Category: Comedy

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.

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.

CONTEST + The Dirty Pair TV Pt. 1: Do Lovely Angels Prefer Chest Hair?

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If you were a fan before the late-90’s, there is no need to introduce these ladies; it was pretty hard not to see at least one of the Dirty Pair titles that were released in the U.S during those days. Kei and Yuri were (and still are for some of us) the quintessential girls with guns. Or more to the point, they fit right in with what people wanted out of anime between explosions, space adventure, and fan-service there wasn’t much missing. And if you haven’t experienced it, you can win the first set right here!

The are some shows that define a genre. They are not necessarily the first show or even the best show in the category but for one reason or another they capture the imagination of the public and become intimately linked with the genre. Whenever you mention girls with guns anime most fans who have been in the hobby for a few years will undoubtedly bring up the Dirty Pair before any other title. Along with Gunsmith Cats it personifies the idea of a show where two beautiful ladies run around defeating nasty bad guys with cool weapons with a side order of humor and cheesecake. As a fan of the series I was always asking ADV when they were going to go back and license this iconic gem for its US fans. But in an unexpected twist of fate it turns out that the champion of the underdog titles Nozomi Entertainment picked it up instead much to my delight. The premiere babes with blasters show finally has made its way to the US and I could not be happier.

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