By Kenya Suzuki. Released in Japan as “Oshiete! Gyaruko-chan” by Media Factory, serialization ongoing in the online site Comic Walker. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jennifer McKeon. Adapted by Lianne Sentar.
As I’ve occasionally mentioned before, I am the opposite of most fans. Most fans, from what I gather, watch only anime, and seem rather surprised to find that a manga or light novel exist, and uninterested if they do find out. Whereas I read manga or light novels, and for the most part don’t really watch much anime at all anymore. On the bright side, this can lead to surprises. For example, this series, which I knew nothing about. At first the description made it sound fairly slice-of-lifey. However, as those who’d seen the anime know all too well, it has a lot of sex talk sprinkled throughout. This was what I discovered when I first started to read it, and my general thought was “oh dear, time to plow through this.” Luckily, as the volume went on, despite the sex talk Galko-chan proved to be more what I originally thought it would be.
The premise is light as air, as are the characters, who all have nicknames related to their specific stereotype (a flashback chapter shows it’s actually deliberate, which is amusing). Galko-chan is the titular character, a Gal in the Super Gals! vein, who is also possessed of very large breasts, which is actually one of the driving plot points as there are many discussions of said breasts. Galko-chan is not quite a 4-koma series, but it’s very much in the vein of such comedies, with little character introductions every single page offering little facts about each character. (Haruchi-chan’s manga has this as well). And because her best friends as Otako, a bookish girl who knows a lot about sex from reading about it and uses that to jump-start conversations, and Ojou, a young rich well-bred girl who’s described as an airhead but who I think is simply sheltered and goes along with any topic no matter what it is, sex comes up a lot.
Each page heading has a specific question that one would ask of high school teens, ranging from “Do friendly sisters borrow each other’s clothes a lot?” to “Is it true that intense exercise can break a girl’s hymen?”. Honestly, they’re more the latter than the former – be prepared for a lot of discussion of breasts, pubic hair, periods, labial size, etc. While this has the potential to be awful, it’s generally not, mostly as all three girls are, despite the saucy talk, really quite innocent – this isn’t even on the level of High School Girls. When not discussing sex, they do normal 4-koma things like go shopping, go to the pool, and worry about school, with the help of their other classmates, who get less attention but still have names that define their stereotype. They’re just… nice kids. Who talk about women’s bodies all the time.
I suspect those who dislike slice-of-life, ecchi stories, and 4-koma style humor already avoided this, but just in case, let me warm you it is all those things. (There isn’t much boke and tsukkomi style humor, though, which is a pleasant change.) It’s also in full color, and the colors are nicely chosen and artistically striking, and the faces are mostly also very good, though Ojou needs to stop having her default expression 90% of the time. This was a cute read, not as ecchi as you’d think t would be, and should please fans of the anime. Which I still have not seen.
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