Soara and the House of Monsters

Soara and the House of Monsters (ソアラと魔物の家) is a Japanese fantasy adventure manga series written and illustrated by Hidenori Yamaji. Shogakukan publishes it since 2021 in their magazine Shōnen Sunday S and on their webcomic platform Sunday Webry, and also releases it in collected tankōbon volumes. These have since 2023 been released in English by Seven Seas Entertainment.

The story follows the human woman Soara, who after the end of a war between monsters and humans joins a group of travelling dwarf architects who build houses for various types of monsters. It was nominated for the Next Manga Award for best web manga in 2022 and 2023, and was well received for its artwork of monster houses and its themes of prejudice and understanding.

Plot
Soara and the House of Monsters is a fantasy adventure story following Soara (ソアラ), an orphan who has been trained to fight in the war between humans and monsters, but is left without a purpose and home when peace is declared just as she becomes old enough to be a knight. Wandering aimlessly, she encounters a group of traveling dwarf architects led by Kirik (キリク), who renovate and build dream homes for monsters, such as goblins, slimes, and dragons. Soara is distrustful of monsters, but is moved by the architects' work, and joins them in their travels.

Production and release
Soara and the House of Monsters is written and drawn by Hidenori Yamaji, who originally created the series from a desire to combine the fantasy genre with something relatable to readers. He considered housing as a theme to be simultaneously unusual in fantasy manga, and something very familiar to readers, so he chose to write a story about architecture with fantasy elements. When drawing the artwork, Yamaji focused on drawing houses that not only were entertaining and exciting to look at, but that also were structured in a believable way, that would have made sense for the monsters if they were real. To help reader better visualize the houses, he chose to draw detailed cross-sections of them.

The manga is serialized by Shogakukan since November 25, 2021, both in their monthly shōnen manga magazine Shōnen Sunday S and on their webcomic platform Sunday Webry. Shogakukan also publishes the series in collected tankōbon volumes since May 12, 2022, under their imprint Sunday Webry Comics; since 2023, these have been released in English by Seven Seas Entertainment and in Chinese by Tong Li Publishing.

Chapters not released in collected volumes
The following chapters have not been released in collected tankōbon volumes as of the release of volume 3: • 19. "Kowashita no Ka?" (壊したのか？)

• 20. "Hajimari no Hanashi" (始まりの話)

• 21. "Hajimari no Futari" (始まりの二人)

• 22. "Ōto Nite" (王都にて)

• 23. "Sorezore no Kachi" (それぞれの価値)

• 24. "Honmono" (本物)

• 25. "Yakkaimono" (厄介者)

Reception
Soara and the House of Monsters was nominated for the Next Manga Award in the Best Web Manga category in 2022 and 2023. It has been nominated for the Japan Society and Anime NYC's first American Manga Awards in the Best New Manga category in 2024.

The manga has been well received by critics. Christopher Farris and Rebecca Silverman, both writing for Anime News Network, appreciated its themes of prejudice and understanding how all living things share in basic needs and comforts, without feeling too heavy-handed in its delivery. Farris found it refreshing to see a new take on the fantasy genre, with appealing and "hog-wild" house designs, and fun solutions to their problems, although felt a disconnect in the "before-and-after" visuals due to the monsters' homes often being demolished and rebuilt rather than renovated; Silverman also liked the artwork, calling it a "triumph of fantasy building". The Japanese entertainment news site Magmix also enjoyed the art of the houses, calling them "fantastic and powerful", and good at immersing the reader in the setting.