Ganbare!! Tabuchi-kun!! volume 1

Earlier this week, I read volume 1 of Ganbare!! Tabuchi-kun!! (がんばれ!!タブチくん!!), a 4-koma baseball manga by Ishii Hisaichi. Western fans might know him best as the guy who wrote the original manga that Studio Ghibli later adapted into “My Neighbors the Yamadas.” I’m on a baseball manga kick right now (as opposed to a real life baseball kick. I’m not that into real-life baseball), so I started this on a whim, but it turned out to be pretty good.

The most interesting thing about Tabuchi-kun – apart from the content, of course – is that it was based on the career of a real-life catcher/first baseman/cleanup hitter. In fact, “based on” is too mild. It straight up caricatured Koichi Tabuchi, right down to using his full name and team. Basically apart from his wife “Miyoko”, any named character in the manga is an actual human being.

Naturally this makes for interesting reading, but it can also make you uncomfortable when the comic gets a little mean-spirited. The whole series is aimed at pointing fun at Tabuchi, but sometimes it’s done in more cruel fashion and sometimes it’s mild and heart-warming. It’s sad to see Tabuchi booed out of the stadium or ostracized by his peers for no good reason other than that the mangaka just doesn’t like him.

It becomes even sadder when you go to J-wiki and read that the manga started right at the time when Tabuchi was playing poorly because he was recovering from a career-threatening injury that put him in the hospital for over three months and led to him gaining some weight. It’s like that tasteless “Derek Eater” headline the New York Post ran a couple of years ago, except imagine they ran that headline every week for 10 years, even long after Jeter had retired (not a Jeter fan, just saying).

Sample done by me. The real manga is in Japanese only.
Sample done by me. The real manga is in Japanese only.

However, it turns out that the real Koichi Tabuchi is a huge, open fan of the manga and absolutely loves it. He even credits it with helping him meet his current wife, so if anything he’s grateful for its existence. So if Tabuchi isn’t mad, then I’m not mad either. No one knows what other recurring characters like Yasuda (my favorite), Suzuki, Oh and Hirooka think of the series, but since they generally come across in a better light than Tabuchi does, they probably don’t have much to complain about.

This frees me to enjoy the silly, slightly mean humor of volume 1 for all it’s worth. I’m looking forward to reading the rest, because part of the humor comes from the interplay between characters like Yasuda and Ooya, and Tabuchi and Kakefu, and much of the first volume is spent just introducing and establishing those characters.

There are 3 volumes of Ganbare!! Tabuchi-kun!! and a further 5 volumes of the follow-up, Tabuchi-kun. You don’t need to know much about Japanese baseball to enjoy this manga, though it helps to know Sadaharu Oh, current holder of the world-record in career homeruns (868) since he shows up a lot. Apart from that, just substitute your favorite team and players and enjoy.

Macmillan Koukou Joshi Koushiki Yakyuubu chapter 2

Chapter 2 of Macmillan Koukou Joshi Koushiki Yakyuubu introduces the pitcher and the catcher, which is very kind of it because you can’t really have a baseball manga without them. What’s more, it illustrates what I said in the last post about the tsundere catcher making everything awkward.

When you think about it, she probably has the most natural reaction to having a guy suddenly show up and become manager of a girl’s team (i.e. wtf is this guy’s problem?) but her prickly reaction stands out all the more because the rest of the team have resolutely determined that this it is not a problem.

Anyway, spoiling a bit here, but Ueda does relax a bit and get along better with the rest of the team as the series goes on (all 30 chapters of it). Unlike what you might expect, Masakiyo doesn’t pull a “mighty whitey” and solve all the girls’ problems for them. For the most part they work through their issues together as a team, and Masakiyo is mostly there on the sidelines supporting them. Also there isn’t really any romance in the series, so don’t get your hopes up.

Apparently, after series ended after 30 chapters in Bessatsu Shonen Magazine, it was picked up by Weekly Shonen Magazine and rebooted as the rather more fanservicey 2-volume “Macmillan no Joshi Yakyuubu” series I thought the original ended very well, so I have no real interest in following the ‘sequel,’ but it’s out there if you finish this and are interested in what happens next. Happy reading!

Macmillan Koukou Joshi Koushiki Yakyuubu

In English Macmillan Koukou Joshi Koushiki Yakyuubu would be mean something like “The Macmillan High School Girls’ Hardball Baseball Club.” A 2-volume 4-koma gag manga about girl’s hardball baseball, which is apparently a real thing in Japan, even though there are only 16 teams at the high-school level, in this manga at least.

One would think that premise would be interesting enough, but the author went further. Male sports teams in manga tend to have female managers, so the author gave the Macmillan team a male manager instead.

Since Masakiyo is a rare breed of high school boy (even in this ‘politically correct’ age) who loves cooking, sewing and laundry and has relatively no interest in or knowledge about sports or girls, it would seem he’s not much different from your female regular team manager. And indeed, possibly because the manga is so short that there was no time to explore complex concepts, remarkably little fuss is made about his presence on the team. His classmates tease him only a little, with one exception the girls get used to having him around quickly and don’t really treat him as a ‘boy’ and he himself doesn’t spend any time thinking about gender roles, he just gets on with the washing and mending.

Macmillan Yakyuubu is short, but it does manage to cover the ‘essentials’ of baseball manga – training, rivals, team bonding and, of course, Koshien. Everything is handled lightly but not necessarily comically. This is one of the least gag-heavy 4-koma I’ve ever read. It’s very laid-back slice-of-lifeish, though the last few chapters have quite a bit of sports action and some rather predictable drama.

I wish I could say the characters are all likeable, but the pitcher really lets the side down. Apart from her, all the other team members are hardworking, friendly, fun-loving and cheerful. The pitcher is just your typical high-maintenance tsundere who often ruins the mood for everyone concerned, the reader included. She’s also the one who just can’t get over the fact that Masakiyo is a guy, and keeps making things awkward all the time. Still, she gets better quickly, and in any case there’s no time for that kind of drama once the Koshien Tournament rolls around.

All in all, Macmillan Koukou Joshi Koushiki Yakyuubu is a pretty good read. I liked that the author didn’t try to shoehorn laughs in where they didn’t belong (Mr. Fullswing, are you listening?!), the sports action was well-drawn and easy to follow, the series is short enough that it ends before it get tiresome, and apart from the first chapter it has very little fanservice. Most of all, I really appreciate the existence of at least one manga about a guy surrounded by girls that doesn’t devolve into a harem manga. Most of the characters keep their heads on and their eyes on the prize the whole time, even when they’re having fun. Good stuff!

Bench – one-shot by Masashi Kishimoto

A one-shot manga by Masashi Kishimoto, author of Naruto. I haven’t read any Naruto in roughly 8 years, but I liked it in the early days so the author is okay in my books. The blurb on mangaupdates is as follows:

Transfer student Yamaguchi Tsutomu has just joined the baseball team. Yamaguchi is overweight and can’t run very fast, so the coach places him on the “D” team. Unlike the “A” team which is has nothing but aces, the “D” team is filled with baseball misfits who don’t expect to see any playing time. Despite this setback, Yamaguchi is determined not to give up his dream of someday becoming a pro second baseman! 

The story behind Bench itself is… boring. I like baseball well enough, and I like stories about underdogs doing their best. That’s the story behind 90% of shounen manga anyway, so I might as well like it. But this story isn’t funny or interesting and it doesn’t go anywhere. The D-team does really suck, the A team bullies them for sucking, the main character shouts them down with garbage about Effort and Love of Baseball! But in typical Kishimoto fashion, the D-team suckers are also (ex-)elites, which makes them the same as the A-team and defeats the whole point of the “effort and love” story they have going on there. Why am I not surprised?

Anyway, the two D-team elites end up having a challenge against the A-team, but since they’re both elites it doesn’t matter who wins either way. It’s good this was a one-shot, because there’s no room for continuation. Two guys who were good and suffered temporary setbacks find a way of working around those setbacks. It sounds really heartwarming when you put it that way, and it might have stayed that way if Kishimoto hadn’t insisted on making the A-team A-holes and bringing up his [elite]-vs-[normal]=(elite wins and normal might as well not bother) theory again. In the end defeat = friendship, but the same goes for 99% of all other shounen manga so no surprises there.

Well, it was worth a read at least. I regret reading the online version though. It doesn’t read very well, and they got the Oh/Hanshin reference wrong right off the bat. The reason it’s a problem that Oh (the character) is a Hanshin fan is because he has the same name as the most famous Yomiuri Giants player of all time (Sadaharu Oh), and the Giants and Hanshin are bitter rivals. It’s like someone named George Best being a Manchester City fan, or someone named Babe Ruth being a Red Sox fan. Or something like that. I’m not too good at sports history.

Now, a minor mixup like that doesn’t affect the manga as a whole, but it doesn’t inspire faith in the translation either, especially when it’s so literal. “Anti-athlete’s body.” “Overly-serious tub of lard.” “As the ex-A team ace with a crushed shoulder.” “4th-seater.” (shouldn’t that be “cleanup?”) There should be smoother ways to put it than that.

Disclaimer: Translation is hard work, the translators are doing this for free and in a very short amount of time because they’re rushing to beat other releases (the fools), I make mistakes in my own writing and translation all the time. I’m just saying, that’s why I like to read manga in the original Japanese where possible. I was too lazy to hunt down a raw today, but stuff like this shows me that it’s worth the extra effort.

My boyfriend is a mooch.

Translated from Japanese for fun.

Original story here: http://komachi.yomiuri.co.jp/t/2013/0107/565121.htm?o=0

I’m a 48 year old single mother. I’ve been dating a 37 year old man for the past 3 years. For personal reasons we do not intend to get married. Last spring my son entered university. It is a very expensive school, so through that my boyfriend realized that I must have quite a bit of money.

Due to our age difference I’ve always been the one who paid for our dates. I even give him a little pocket money. Now he’s not satisfied with that any more. He asked for 30,000 yen (around $320 USD). It bothered me, but I gave it to him anyway. He said it was just that one time and thanked me and took it.

Now every time he sees me, he wants 30,000 yen. I think he loves me, but he’s started saying he won’t see me any more unless I give him the money. He’s so cruel. He’s given me the choice of either 30,000 yen per meeting or 50,000 yen per month. I’m not very happy about paying him every time. Do I have any other options, short of breaking up with him?

[do not reply]

Translator’s note: What an idiot…