Himeno Kimihara is an ordinary schoolgirl living an ordinary life in an ordinary town during an ordinary time in modern-day Japan. Does that make A Centaur's Life a more stately and considered performance that's acquired confidence through experience, or is it a has-been that's been left behind as an evolutionary dead-end?

What about A Centaur's Life, though? Both manga run in the same magazine, Monthly Comic Ryu, and A Centaur's Life is actually the elder sibling, having started in early 2011 over a year before Monster Musume the mangaka Kei Murayama also does have form for quite unusual settings, also having created Kinoko Ningen no Kekkon, a yuri romance between mushroom-people. Monster Musume has been perfectly placed to ride the zeitgeist and it's been a stunning success for Seven Seas - each volume released so far has stormed onto the New York Times manga bestseller lists with no sign of the runaway train running out of steam.

Not willing to limit itself to the low-hanging fruit of boob jokes though, Seven Seas has sought to explore the full potential of the setting of demi-humans alongside the 'silly' Monster Musume it's also licensed a 'serious' counterpart, A Centaur's Life (originally called Centaur's Worries in Japan - Seven Seas probably changed the title to make it more easygoing and inviting). Catching the wind of the great noise of internet buzz surrounding the emergence of the series of sex-comedy 'Living With Monstergirls' doujinshi from the mangaka Okayado, Seven Seas Entertainment was quick to snap up the license of Okayado's Monster Musume, a professionalised version of the concept for a wider audience that dials back the hentai into 'just' ecchi and becomes a bouncily busty Carry-On comedy. Having liberally cribbed from Tolkienesque fantasy for everything from Record of Lodoss War to Rage of Bahamut, it was perhaps inevitable that anime would move onto sourcing other myths - particularly when there's a strong affinity with Japan's own traditions of half-human beasts, whether the uniquitous trickster-fox kitsune or the spurned spite of serpent-woman kiyohime - and making them more approachable through the more personable nature of the Shinto spirits. Given the unknowable and impossible nature of that alien being that we call woman, it's no surprise that from the Harpies and Sirens to the wrathful harridan of Grendel's mother and beyond they emerge into our literature as strange and dangerous beasts. If Captain Picard still can't find an answer after boldly going across new life and new civilisations, we certainly don't have a chance! ' I would be delighted to offer any advice I can on understanding women.

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