often had to spend the night in a separate building, because they were considered “unclean”. The two main characters and two Seiri-chans try to make it through by keeping warm together under a blanket and fantasizing about a world where they could be in the same room as the rest of the family, or at least could somehow ease the pain.
It is funny, bittersweet, realistic and also destigmatizing. The manga is not perfect and there are aspect which could have been improved (like the presence of a caricature character Mr. Libido, who of course only ever visits men…). But if you want to read a funny dark humour story about the mean (though sometimes surprisingly lovely) Miss Period and you don’t expect super ambitious medical content about menstruation, then you are in for a few hours of fun.
You can findn a wonderful passage about menstruation in Aoko Matsuda’s Układ(a)ne : more serious, but eqully absurd.
