I read Mingo volume 1 due to being a big fan of Terrace House, The backgrounds are fantastic, I think it captures the city beatifully, which by the way i will get into that, I think Mingo overall is about metropolitan anxiety.
When i saw the author on Terrace House describing his story as a comedy and how much he loves to make people laugh, I was expecting a light hearted story, but i was surpriced when i read his work. Instead of a hihihi laughing my ass out, what i read was a little fucked up, explicit, full of nudity, deep emotional story about social communication, sexuality and anxiety. I really felt for the protagonist interacting with other characters at the night club or at auditions and how overwhelming Tokyo must be,the depiction of tokyo is phenomenal, the best part of the story.
Now for the negatives, I think the portayal of the female lead was a little weird, like if she is some pure angelic figure, beyond the rest, not like those other slutty chicken heads. Number 2, the italian characters had the mentality of we are italians we will give them some italy ok? and they turned into a caricature of themselves like they were straight out of a 60s mob movie. I would never do that, i dont know people that do that, let alone get laid a lot due to that. Number 3, the protagonist realizes that italians are fantasized in Japan and have a lot of success with women, but if you take a quick look at the author you will quickly realise that he is an 11/10 very handsome man, so that made me think if he draws from experience and by that i dont think his italianess had nothing to do with him being very attractive, i get a feeling a lot when reading his work, did this happen in his life? Did he miss identify the cause of the problem when writting his work? I hope in the future Mingo focuses a lot more on communication and anxiety, i liked those parts and less on nationality and picking up chicks.