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.

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

It’s a bit difficult to know where to begin with a review of this title. I mean, it’s not as if I can talk about plot or characterization!

The history of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo in Japan is fairly straightforward. It’s a shonen gag manga that began in Weekly Shonen Jump in 2001. It ran for 21 volumes, not bad for a gag manga, and also had a popular anime. There was then a 2nd ‘New Bobobo’ manga series, that was not as successful and ran for 7 volumes. Even for a gag manga, Bobobo is over the top, with non-sequitur gags and overreactions almost every single panel. It had an anime in 2002, that was quite popular. (I was introduced to Bobobo through seeing the anime at Otakon one year.)

In North America, the history is a lot more complex. In late 2005, Viz published a one-off Bobobo volume, which comprised half of Volume 9 and half of Volume 10 of the original Japanese version. This was likely done for 2 reasons; to test the waters to see if it sold anything, and because Yu-Gi-Oh made a cameo in one of the chapters. Toonami then bought and dubbed the anime in 2007, and it was a mild success on television, though the redubbing almost reaches a Samurai Pizza Cats level.

So in 2008, Viz decided to serialize Bobobo in their monthly Shonen Jump magazine, likely as the magazine needed a gag comic to offset all of the FIGHT TRAIN GROW STRONGER! manga that litter it most of the time. (Admittedly, Bobobo is one long fight scene most of the time, but you can’t really call it similar to, say, Bleach or Yu Yu Hakusho). After a while, Viz quietly dropped the manga from the magazine and began putting it out to graphic novel only. They’ve started with Volume 11, so the first 8 1/2 volumes have never been released in America (rumor is the artist dislikes them).

To be honest, I can’t imagine this sells well at all. I’m going to assume that this title is being published in North America at the request of the Japanese publisher, which sometimes happens over here. Volume 4 is solicited for June 2010, so apparently whatever caused this volume to be delayed for 10 months is fixed.

And so we come to this, the Japanese Volume 13, being released here a mere 9 months after Volume 2 (Japanese 12). In it… things happen. Honestly, sometimes you hear the word ‘indescribable’, but rarely is it actually true. You can’t really sum up Bobobo except to say ‘wacky stuff happens’. Heck, I can’t even describe most of the gags themselves! Viz has opted, with this new ‘reboot’, to translate all the signs and Japanese, which was not done earlier (Jelly Jiggler’s ‘nu’, for example). It doesn’t really make much of a difference.

I’ll admit, I like this series. In small doses. It’s so over the top stupid and insane, and was basically perfect in little 14-page snippets for Weekly Shonen Jump. It also, I felt (though I am apparently in the minority) worked well in Shonen Jump over here. Unfortunately, collected into a 200-page volume, it’s just too much. You get burned out, and then irritated. If you are going to read this series, I recommend sticking it by your desk, reading a chapter a week, then putting it back. Then you can let the insanity wash over you, and won’t drown in it.