On the way home from work one night, Kiriyama Taiyou picks up a friendly stray cat. Pets are strictly off-limits at his apartment building, but he attempts to sneak in his new feline friend anyway—only to be caught by the grumpy building manager, Taira Asahi. Taiyou begs Asahi to let him keep the cat until he can find it a new home. To his shock, Asahi agrees. The catch? Taiyou has to be his gofer until the cat is gone.

As Taiyou runs himself ragged completing errands for Asahi, he begins to notice a kind heart lying beneath his prickly exterior...as well as the unrequited crush on someone that Asahi's been nursing for years. Taiyou wants to make Asahi's romantic dreams come true, but will his attempts at playing cupid lead to his own broken heart?

Laughter in the Sunshine has story and art by Fuuki Maru. English translation is done by Nomnom Namako and lettering by Giuseppe Antonio Fusco with an adaptation by Casper Kazor. Published by Seven Seas Entertainment (March 31, 2026). Rated M.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

This is a book with its heart firmly in the right place. Comprised of two stories – one basically full length and the other in two chapters – Laughter in the Sunshine follows people who always do their best to do the right thing. They don't always succeed, because, as Asahi from the main story points out to Taiyou, not everyone lives life on the same terms. They make mistakes based on their own perception of things. But they try, and that feels like the most important part.

The title story revolves, at least nominally, around a cat. Taiyou, who works for a delivery company, found a stray cat in the alley behind work and thought his girlfriend would adopt her. But that plan fell through when she instead dumped him and refused to take Nyasuke (named before Taiyou realized the cat was female), and now he's scrambling to find the cat a home. When his building manager confronts him about trying to sneak a cat into a no-pets building, Taiyou convinces the other man to foster Nyasuke while he tries to get her adopted.

There are some good cat details in here, like the fact that it's often harder to home adult cats than kittens, but if you're drawn in by the cat on the cover, you ought to know that Nyasuke is more catalyst than main character. She's the reason Taiyou and Asahi start talking and getting together, but this isn't really a cat manga. It's also not an explicit one, despite its presence here in the 18+ section – there's one short sex scene at the end of the book (explicit) and an even shorter one in the second story (not explicit). So obviously that's not the reason to pick this up any more than the cat.

So what is? The sweetness of the stories and characters. Taiyou really tries to understand the world around him and to be considerate of Asahi, who's impressively prickly at first. But Taiyou takes time to get to know him, and while he absolutely gets annoyed by some of the things he does – using Nyasuke as emotional blackmail is not a good look – rather than just getting angry he tries to figure out why Asahi is the way he is. The same goes for the second story, where Amane tries to understand Ayato and to respect his decisions. He wants to help, but he also doesn't want to make the younger man uncomfortable, and the story does a good job of balancing that out.

Laughter in the Sunshine isn't really long enough to delve too much into its themes, but it does a lot with what it has. Both stories are about learning to respect and understand your partner, and there's a lot to be said for the appeal of that sort of storyline. I'd have liked a bit more, but I'm still very happy with what I got.