Tag: Shounen

Ganbarist Shun anime review

Another cheerful series, about a boy named Fujisaki Shun who wants to win a gold medal in Olympics. That’s it. That’s literally the story behind Ganbarist Shun (ガンバリスト!駿). He just shows up at his middle school gymnastics club, blurts this out and the story is underway.

 Things get interesting after that though, when it turns out Shun can’t even turn a simple cartwheel. And he has to perform in the regional tournament the very next day. This leads to one of the funniest first episodes I’ve watched in a long, looong time.
After that the humor content goes down a lot, in favor of Shun and the rest of his club members slowly but surely improving under the guidance of various coaches. Some of the performances are seriously impressive, especially Shun’s two turns on the horizontal bar (the manga co-author Morisue was an Olympic gold medalist in the same event). It’s spoiled a bit by the lengthy flashbacks, sideline comments and internal thought processes that punctuate every single move, but it’s still gripping to watch anyway. But, you never do get to find out why Shun wants to be a medalist anyway. He just does.
The series is only 30 episodes long (yes, 30 is “only” for a series as fun as this), and it’s never been officially released, so it’s not very well-known in the west. Even in Japan it never got a DVD release so you’d have to get VHS (what’s that mommy?) tapes if you wanted to own it. The only subs available are some seriously atrocious “Engrish” subs that I quickly ignored in favor of just watching it for myself. If you’re lucky enough to find it in a language you understand, I highly, highly recommend it.

Chou (Super) Virgin manga review

A seven-volume romantic/cross-dressing comedy by Uchida Fujimaru. The protagonist is Hanazono Ippei, a middle-school student who suffers from the interestingly-named “Cherry Boy” Syndrome, which means he freaks out completely whenever he even goes near a girl. Thanks to that he fails an exam for a co-ed high school, which means he loses a bet he had with his dad and has to dress up like a girl and work in their restaurant.

However, Ippei finds out that as a girl he has no problem at all talking to girls and gets a crush on one of the customers on the same day. This is good news for him… right?

Uhh, not quite. It’s never that simple. Dressed as Ichiko, Ippei manages to win Rika (his crush’s) trust while simultaneously sort-of dating her as Ippei. And then there’s the fact that Rika is a pro-wrestler whose her arch-rival falls in love with Ippei, which means you’ve got the beginnings of a far-from-ordinary romantic comedy.

Chou (Super) Virgin! was pretty good, since it had a good balance of romance, action and comedy. Ippei gets involved in pro-wrestling, has to save Rika from the clutches of a rival (who then falls in love with Ichiko), has to navigate his way through several tiffs with Rika, and has to keep his secret from coming out while slowly getting over his Cherry Boy Syndrome issues.

The ending was happy, but left a bit to be desired. SPOILERS: Rika finds out about the deception and is rightfully mad, but then Ippei goes “I love you! I only did this because I love you!” and then everything is somehow okay again and they’re a couple. The ending shows he explained his problem to her and that she forgave him, but it really is sudden. And they haven’t shown how they’re going to resolve the issue of her being 19 and on her own and he being 16 and in school. 10 years from now it won’t even matter, but right now they’re at very different places in life.

But well, all’s well that ends well. It was a fun series, not too many wacky hijinks, an interesting cast, and a happy ending. Can’t ask for much more than that.

Katekyo Hitman Reborn! anime review

After watching what I could stomach of Darker than Black, I wanted to try something a little more lighthearted. I often download stuff at random, but this time I read the description and it sounded funny: Italian hitman who looks like baby trains Japanese high schooler to become Mafia leader. What could possibly go wrong?

I watched 10 episodes of Katekyo Hitman Reborn! before giving up, but I won’t say anything went “wrong” with it. More like something was right, so they took that something and reused it over and over again, thereby flogging it to death.

Basically each episode was like the one before it. The same things happened, the characters had the same reactions to it, it ended the same way, on to the next. Tsuna acts like a flabbergasted moron, Reborn is all-wise and all-knowing, Lambo is cute but annoying, Haru is also cute and also annoying, Kyoko is cute and clueless, Yamaguchi is an idiot who thinks everything is a game, etc, etc. You can tell what’s going to come out of everyone’s mouth before they even open it.

I found the first episode or two pretty funny, seeing all the crazy things Tsuna would get up to after being shot with the Dying Will bullet. But after that it was just “Bullet of the Day” ad nauseam, and Tsuna didn’t seem to be getting any brighter or more likable. Also I hate manipulative know-it-alls like Reborn. That smug bastard just pissed me off, episode after episode. If the two main characters suck so hard, there’s very little a series can do to redeem itself.

I hear eventually there’ll be some tournament-style fighting and some time travelling, and nothing could be less appealing to me, so I figured I’d quit while I was ahead. At least I laughed my head off at the Organ Block, so that’s worth something.

Hayate no Gotoku manga review

Hayate no Gotoku! a.k.a. Hayate the Combat Butler is an anime based on a manga series by Kenjirou Hata about a debt-ridden butler and the rich young girl who saves him. The story is pretty straightforward: Ayasaki Hayate’s parents rack up a debt of 159 million yen to the yakuza and take off, leaving Hayate to handle it. After a failed attempt to kidnap Sanzenin Nagi (the rich girl) for money, he ends up working for her as her butler and owing his debt to her instead.

I started out by watching an episode sometime in November and really liked it, but didn’t have time to really dig in until earlier this year. I spent a couple of weeks blasting through both seasons of the anime and then read the manga from chapter 148 onwards. I’d like to go back and read it from volume 1, but I’ll save it for another time.

I tend to prefer character-driven manga to story-driven manga anyway, unless the story is really good. HnG has a number of interesting and likeable characters (Hayate, Maria, Nagi, Tama, Hinagiku, Isumi) and not so interesting and not so likeable characters (Sakuya, Wataru, Saki, Klaus), but even the less interesting ones still make for a few good laughs.

I enjoyed the constant spoofs of and references to other anime and manga as well. I actually got a lot of them, which shows I’ve been watching too much anime… That said, I thought the quality of episodes in Season One was really iffy. Some were good, some were not so good. Later on I discovered that most of the ones I thought were bad were actually filler, which just goes to show that Hata’s unique touch isn’t so easily imitated.

Anyway, after putting the anime behind me, I’ve finally caught up to the current manga chapter, chapter 309. That was a whirlwind ride, especially the Mykonos arc where Hayate ran into his old flame Athena. I like Athena a lot. This is may sound like blasphemy to Hinagiku fans (of which I was one until Athena showed up), but I think Athena fits Hayate better in a lot of ways. She understands that he has feelings, that he’s often in pain, that sometimes that smile is just a mask. Hinagiku still doesn’t really know Hayate, deep down inside. To be honest I think the main frontrunners for Hayate’s affection right now are Maria and Athena, with Hina in third place. Athena x Hayate forever!

That being the case, I’m rather pissed off at this whole Alice arc, wiping out Athena’s memory and turning her into a kid again for 3 months. That puts a halt on any romantic development for the next 200 chapters or so. Boo! Hiss! Hata’s also added another girl called Luca/Ruka to the mix, we’ll have to see what she can bring to the party. It might be time to drop this for a while and see how things work out.

Sumomomo Momomo vol. 1 manga review

The usual “Fiancee Out Of Nowhere” story with bad art, bad comedy, and bad angst right from the very start. I like those stories when the comedy is funny (see: Ranma 1/2) or if it’s very romantic and the characters are nice (see Ai Yori Aoshi), but Sumomomo Momomo is just bad. The girl Momoko has nothing going for her except she’s good at martial arts and she’s supposed to be pure, innocent and ignorant. Oh, and she looks 12 years old but she wants to have a baby with the main character, riiight.

The main character XYZ…I can’t even remember his name and I just finished reading it…ah, Koushi, starts out snarky and rude, wanting nothing to do with his martial arts family and background. But thanks to Momoko reminding him of his childhood through the usual tears and shouting “What happened to you, you used to be so blah-blah-blah”, he finally sees the error of his ways and goes back to being a strong martial artist again…

Or that’s how it was supposed to be, but then he remembers…he got the crap kicked out of him several years ago in front of Momoko and was so traumatized he gave up martial arts. His M.O. after that is figuring out how to get Momoko to do his dirty work for him while he tries to avoid getting married and having babies with her. Oh, and how to keep her out of trouble after she naturally enrolls at his high school. Oh, joy.

Psst, did I mention that several assassins are after Koushi’s life? Just because? All of a sudden? Yeah, it’s that kind of manga.

From the sound of all that, I expected to get a funny, crazy, interesting series out of Sumomomo, but for some reason the whole thing just feels dull, dry, empty and gloomy. I’m not quite sure what to pin it on, but I think it has a lot to do with the visuals not being able to keep up with the comic mood of the series. The panel layout in the action scenes is rather hard to follow, and all Haira Ichiden Musou-Ryuu and Shindara Rettsu Ryuu etc etc terms flying about get a little hard to follow after a while. Character design is odd, the artist goes a little too heavy on the black ink and dark screentone so every page looks really dark…basically this manga doesn’t have what it takes to hold my attention after volume 1.

Nothing to see here, moving right along.