By Yoshio Sawai. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz.

This volume of Bobobo is, like its predecessors, difficult to review. There’s no plot as such, except ‘defeat boss, move on to next boss’. There are technically characters, but they aren’t going to grow or change. And there’s no real subtext here. There’s just the gags. Pure gag manga, unfettered by anything connecting it to reality. Gintama can get this goofy for maybe a page, but it has actual things going on. Jaguar and Kochikame are pure gag comedy as well, but those two are situational. In Bobobo, the situations bend to whatever the artist wants to draw next.

Anything can change to become anything else mid-panel. This is part of why I describe this manga as exhausting, and say it works best in weekly 14-page chapters. There’s just too much thrown at you at once, and the volume is LOUD all the time. And there aren’t even different gags. It’s the SAME gag, repeated. Bobobo, Poppa Rocks or Jelly Jiggler will do something insanely silly and random, and another character (usually Beauty) will point out how stupid it is, usually with a bug-eyed look of shock.

So why do I keep reading it? Well, in a series with this many gags being thrown at you this often, some of them have to hit. And when Bobobo is funny, it just makes me laugh hysterically. As with everything else in Bobobo, I may not be able to explain why I’m laughing, but I know it’s funny. Poppa Rocks’ farting sheep, the incredibly silly backstory for Rem (a human with futon parents), All of Bobobo and Poppa Rocks’ Super Fists. Best of all, a totally random gag where Bobobo unleashes tiny little clones of himself on Rem, saying that it’s Super Fist of the Nose Hair Great School Trip. The tiny Bobobos all emerge grinning and shouting “Yaaaay, Kyoto!” This made me laugh almost till I cried.

A lot of this manga is simply the author mocking other Jump manga, particularly the older ones such as Fist of the North Star (obviously) and Saint Seiya. But you really don’t have to know about them to enjoy Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo. You don’t have to know much of anything. You just have to have a high tolerance for in your face comedy, and be aware that you’re seeing 10 gags thrown at you every minute in hopes that one or two stick. They usually do.