Strawberry-chan 2: The Super-Cool Life of Strawberry-chan

Somehow, when the dust settles and I’ve read more of Ai Morinaga’s series (like the pending volumes of My Heavenly Hockey Club and Your and My Secret sitting next to my bed), I think nothing will ever top the insanity in these two volumes.  Until another shoujo manga can offer up the line “I thought my anus was going to turn inside-out” or features a frog vomiting up its stomach in a romantic fantasy, this one will be at the top of the list.

I literally laughed so hard I cried.  Just like I did in the first volume.  And I read a bunch of this one on a bus.  I could not control myself, it’s just so bizarre and funny.  A lot of the repeat gags and continuity from last time are gone (the straw trick is only brought back out at the end, and the stalker kid only comes back at the end too), but they are replaced with things which are just as good.  My favorite was a really huge, butch-looking character who got put into the wrong school.  This character was female, but the principal accidentally put her in the all-boy’s school because she looks like a really manly man.  She goes through all the shoujo devices of being nervous about being found out and having a crush on her roommate, except she looks REALLY, really manly, and most things run to her being a really popular and admired role-model type guy.  Every single joke involving her just had me dying.  I started listing them out before I realized I was just narrating every scene with her in it.  She doesn’t have much to do with Strawberry-chan the frog, but she’s still a perfect addition.

Actually, yes, the stalker kid is in one of the first chapters, briefly.  He’s in what I believe is the best panels of manga I’ve ever seen, the perfect visual gag.   Ai Morinaga not only has the best sense of humor, she is also good at translating it into drawings.  I mean, that’s her job, but nobody seems to do it quite like her.

One bit of continuity from last time was the return of the frog which had hibernated in a flowerpot… except he’s brought up in the middle of a scene where everyone is trying to figure out what smells so bad.

Strawberry-chan gets constipation at one point.  Someone buys him an enema.  There is some injury and molestation that happens.  It is so MESSED UP and funny.

The entire thing is once again just gag chapters one right after the other.  The Strawberry-chan parts only take up about 2/3 of the book, and at the end there is a sentai story.  The only thing that could make me like Ai Morinaga more than I already do is if she drew a sentai series.  Unfortunately, it seems like this story was one of the first ones she drew, and it’s not very good.  There’s some good stuff in there though, like the octopus girl blowing up after not being able to process her feelings.  I wanted more Strawberry-chan, but I also have an inordinate fondness for sentai comedy, so I was satisfied.

Her post-script was very simple and to-the-point, but still made me laugh.  She talked about how her editor phoned her 9 years before the book was published to tell her to turn her Strawberry-chan doujinshi into a series, and she was very confused since she was working for a girl’s fantasy or sci-fi magazine and… it just didn’t fit.  Somehow that makes this series even better.  There’s also a panel where she got a call from her editor requesting the Sentai series, and she also didn’t understand how it fit since she was drawing a “lyrical shoujo manga” at the time.  She seemed extremely disturbed by this information.  She also drew herself crying tears of blood after looking at that sentai story for the first time in years, and explained she’s never stuck a straw up a frog before.  All of this was most interesting to me.  And there’s also a bonus Strawberry-chan story in the back.

I want to tell everyone to go out and buy both volumes of this because it is literally the funniest thing I have ever read.  I’m not sure how many people share my twisted sense of humor though… but if you’re one of the few, please, for God’s sake, DO NOT MISS OUT ON THIS SERIES.  It’s easy to do since it’s a Media Works release and is probably flying under the radar, but it’s some seriously funny stuff.