Sgt. Frog 10
June 19, 2008
I seem to only remember this series exists whenever I see a new volume come out. I ought to catch myself up, but it’s not the sort of thing I can read 2-at-a-time, just because the same sort of humor and jokes is used pretty frequently. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but even reading the volumes as slowly as I have been I was kind of worn out and didn’t really like the last volume.
This volume solved that problem in an extremely out-of-character epic battle. Since the Keron Invasion is not moving forward, more soldiers show up and… well, basically invade Earth. While there are still plenty of jokes (the backhanded compliments that Tamama gets in his battle had me going), everyone on Earth basically gets… decimated, including all the main characters. We see a few battles, and while the (unfavorable) outcomes are pretty much repeated throughout the volume, we never actually see the character… you know, lose, though the situations they’re all left in are pretty hopeless. Keroro gets a slightly worse fate than the rest, he being the commander and all. The invaders are pretty humorless themselves, and also awesome, if a half-metal assassin frog is your thing.
Fuyuki, Natsumi, and Mrs. Hinata do what they can, but the invading technology is superior, and it is all the ally frogs can do to send them to safety. The volume ends on a cruel, cruel cliffhanger, which will probably force me to read volume 11 sometime this weekend. I liked this story A LOT, it definitely redeemed the series for me.
There were a few one-shot chapters at the beginning of the volume that were more in-character for the series, two of them were pretty spectacular. One was about a soccer game played just before the invading force left for Earth (Fuyuki is so excited to see alien soccer, which makes the outcome much funnier), and another was about Kururu giving tips about being nice when it’s not expected of you, and that way you get into people’s good graces. Kururu is still a creep, so I was kind of uncomfortably waiting for the other shoe to drop the whole time. This kind of leads into the big battle story, which begins with Keroro staying at home and doing the best he can at the chores, only to be reamed by Natsumi and Fuyuki both unfairly for something the invading force was doing to mess up the computers. It was very sad.
June 20, 2008 at 3:13 pm
[...] an audio review of vol. 1 of Honey & Clover and vol. 2 of Gunsmith Cats BURST. Connie reads vol. 10 of Sgt. Frog at Slightly Biased Manga. Oyceter reads the Chinese translation of Kaori Yuki’s Parfum [...]