The Concierge at Hokkyoku Department Store #2

Tsuchika Nishimura's charming series continues in this second volume, and the cover alone captures everything delightful about it — a towering bird in a bowler hat and dress coat navigates the department store's escalators alongside a poised human concierge in a teal uniform carrying a silver tray, while a small seabird in a chef's toque and a zebra-suited figure round out the perfectly ordinary-yet-surreal shopping crowd. The geometric escalator design and soft teal palette give the whole scene a quietly elegant, mid-century feel that makes the anthropomorphic animal customers seem completely at home. If you're looking for something warm, witty, and genuinely unlike anything else on the shelf in 2024, Hokkyoku Department Store is open for business.