Danica Davidson
December 6, 2023 
One More Step, Come Stand By My Side is a unique and unusual manga short story collection. It consists of seven stories: “When the Time Comes,” “Ten Minutes Later, the Cops Showed Up,” “A Tranquil First Night,” “Ain’t That Nice?,” “Paradise,” “Nothin’ Wrong with That,” and “The Wife Whom I Loved Dearly.” The stories range from a few pages to 85 pages.
The first and last stories — “When the Time Comes” and “The Wife Whom I Loved Dearly” — stick out the most. In “When the Time Comes,” a princess is kidnapped and blindfolded. Living in this terror, she has to trust a man who silently helps her get around. But how can she trust someone involved with her kidnappers? Like the other stories in this collection, it has a twist to it.
Then the final story, “The Wife Whom I Loved Dearly,” comes across as melancholic and sad, but also powerful. A husband learns that his wife has cancer and an estimated six months to live. Like the kidnapped princess, he’s living in a nightmare. What is he going to do?
The characters in these stories tend to find themselves in odd situations. In one, a woman captures her stalker and then has a conversation with him while waiting for the police. In “Paradise,” some men come across a tribe that doesn’t know the outside world, and miscommunication and misunderstandings lead down a dark path, but also a very ironic one.
The artwork is detailed and a little more realistic than one tends to see in manga, though it still keeps with that general manga style. There is also a helpful afterword from the mangaka, where she explains the ideas and work that went into these stories. For fans of manga short stories who want something a little different and haunting, One More Step, Come Stand By My Side offers unique perspectives and storytelling styles.
Story & Art: Toryumon Takeda
Publisher: Yen Press
Translator: Jason Moses
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Danica Davidson is the author of the bestselling Manga Art for Beginners with artist Melanie Westin, plus its sequel, Manga Art for Everyone, and the first-of-its-kind manga chalk book Chalk Art Manga, both illustrated by professional Japanese mangaka Rena Saiya. Check out her other comics and books at www.danicadavidson.com.
