And Yet the Town Moves
And Yet the Town Moves, abbreviated as, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Masakazu Ishiguro. It was serialized in the monthly magazine Young King OURs from March 2005 to October 2016, and was collected into 16 bound volumes. The series follows the exploits of whiny Hotori Arashiyama, her friends, family, neighbors, shopkeepers and colleagues at the local maid café. The slice of life format is occasionally interspersed with stories dealing with aliens, ghosts, and the paranormal.
An anime television series adaptation by Shaft was broadcast from October to December 2010. The manga was first licensed by
JManga, then Crunchyroll; in 2020 it was also licensed by Manga Planet with the name SoreMachi: And Yet the Town Moves.
In 2018, And Yet the Town Moves won the 49th Seiun Award for the Best Comic category, as well as the Excellence Award at the 17th Japan Media Arts Festival in 2013.
Plot
Hotori Arashiyama is a high school girl who works part-time as a waitress at Seaside coffee shop in the Maruko shopping district. One day, the owner, Uki Isobata, comes up with a secret plan to make the restaurant prosperous. It was to turn Seaside into a popular maid café. However, none of the people involved knew about maid cafes, and under the simple idea that if the waitresses wore maid clothes, it would be a maid cafe, and Seaside restarted as a maid cafe.Characters
Main characters
;Hotori Arashiyama;Toshiko Tatsuno
;Hiroyuki Sanada
;Uki Isohata
;Harue Haribara
;Natsuhiko Moriaki
;Futaba Kon
Arashiyama household
;Ayumu Arashiyama;Yukimi Arashiyama
;Takeru Arashiyama
;Yukiko Arashiyama
;Josephine
Townspeople
;Shunsaku Matsuda;Yuuji Sanada
;Takanori Kikuchi
;Kazutoyo Arai
;Shizuka Kameidō
;Eri Isezaki
Media
Manga
Written and illustrated by Masakazu Ishiguro, And Yet the Town Moves was serialized in Shōnen Gahōsha's manga monthly magazine Young King OURs from March 30, 2005, to October 28, 2016. Shōnen Gahōsha collected its chapters in 16 volumes, released from January 2, 2006, to February 14, 2017.It was originally published in English through JManga from its launch on August 17, 2011, until its shutdown on May 30, 2013, but it was later simultaneously published online by Crunchyroll since February 28, 2014. BookWalker also released the first ten English digital book volumes for purchase on November 17, 2015. In 2020, it was also licensed by Manga Planet under the name SoreMachi: And Yet the Town Moves, who released it digitally from May 20, 2020, to May 26, 2021.
Volumes
Chapters not in volume format
These chapters have not been collected into volumes. They were published in issues of Young King Ours in May 2009 and November 2015. They can be found in the Soremachi Official Guide Book which was released on the same date as the final volume.- 53. "Lock"
- 128. "Time Bomb"
Anime
The manga has been adapted into a 12-episode anime series that started airing on October 8, 2010. The anime is chief directed by Akiyuki Shinbo, with assistant direction by Naoyuki Tatsuwa, and produced by Shaft. J-pop band Round Table composed the music, Katsuhiko Takayama acted as series composition writer, and Hiroki Yamamura designed the characters. Yamamura, Yasutoshi Iwasaki, and Miyako Nishida served as chief animation directors. Half of the series was outsourced outside of Shaft: episodes 3 and 6 to Magic Bus; episodes 4 and 10 to Studio Pastoral; episode 8 to Doga Kobo; and episode 11 to Diomedéa.The opening theme is Down Town by Maaya Sakamoto and the ending theme is Maids Sanjou! by Maids and arranged by Round Table, both released by Victor Entertainment. The CD of Down Town was released in Japan on October 20, 2010, and the CD of Maids Sanjou! was released on November 24, 2010. The first Blu-ray/DVD of the series was released in Japan on December 24, 2010, and the sixth and last on June 15, 2011. At Anime Weekend Atlanta 2011, Sentai Filmworks announced that they have licensed the anime, and they released it on DVD on January 3, 2012, and on Blu-ray on June 21, 2016. Anime Network streamed the series in North America from June 15 to August 31, 2012.
Reception
On Kadokawa Media Factory's Da Vinci magazine "Book of the Year" list, the manga ranked 44th in the 2017 list. On Takarajimasha's Kono Manga ga Sugoi! ranking of top manga of 2018 for male readers, the manga ranked 20th.And Yet the Town Moves was awarded the Excellence Award at the 17th Japan Media Arts Festival in the Manga Division in 2013; where the jury described the manga as one that can convey drama, happy daily lives and connection with people without depicting any dramatic or personal traumatic incidents. The jury members highly valued the work's realization of the “pursuit of cheerfulness”, which they described as heliotropism, comparing it to works by Fujiko F. Fujio and Tetsuya Chiba, providing entertaining episodes with "high level contents every installment". The manga won the 49th Seiun Award for the Best Comic category in 2018. It was nominated for the 22nd Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2018.