Category: Manga of the Month

May’s Manga of the Month: GTO Shonan 14 Days

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GTO Shonan 14 Days (麻辣教师GTO 湘南14天) by Tooru Fujisawa

Whenever Tohru Fujisawa needs work he goes back to the well named Eikichi Onizuka. Onizuka has been in Bad Company, Shonan Junai Gumi, and Great Teacher Onizuka and now he is continuing his adventures in GTO Shonan 14 Days. But there is a reason Fujisawa can always go back to the Onizuka well. Onizuka’s adventures are filled with splendid mixture of manly action, naughty comedy, and heartfelt drama that make a well balanced meal that always satisfies and leaves you wanting more.

 GTO Shonan 14 Days is an odd manga in the fact that the whole story takes place in the two weeks between the climax of the original GTO manga and the epilogue. After an incident on TV Onizuka decides to visit Shonan until the heat dies down. He meets the beautiful Ayame Shiratori who knows him through Azusa Fuytsuki and is convinced to come with her at the White Swan youth home. Onizuka has to work his over the top magic with troubled teens while trying to lose his pesky virginity once and for all.

GTO Shonan 14 Days is more GTO just in a new setting but I am all right with that. It is like sitting down to a comforting meal after a hard days work. There is just something comforting in seeing GTO back in the saddle. The kids Onizuka have to deal with always send the craziest problems his way and Onizuka tackles them by seeing their crazy and then raising them double. But he is so charmingly manly when he does it that you cannot help but root for him. The series also integrates some fan favorite characters from both GTO and Shonan Junai Gumi so any long time fans will get a bit of service as well. I really hope that some one license rescues GTO and picks up Shonan 14 Days at the same time. It is a title that really need to stay in print in all its forms. This series is a classic in all its iterations.

April’s Manga of the Month: Kekkaishi

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Kekkaishi (結界師) by Yellow Tanabe

With the recent news that Kekkaishi will be wrapping up its story in Shonen Sunday this month, I just had to talk about the series.

Even since I found the series, Kekkaishi has remained a favorite, and in my opinion one of the best, of recent shonen fighting titles. The story revolves around the sacred land of Karasumori which attracts a lot of attention from monsters seeking power and the two families who guard it. Yoshimori is a meld between your typical shonen protagonist who posses a lot of raw power but can’t fully control it yet, and some personal quirks like using his defensive technique aggressively, being a cake-baking otaku, and possessing a compassionate soul. His partner and rival Tokine is a strong female who starts the series leagues ahead of Yoshi and continues to grow along side him. Their techniques are similar but their strengths are different causing the best battles to occur when they work together using ingenuity and teamwork rather than a power up. As the series goes on family secrets, rival organizations, death, friendship and betrayal, and deadly power all reveal that Karasumori and everyone surrounding it is a lot more complicated than initially suspected.

Kekkaishi balances a lot of wonderful elements in its story beyond the assumed action and drama. Interwoven throughout is an amazingly organic romance, I hope I don’t have to emphasize how rare this is in the genre, that underlies many scenes while never overtaking them and more importantly never appearing for plot convenience. Family also has a grand role to play in Kekkaishi creating wonderful tension. And perhaps the most surprising part of all is the cast remains fairly small never straying far from our leads. Kekkaishi is a fresh yet familiar series that hits the right notes with precision.

March’s Manga of the Month: Hayate the Combat Butler

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Hayate the Combat Butler (ハヤテのごとく!) by Kenjiro Hata

Hayate the Combat Butler is hardly an obscure series but I wanted to bring it up for two reasons. The first is that as far as a I can tell Hayate, much like many other Shonen Sunday titles is hardly doing gangbusters in the English-speaking world. Viz has already slowed down the release schedule on the series. While I don’t think it will be canceled anytime soon I would like to see its schedule speed up rather than slowed down further.  The other reason is the is the lull between the end of the second season and the movie. Manga seems to generate less conversation when there is no anime running at the same time. So I have decided to hopefully get some conversation going before the movie comes out.

Hayate Ayasaki has the worst parents in the world. One day he comes home to discover they have saddled him with a 156,804,000 yen debt. Through odd circumstances he winds up in the employ of the insanely rich Nagi Sanzenin as her butler. Nagi has  fallen in love with him but sadly Hayate is blissfully unaware of this fact. At first Hayate had to protect Nagi from people who would try to steal her fortune. Recently Nagi renounced her inheritance and is running an apartment complex with the little money she has left. So Hayate tries must keep the apartment complex afloat while dealing with the strange residents within and their equally troublesome friends.

People often ask me why I like Hayate the Combat Butler so much. My answer is that it is refreshing. Whenever I read the newest chapter of the manga I just feel my worries fade away. Kenjiro Hata has a gentle writing style that is both soothing and invigorating. The series is consistently funny and mixes high level otaku humor with your more standard comedy elements. There is also a mixture of romance, action, and drama in the story but every chapter is sure to have some laughs to balance it all out. The other major appeal is that the characters are very endearing to me. While I wrote a whole article on why Nagi is such a great character I could write similar articles on the rest of the cast.  I think since our review of the anime I have realized that the otaku level for the series might be a little too high for some but I think any decently experienced anime fan will find something to enjoy in Hayate.