Practice Husband
Posted: May 29, 2011 Filed under: Practice Husband Leave a comment »Mao Karino / Judith McWilliams – Harlequin – 2011 – 1 volume
Another Harlequin e-manga! Honestly, with these Harlequin eManga, it makes little difference to me which one I read. This was on the front page, probably added a few days ago. I picked it and read it just now.
It was slightly more interesting than usual. A woman named Addy has made the decision to move back to her hometown. It’s a big decision for her, since she grew up teased and very unhappy due to being overweight throughout her childhood. But now she’s thin and fit, and on her way back to meet up with childhood friend Joe. Joe is currently a very wealthy and successful business owner, but grew up poor and with an alcoholic mother. Joe and Addy get together in order to try to find Addy a husband. Joe is out of the question, since he’s a dear friend and is currently living the good life as a rich and very unkind bachelor. But is Joe really out of the question? Probably not, since this is a Harlequin story.
Addy was an interesting character. Being teased throughout childhood leaves her in a position where she doesn’t believe she is attractive and is convinced no man will want her. She is constantly unsure of herself, and while Joe is a jerk to just about everyone else, he is a gentlemen around Addy, even taking her out on several practice dates and telling her what men expect at certain parts of the evening. Addy also balances out Joe’s jerk tendencies, helping him to see the light when it comes to his alcoholic mother who blamed all her troubles on other people. There’s an interesting scene where they sleep together, then both have a meltdown the next morning. The story shows both sides of the misunderstanding, and I thought that was quite interesting.
Unfortunately, it looks as if eManga has recently raised their prices. Rather than the 400 point rental, you now must permanently purchase all the Harlequin titles for 499 points. Bummer. I don’t really care about being able to read them again, and it’s hard to justify a 130-page digital book that I can read in 20 minutes for $5, when I can buy a regular volume of manga on sale at the Right Stuf for about $6.50.
Grand Guignol Orchestra 2
Posted: May 29, 2011 Filed under: Grand Guignol Orchestra Leave a comment »Kaori Yuki – Viz – 2011 – 5 volumes
Strangely, the same day I read this, I got Lychee Light Club in the mail, which is apparently based on a Tokyo Grand Guignol performance from the mid-1980s, a performance that mangaka Suehiro Maruo acted in. Strange that such an obscure form of theater should come up twice like that, though Grand Guignol Orchestra has less to do with the Grand Guignol style than Lychee Light Club.
Grand Guignol Orchestra is growing on me, though. While it hasn’t knocked my socks off yet or anything, I do like the story so far, I like the way things are developing, and I love the art. Typically, I’m already lost or bored by volume two of a Kaori Yuki manga (I’m sorry, I try to like them, and I will always buy her books, but it’s true).
Part of that is that everything is still a mystery at this point. Sometimes, the lack of information in a story can be annoying. This story walks the line, but everything is so interesting that I forgive it the obvious secrets. Some of the information does reveal itself by the end of the volume (the link between the Queen and Lucille, some of Lucille’s past), and what Lucille is looking for and why becomes obvious, but what exactly the nature of the current relationship between Lucille and the Queen remains the mystery, and there is currently still some ambiguity about what happened to former members of the unofficial orchestra. The nature of Lucille’s powers are also still something of a mystery.
All of what is revealed is pretty dark and tragic on some level, and some of it is also a bit bizarre. It’s melodramatic dark gothic fantasy at its best, and Yuki’s art is well-suited to this type of story. It’s not too terribly deep or complex at this point, and I’m still trying to sink my teeth into the characters, but it’s definitely going places.
And how are the characters as of this volume? Well, Kohaku and Gwindel, the two other members of the orchestra, are still just warming the bench at the moment, though something happens to Kohaku at the end of the volume that makes me wonder how he’ll continue doing his thing. Lucille is either completely transparent in his motives or deceiving everyone in a very clever way, I can’t tell which right now. He’s a very cheerful and fun character though, and watching him work these dark, disturbing jobs as if they were a game, and being very clever about it, is most of the enjoyment I’m getting from the series right now. Eles is still the stereotypical perky newbie, and she’s not really doing anything new or interesting, but I haven’t given up on her yet.
The first half of the volume is a strange story that talks about Lucille and the Queen. I can’t comment on that story, partially because of spoilers, and partially because it’s so bizarre that I don’t know what to say about it. But I LOVE the second story. Lucille and Eles have to infiltrate an evil convent said to be guarding the Black Oratorio, the book that Lucille is after. The convent is full of creepy nuns, and the story is pretty good at letting the nun’s masks slip, little by little, so that what seems like a cover-up turns into something much, much more disturbing and sinister by the end of the volume. And I’m not entirely convinced that it’s all the nuns’ fault.
Again, it’s still not rush-out-and-buy-it good, but it is definitely interesting and getting a little better with each volume. The unique art and gothic flavor of the story also make it stand out in the shoujo manga pack. It’s definitely worth a look if the story sounds at all interesting to you, and I’m looking forward to future volumes to see if it gets better.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
One Piece 51
Posted: May 29, 2011 Filed under: One Piece Leave a comment »Eiichiro Oda – Viz – 2010 – 62+ volumes
It’s been awhile since I’ve read this! Truth be told, I was putting off reading this volume specifically. It’s depressing. Still good, mostly exposition, but depressing exposition all the same.
There are some pretty choice scenes that aren’t depressing though, and that’s what makes it great. The Straw Hats go up against the Flying Fish Riders and their leader, Duval. Duval has… a problem with one of the Straw Hat pirates. A problem that stays under wraps for several chapters. When his beef is revealed… it’s a terrible, terrible joke that made me laugh very hard. After his situation is resolved, his personality made me laugh even harder.
After that situation is taken care of, the Straw Hats go with Hachi, Camie, and Pappagu to explore Sabaody Archipelago. It’s a mangrove island chain with a unique bubble system for everything. The Straw Hats exploring fun new areas are some of my favorite parts of the series, and watching Luffy, Brooke, Chopper, and Camie have fun at the amusement park and riding around on bubble bikes was both funny and, once again, amazing on some level since Oda is just so skilled at inventing new areas and letting his characters have fun in them. The man is a genius.
The depressing bits also happen on Sabaody. Luffy and crew are looking for a man that can give their ship a coating that will allow them to dive the 30,000 feet underwater to Fish Man island. Along the way, they run across and avoid the Celestial Dragons, a race of humans descended from the men who formed the World Government. They keep all races of people as slaves, anyone who they pass on the street is required to bow down to them, and the scene that introduces them goes so far as to blow a slave up, have a pet dog pee on his remains, dump a critically injured man on a stretcher, then shoot the doctor that dared cross his path. These are bad people, and their every action is protected by the World Government.
And… well, Camie is captured as a slave. It’s not hard to see coming, since they talk about the danger constantly, and she thanks the Straw Hat pirates again and again for giving her the opportunity to have more fun than she could ever remember (she wouldn’t normally go to Sabaody because of the risk). But it happens. And the Straw Hats have to deal with it, since both slavery and the actions of the Celestial Dragons are protected in Sabaody.
It’s depressing. And it gets more depressing before it gets better. But it’s also not without its amazing sense of humor, which is the true beauty of One Piece.
Sensual Phrase 6
Posted: May 29, 2011 Filed under: Sensual Phrase 1 Comment »Mayu Shinjo – Viz – 2005 – 18 volumes
Oh, Sensual Phrase. Why must I love you so? I know you’re no good for me or anybody else. But you’re so addictive.
Only half of this volume deals with the main Sensual Phrase storyline. In the first half, Aine meets the family of one of Sakuya’s bandmates, his wife and daughter. Sakuya, being perfect at everything, is wonderful with the baby. This gives Aine food for thought as she begins experiencing morning sickness and realizes that her period is quite late. In the second storyline, Aine writes another naughty song and Sakuya pulls out another amazing video for it, and yet another band swoops in and is determined to steal Aine to write their lyrics. The story ends on a cliffhanger before we know what the plan is, but… haven’t we seen this story before?
I’ll admit, the story is still mostly just carried by passion and romance. But it’s hard to resist, since as I said before, Sakuya and Aine are such a close couple that it’s hard not to like the story. They are good to each other, and the drama comes from outside sources, the satisfaction comes from watching the two of them pull through. It sounds sappy, and it is. You also have to remember that they have sex a lot, which is something I don’t mention too often, but it happens at least a couple times a volume. The quality is not good, people. But it’s addictive all the same.
The rest of the volume contains two short stories, each focusing on a different member of Lucifer. The second talks about Yuki, the member with the wife and child I mentioned earlier. Not only are Yuki and his wife completely devoted, the same way that Aine and Sakuya are, but his story’s actually very interesting since he and his wife originally come from a very prestigious family of Noh performers. I can count on one hand the number of times traditional Japanese theater comes up in English-translated manga. This story doesn’t go into any detail of Noh performance (just the drama of being in such a family), but that it was a detail that was included at all is pretty great.
The other story is about Atsuro and how he and his step-sister are madly in love with each other. That chapter ends with sex. I was more than a little disturbed by this chapter.
Tenjo Tenge 1 (omnibus ed.)
Posted: May 28, 2011 Filed under: Tenjho Tenge 3 Comments »Oh! great – Viz – 2011 – 22 volumes
this omnibus contains vols 1-2
I won’t lie: I love Tenjo Tenge to pieces, and I was super-excited to hear that Viz licensed it. It was in my top 5 series to be rescued from CMX. It’s got a terrible reputation for having rather graphic art and themes (which means that some only see it as fanbait manga) and being censored (which means that people who read fanbait manga won’t buy it), but it’s a really fantastic story with great art. I’ve read through my CMX volumes two or three times, and I almost never re-read series. It breaks my heart that more people didn’t read it when CMX published it.
The Viz edition of this series is really nice. An omnibus treatment is really the way to go, especially since the English edition was only 4 volumes from the end. This book contains volumes 1-2 of the original. The cover is that of volume two, and the art to volume one’s cover (which was the controversial due to the logo covering the panty shot on the CMX edition) is included in the plentiful color pages. Each volume of Tenjo Tenge in Japan comes with a double-sided poster, a double-page color title spread, an additional color page, and a color illustration on the table of contents. All of those color pages are included in the Viz edition, in front of volume one, then again in the middle of the book for the stuff included with volume two. The volume two poster isn’t a poster, but is included as a single page illustration for the Aya image, and a double-page illustration for the Maya image. Part of me thinks that Oh! great may insist that these color pages are included, since they were part of the CMX edition all the way to the end, and I can’t imagine that the series was making enough money to justify the extra cost. The book is manga-oversized, the trim size is consistent with the larger-size Viz Signature line.
And nothing is censored. At all. Fanboys, put your money where your mouth is.
The uncensored artwork… is what it is. Oh! great started his career by drawing porn manga, and it’s obvious in his style. All the girls have massive breasts, and there are several scenes that lapse into porn manga mode. Chiaki, Bob’s girlfriend, is raped in a despicable attempt to teach Bob and Soichiro a lesson about acting out in school. It’s a graphic scene, but nowhere near as graphic as it would be in a porn manga, to be fair. And also, to be fair, it was talked down a lot, with Chiaki swearing up and down that she wasn’t actually raped. It’s still a very graphic scene. Later, while talking to Aya in a hot spring during a training camp, Chiaki begins feeling Aya up, sucking on her nipple and giving her kisses. Within the first chapter, Soichiro crashes through the roof of the girls’ shower and lands on a naked Aya (directly in her crotch, actually), who begins making out with him. There are what feels like dozens of panty shots per chapter.
It’s more graphic than a shounen/seinen manga (it straddles the two, in my opinion), but nowhere near as graphic as real porn manga. I’ve read Oh! great’s porn manga, simply because I liked Tenjo Tenge so much, and I was curious. There’s stuff in there that still gives me nightmares.
I know that doesn’t sound like the makings of the fantastic series I promised, but the fanservice mostly disappears (really!) after a few volumes, as if one Oh! great proved the story could stand on its own, he was allowed to stop doing it. Once you aren’t distracted by girls getting their panties ripped off, you can see that Oh! great’s attention to his female character’s appearance works really well in a series like this. All the girls are beautiful, the characters (male and female) all have a distinctive look and much attention is paid to the clothing they wear. The settings are also detailed and nice-looking. About the only failing I see in this first volume is that, occasionally, when someone lands a punch or strike during a fight, there’s a panel where it’s hard to tell just what is happening, but it doesn’t bother me that much since, really, someone is just being hit very hard. Otherwise, his fight scenes are also really well-drawn, with lithe characters jumping around and landing the occasional powerful punch. You can tell he plays a lot of fighting games.
The story? It takes awhile to get going. Compared to what I love about the series, the first two volumes are simply exposition, and it does get much better when the lengthy flashbacks start. We meet newcomers to Todo Academy, Bob and Soichiro, and we learn that they love to fight. Fortunately, Todo Academy is a school founded on fighting, and they see plenty of action. On their first day, after all their cocky challenges, they are beaten soundly by Maya Natsume, the president of the tiny Juken Club. Meanwhile, her sister, Aya, falls in love with Soichiro at first sight. Unfortunately, Masataka, another Juken Club member, falls in love with Aya at first sight and begins sulking over her crush on Soichiro. Soichiro wants nothing to do with Aya, but Masataka beats him up out of jealousy later when Soichiro provokes him into fighting. All the fighting gets the attention of the Student Executive Council, who punishes Soichiro and Bob by burning Bob’s bike, raping his girlfriend, then beating the crap out of Soichiro and Bob. Maya gets revenge for them, but sobered by the sound beating and enraged by the line that was crossed, Bob and Soichiro join the Juken Club and begin training to beat the Executive Council. The second volume is mostly training and, later, a full-out brawl in a bowling alley between members of the Executive Council and Juken Club.
It sounds like just a shallow fighting manga, and right now, it is. But there are several nice touches even in the first couple volumes. There is some romance mixed into the story, and I love that the characters tend to fall in love out of a sense of admiration. Masataka falls for Aya as soon as he sees her, not because she’s beautiful, but because she’s fantastic at the sword exercises he sees her doing (and I suppose being beautiful helps). Soichiro slowly begins to fall in love with Maya Natsume, but again, it’s less because she’s beautiful and more because she’s a genuine martial arts master with a lot to teach. Love out of admiration fits the series well, since all the characters are constantly striving for a personal best. This is completely overshadowed by the ridiculous relationship between Aya and Soichiro, however, which is far less understated than the others. Aya falls in love with Soichiro because of an old family rule that states the first man to see the flesh of a Natsume woman is their intended, and of course this triggers when Soichiro falls through the roof of the shower and sees Aya naked. Aya also constantly forces herself on Soichiro, talking and thinking of little else. Bah. It took me a long time to warm up to Aya Natsume after these first couple volumes.
After the initial set-up, we begin flashbacks that develop the characters and the history between the Executive Council and the Juken Club. That’s when things really start to get good, I promise. These first couple volumes are still necessary reading, and a pretty decent fighting/action manga in the meantime. But it gets much better and slightly less skeevy in the future.
Also, there’s some asides that point to Soichiro as the main character of the series. Maya and Aya dominate much of the story, but I think the real main character is Masataka. It takes a long time for that to become more obvious, though. Bear with me.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Butterflies, Flowers 6
Posted: May 22, 2011 Filed under: Butterflies Flowers Leave a comment »Yuki Yoshihara – Viz – 2011 – 8 volumes
After enjoying the absurd silliness of volume 5, the drama in this volume came as something of a shock. I like this series a lot for its light touch and sense of humor, and Masayuki’s hilariously terrifying presence, and it’s almost as if drama has no place in the happy relationship between Choko and Masayuki. So when romantic rivals for both characters appear in this volume, things get very ugly.
The volume starts out innocently enough, with a cute one-shot about Choko moving back in with her family, but not wanting to move out of Masayuki’s apartment. There’s all sorts of funny sweetness in this story, though it’s only of moderate quality in the context of the series. It’s great, don’t get me wrong, but Butterflies, Flowers has done better. The second story is another relatively cute one about a work-related hot springs retreat. This… goes about how you think it will, but at the end a few characters sew a few plot-related seeds. Gossip shows that the board of directors is looking to overthrow the president of the company, and also that Masayuki was involved in a relationship with another woman before Choko began working at the company. Choko gets jealous, but it ends in a relatively pleasing way, with both characters laughing it off. I love it when the manga relationship can weather drama like that unscathed. Rarely are the characters tied together that strongly.
My pleasure was short-lived, however, as the next few chapters introduced a new character, brought in to sort out the board of directors business. He has designs on Choko, and although Choko tries her best to dissuade his advances, he is rather persistent, and Masayuki remains relatively silent on the matter. This character also brings Masayuki’s old girlfriend back to the company, and Masayuki begins spending a lot of time with her rather than Choko, again, with no reason why.
The book ends on a very ugly note. What would be par for the course in any other romance manga was extremely upsetting here, since the romance and laughs are usually perfect and reading a volume always makes my day awesome. I wasn’t expecting to be so disillusioned by the new path the story took here, and Choko and Masayuki are so out-of-character I feel like I’m suddenly reading a different book. With two volumes left, I hope it’s not an ongoing plot thread to the end of the series, because Masayuki being serious and quiet is a waste of a wonderful character.
Oddly enough, this made me want to read the next volume even worse than usual, because I have to know whether things are truly going south or not. What can I say, drama works even in the happiest of series, I guess.
Blade of the Immortal 20
Posted: May 22, 2011 Filed under: Blade of the Immortal Leave a comment »Hiroaki Samura – Dark Horse – 2008 – 26+ volumes
Okay. So, I won’t lie. I’m a big fan of the prison arc storyline here. When it leads to volumes like this, it’s worth anything that came before.
Just about everything I could possibly want in Blade of the Immortal is in this volume. Rin being a hero. A reunion between Rin and Manji. Rin finally beating the crap out of somebody. Manji fighting bad guys. Rin fighting bad guys. Someone going what appears to be full-on Lazarus. A brawl between several people in a cell, where some of the people are restrained and occasionally incapacitated and the whole thing is flooding. Actually, the flooding doesn’t happen until next volume. Shame on me for reading ahead, but most of the good stuff happens here.
Part of me suspects that Hiroaki Samura just thought of what the coolest situation for the characters would be, then wrote all the lead-up just to justify this. I don’t know how this volume can ever be topped.
There’s really too much to go into, and to talk it up would spoil it. All of it is good. Every page. But my favorite part, the unlooked-for action, is the confrontation between Asaemon and Manji. It’s not a fight I was expecting, and Asaemon makes for an interesting opponent, especially since… well, neither are fighting for their life, really, it’s more a matter of principle. That is, if by “not fighting for his life,” you can also include Manji’s wish not to be nailed to Asaemon’s wall, having his liver constantly removed. But Asaemon is a good character, the happy executioner, perfectly aware of everything that was going on and simply filling his role. He spoke up when things got too out of hand, and he had his own type of honor. I like him a lot, he’s a different sort of fellow, and I always thought he might be on Manji’s side if it came down to it. Sad, then, that it turned out this way, but it still makes for a really good fight.
Is there significance in the fact that he had 大 on his forehead through the latter half of the fight?
Itazura na Kiss 4
Posted: May 22, 2011 Filed under: Itazura na Kiss 2 Comments »Kaoru Tada – Digital Manga Publishing – 2010 – 23 volumes
this is an omnibus containing volumes 7-8
I love this series. It’s great at capturing little events and moments in the lives of the characters, and I also like that time is moving forward with every chapter. Again, each chapter is a standalone story, and while the stories themselves aren’t anything to write home about (a summer vacation retreat where the entire cast happens to appear, a tennis tournament where Kotoko is an alternate but winds up playing due to a train delay, a birthday chapter, a Christmas chapter, a coming-of-age day chapter, et cetera), the little nuances are what makes this series great. Kotoko’s friends blowing her off repeatedly to hang out with their boyfriends, the story where Kotoko and Yuuki investigate a ghost story in the hospital, the tennis coach’s continued ploys to get Naoki and Kotoko in the same place so he can get closer to his crush Matsumoto… it’s not the plots of the stories that make them great, but all the little details that go into them. The way the stories play out doesn’t revolve around a joke, but rather character interaction, and the characters are always a little more fleshed out in the end. And, to be fair, the plots of the stories were probably a little less tired in the early 1990s. Apparently this series was very “influential,” too, in that these plots have been recycled for the last 20 years starting here.
One thing that still impresses me in particular is the relationship between Kotoko and Mrs. Irie. They wind up scheming together a lot, of course, because both of them are trying to get Naoki to fall in love with Kotoko, but it’s more than that. Though unrelated, they have the perfect mother-daughter relationship. Mrs. Irie is always willing to speak up for Kotoko, even in non-Naoki matters, and Kotoko is always willing to indulge Mrs. Irie her strange whims, be they sneaking around the campus or any number of crazy things she decides to do. Reading this, it breaks my heart that mothers are often evil or a nonentity in modern shoujo manga, because Kotoko and Mrs. Irie are just about my favorite part of this series.
On the minus side… there’s Naoki. We are eight volumes into the series, and he mostly only tolerates Kotoko, which is a step up from the outright jerk he’s been the past several volumes. He’s always willing to help her out, and always sticks up for her when she gets over her head. There is that, and Kotoko does get overwhelmed pretty frequently when she follows Naoki around everywhere. But that I’ve been reading this for eight volumes, and Kotoko is still following around Naoki with no sign that he may, one day, look her way. That’s three years of story time. It’s just sad. Things do come to a head at the very end of volume eight, when Naoki points out that he hates having his career and love life decided by his parents. This is bad news for Kotoko, of course, but Naoki throws her a little bit of personal information, and she seems okay again. Yuuki mollifies me for the time being with a juicy tidbit, the first solid proof we’ve had for eight volumes that there might, in fact, be something to this relationship, but even so. My point stands. Every chapter without romance is just damning evidence against Naoki. He is literally one of the biggest jerks in shoujo manga at this point in the series, good deeds aside.
Ugh. Naoki Irie makes me so mad. It’s a pretty good indication of quality though when I still love a shoujo manga to pieces even when the main relationship is so rotten. I promise the character development really is the best, and the little slice-of-life moments are totally worth reading. And even I almost forgave Naoki when he came to Kotoko’s rescue on Christmas Eve. That’s been my favorite chapter so far. If only he were a little nicer.
Demon Sacred 4
Posted: May 22, 2011 Filed under: Demon Sacred 1 Comment »Natsumi Itsuki – Tokyopop – 2011 – 11 volumes
I think of all the Tokyopop series that have ended prematurely, missing the last volume of Alice in the Country of Hearts and the entire last 2/3rds of this series break my heart the most. This series is AMAZING, and I know it’s on its way to all sorts of mind-bending places. I love just about everything about it, and modern shoujo fantasy like this is hard to come by in English. Reading this book has mostly convinced me to suck it up and try to make my way through the Japanese volumes, because I really, really want to know what happens. I doubt anyone will bother to license-rescue this.
The most interesting thing going on right now is, of course, romance related, because I am a shoujo junky. K2 finds out more and more about human rituals dealing with love, and an older woman has appeared that is more than happy to school him in such things. Shinobu’s sister Sophie starts snooping around in Shinobu’s private life and finds K2. And then decides to seduce him. She is basically the only person that knows, since K2 is completely oblivious as to what’s going on and she is careful to keep it from everyone else. Meanwhile, Rina is wrestling with the beginnings of love for K2. Then Mika drops a bombshell at the very end of the book that makes me want to read the rest more than anything. I NEED to know how that ends.
Meanwhile, in the world of exploring the demons, Red Dragon makes an appearance and has an interesting talk with Mika about the nature of growing old and what it means to be a demon. Mika also reveals the three ways in which a demon can die, and why death is a blessing that old demons see as lucky, as demons are less and less likely to die the older they are. The mechanics of demon life become clearer and clearer in every volume, and it’s one of the most interesting things about this series.
Also interesting is the sickness humans catch from demons that reverse-ages them until they turn into infants and disappear. This is illustrated in the story by Mona, Rina’s twin. We haven’t heard very much about this illness other than it’s scary and that the sisters are dealing with it together, but in this volume we begin to see just how many regrets Mona has, and that she’d give anything to be an adult for one day. I’m thinking this is probably going someplace terrible later, and again, I would love to know more about it.
But really, what a wonderfully bizarre fantasy series. It has such an original flavor, and goes pretty far out there without alienating the reader. Reading the first four volumes is worth it, but it’s a shame that the rest will never see the light of day.
Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei 2
Posted: May 22, 2011 Filed under: Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei 2 Comments »Koji Kumeta – Del Rey – 2009 – 24+ volumes
As much as I’ve liked the two volumes of this series that I’ve read, it’s got one important factor working against it: it’s mostly a social satire of Japan, and I’m missing almost 80% of the jokes it’s making because I don’t know enough about Japanese pop culture. And this is coming from someone that knows an awful lot about Japanese pop culture. Granted, it’s got pages and pages of translation notes in the back, and I love that about it. It would fail without them, honestly. But if I have to look up an explanation for every joke it makes, is it really still funny?
It kinda is, actually, and the fact I still like it despite this is pretty amazing. But it can get a little tedious to read when most of the jokes are falling flat in every chapter… not because they’re bad jokes, but just because I don’t know enough about them. Jokes about the bizarre characters and the surreal things they do are okay by me, though.
I was disappointed that we only saw about 2-3 new students this volume. The fujoshi student and a nearly invisible boy that is going prematurely bald (mysteriously, the only male in the class aside from Itoshiki-sensei). There’s also an almost-plot in the middle of the book, consisting of several chapters, where we meet members of Itoshiki-sensei’s large family. They all also have pun names (like Itoshiki’s name can be spelled to mean despair), and are varying degrees of crazy, as you can imagine from his family. There’s a fun tournament, too, where you have to marry anyone you make eye contact with, which is a roundabout way of explaining why Itoshiki-sensei never makes eye contact.
Topics tackled in these short chapters include a look at being overshadowed, “non-reporting” versus knowing the meaning of the universe, some discussion of doujinshi, and a bizarre chapter where a strange man pretends to be Commodore Perry, the man who opened up Japan to outside trade in 1854. Modern Perry runs around opening anything he can get his hands on. This goes just about every place you think it does.
I like the very design-centric way that Kumeta illustrates, with lots of patterns and shapes blocked out and simplified, and lots of heavy black and white. It works well for this style of gag manga. I also adore the technique he uses where he’ll show a full-body illustration of Itoshiki-sensei, then zoom in on his face for no reason. This happens at least once a chapter.
I… don’t think I’ll be buying more volumes anytime soon, because I have a feeling that this will wear on me even faster than Sgt. Frog did. But I do like it, and I’ll probably pick up the next couple volumes at some point.
