Title: You Can’t Escape from Mizudako-chan Vol. 1
Author: Megame
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 194
Genre: Romance, Comedy, Fantasy
Publication Date: April 28, 2026
The Story
Kanisuke Akigai is a normal boy in a high school filled with demi-humans. One day, a girl with long tentacles protruding from her hair, Mizuko, transfers into his class. Because she’s part octopus, the other students nickname her as Mizudako-chan. She seems really off-putting at first; however, she’s just misunderstood. She has a power that she cannot control, and because of this, she’s been made to feel like an outcast her whole life. It wasn’t always the case in the world, as different beings co-existed, but over time, humans survived, and those beings became demi-humans to resemble them. When that happened, your typical prejudice took over, and now demi-humans are shunned in a world where they were once accepted.
Akigai warms up to her, but he suddenly realizes that Mizuko has taken a keen interest in him for a particular reason, and because of that, she sticks with him nearly everywhere he goes. Even though she does that, he doesn’t mind. In fact, he helps her adjust to life in a human world, giving her the encouragement that she’s been missing to do the things that she only wished she could do.
Along the way of them bonding, they come across a cat with an octopus for a head. Eventually, we learn that it’s someone from her family checking in on her because, with her uncontrollable powers, they were worried that it would cause trouble for others as she tried to integrate into society. Once we get that out of the way, the school’s Principal, named Sam Adams, holds a morning meeting. I wonder if these meetings are always a good decision?
Characters
The first volume mainly focuses on our two main characters, Akigai and Mizuko.
First off, I’ll talk about Mizuko as she ties into Akigai. Mizuko is simply a demi-human that is half-human, half-octopus. She has a few quirks about her, but it’s mainly the two large octopus tentacles protruding from the top of her head, acting as hair. They’re very intimidating, but it’s because of that that people get the wrong impression of her. For instance, she has to raise them to hear people when they speak because they cover her ears, and when she does that, everyone thinks that she’s making a warning gesture, and they get scared and leave her alone. This has caused her to become very lonely, but Akigai fixes all of that when she picks up an eraser with a Nekopus character on it, and proclaims that she likes that character.
We then dive a bit into Mizuko’s past. We see how she was always shunned as a girl, made fun of, and scared other people off by her uncontrollable power, which is triggered by her emotions. That is… until one kid comes up and accidentally gets hit with her power. He loved what happened to him, which made her feel that maybe there is a place in this world for her. The volume doesn’t flat-out say so, but I’m sure you can guess that this kid was….
Kanisuke Akigai is just an ordinary teen boy going to a school for demi-humans. For some reason, he felt bad for Mizuko and decided to try to thank her for retrieving his eraser for him. Since that moment, he felt bad for what she was going through, but he was also intimidated by her. Once he got to know her, though, things changed… especially when he accidentally becomes a victim of her powers, which ties into her backstory, allowing you to make that connection. Now, he helps her try to adapt to the world to give her that courage.
Aside from this, we have a couple of side characters such as Iwane… a girl who sits behind Akigai who is kind of a light tsundere towards him, but is also energetic and eager to become friends with Mizuko… and Nakayama… who is, um, for the lack of a better term, a scuzzball pervert. For instance, he asked if Mizuko’s hair was used for tentacle porn. Yeah, he has no filter or boundaries, but it’s fine because everyone thinks his hair looks like pubes.
Final Thoughts
This wasn’t all that bad, even if it didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. Outside of focusing on demi-humans, the plot is something we’ve seen a thousand times before. You have the shy outcast wishing that they could fit in, and the person who accepts them and becomes their friend. They just took that concept and wrapped it around humans and demi-humans. So, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, but Mizuko is a rather adorable little octopus girl. While her archetype is also something we’ve seen before… the misunderstood girl who looks like she could kill, but is actually a cinnamon roll, you still couldn’t help but want to hug her… and good on Akigai for wanting to stick with her.
The end saw a couple of interesting things happen, and the Principal’s meeting is sure to leave things on enough of a cliffhanger to make us want to see what it’s about in the next volume, but right away, you can tell that this is just another story of an outcast trying to fit in, and they have to fight against racism, prejudice, and all that just for being different. So, in that regard, this manga series isn’t exactly going to break the mold, but it doesn’t have to. It was good enough as it was to be entertaining, and that’s all that matters in manga… is it entertaining? If yes, then keep reading it.
If you want just a slice-of-life comedy with a splash of fantasy, and genres like monster girls are your forte, then this is going to be a series you’re going to want to pick up.
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This item was provided for review by Yen Press.
