Heroes are Extinct 1

I may have mentioned I have a weakness for sentai comedy series.  Unfortunately, this is a genre whose only fan in America is me, I think.  One of my favorite CLAMP series is Duklyon, which only loses out to things like Holic and Sakura because it is only two volumes long, and I even liked the somewhat bad Imperfect Hero.  But as far as sentai manga in English go… that’s it.  Fortunately, DMP heard how much I liked these, and I think they licensed Heroes are Extinct just for me.

One of the reasons I like these so much is because it’s really hard to mess up jokes about sentai.  They’re so weird in the first place that an actual sentai story only needs a little push  in order to be funny.  This series takes that to the next level and doesn’t even waste time with romantic triangles and breasts jokes.  It is funny because it’s just really, really weird.  The cycloptic main character is invading Earth, but when he finds that he can do this with no resistance, he decides he would like to train some Terra Rangers so that he can fight them in his role as the invading general.  He spends a long time training said Rangers in the fine art of posing and delivering their lines.  These people are actually just afraid of this one-eyed man and go along with him because he sets off explosions when they try to resist.  Everything is done without being over-the-top, which is a beautiful thing.

There’s a couple flashback and fantasy sequences which were very funny, most courtesy of the main character.  While running some errands on Earth, he puts up a sign which he was hoping would somehow suggest to Earthlings that they should band together to fight him in a sentai-like troop.  As he imagines this, the Earthlings have heno heno mo he faces and relatively well-drawn blank little bodies, which make them look like Perry Bible Fellowship people organizing a sentai troop.  One of his rushed flashback sequences featured a younger version of himself weeping manly little boy tears in frustration over falling in love with the princess.  This may not have actually been that funny, but I think the weird timing of the sequence is what made it odd.

Some of the other characters are really weird, and probably the best thing about the series is that it does take everything with a really level dose of reality, which makes the weirdness that much funnier here when it would be taken in stride in any other series.  One of the other generals is a dopey character who has what appears to be a floating puffer fish with him at all times.  This offers several really bizarre jokes and story elements throughout the course of just this first volume.  A general who makes his appearance in the last two or so chapters is a mute, good-natured fellow with a two-color face and who loves to creep up behind you and tie ribbons in your hair, which is about the creepiest thing I can think of.

It’s got a really level, unique weirdness to it that I enjoyed a lot.   There’s nothing that stands out too much, but that’s a really good thing, and I liked not having 500 jokes thrown in my face at once.  The plot isn’t that well-organized, though it’s also not scattered or rushed, and the characters are pretty one-dimensional, but I like them that way so far.  At 3 volumes, this isn’t going to be a substantial read, but I really, really enjoyed the first volume, and I think I’ll enjoy the rest of it, too.