I”s 7

I think the thing that differentiates I”s from the standard Shounen Jump cupcake series is probably the fact that the jokes about the main character being kind of dorky aren’t made by the other characters.  Ichitaka makes fun of himself, and I get a lot more pleasure when the other characters aren’t constantly demeaning the main character for things that boys do.  The fact that he feels embarrassed does come up, which is a big part of this type of thing, but it’s all in Ichitaka’s mind.  The I”s magic is that all the commentary comes from Ichitaka and not a female harem that hates him.

Also, unlike most other manga, there is a lot of narration given by Ichitaka.  In the strictest sense, I suppose you could consider them thought balloons, but it’s generally a description of whatever is going on from Ichitaka’s point of view given inside thick-bordered round balloons with no stems.  If you put them in a little box at the bottom of the panel, they would be narration (something you’d find in any American graphic novel to describe nearly everything).  I have no idea why this technique isn’t used more frequently in manga… but it just isn’t.  Baoh uses it (and Jojo too, to a lesser extent), and I”s uses it extensively, and those are the only two series I can think of.

Moving right along, the name of this volume is “Spank.”  That had nothing to do with its contents.  That’s the other reason this series is magical, because it does revel in absolutely everything you would find in a shounen romance without being trashy about it.  Well, without being too trashy.  The characters revel in it as much as the reader, I think, which also makes a difference.

After the game of “Kings” is done, Ichitaka has some serious problems gathering his thoughts on Iori and whether or not she feels the same way he does.  All signs point to yes, and Ichitaka’s friend helps him along by casting the pair in some sort of gender-crossed love story where Ichitaka, as a girl, has to confess his feelings for Iori at the end of the movie.  It’s… kind of weird, and exactly what you think it is, but I thoroughly enjoyed watching Ichitaka beat himself up internally throughout.

But, of course, things do not end well for Ichitaka, and he’s rather crushed by the end of the volume.  This series is great for its humor, but it can also do fairly heartbreaking scenes, like Ichitaka hitting “rock bottom” at the end here.  That’s another good reason I”s is better than most other shounen romance series.