Vertical features the first volume of their new shonen romantic blackmail comedy The Flowers of Evil, and I’m afraid everyone has to buy it, as otherwise the cover image will continue to stare into your soul forever. Into your SOUL. FOREVER.

Viz has the 5th volume of Saturn Apartments, which I’ve lost track of but which is from the SigIkki line, so clearly it is deserving of your praise.

And there is a huge pile of stuff from Yen. Including two big new debuts. From Square Enix’s Young Gangan, we have Until Death Do Us Part, an action/adventure/esper epic that they are releasing in omnibus format, meaning we get the first 2 volumes here in one. This is 15 volumes and still running in Japan, so should be a lot of fun. And from Houbunsha (I believe they went straight to graphic novel, a rarity in Japan), we have the first volume of Magic Girl manga Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Hey, do you want to buy a magical girl manga? Kyubei can sell one to you!

But wait, Yen has even more! The penultimate volume of Bamboo Blade; the 12th Haruhi Suzumiya manga, which starts to adapt the 7th novel; new Nabari no Ou, Omamori Himari, Pandora Hearts, and Sumomomo Momomo, which I don’t have anything clever to say about; and the 9th Soul Eater, which I would say features things spiraling out of control, except that might imply Soul Eater had control in the first place. And lastly, there’s the 3rd volume of Daniel X, which is an OEL adaptation of the James Patterson series. Who doesn’t love OEL?

So what are you devouring next week?

I recall when Tokyopop first released this manga, a number of years ago, my general reaction to it was sort of a flat ‘what’. Of course, I was a much younger reader then, and have since read many experimental manga with weird art, weird plotting and a certain gonzo style to them. So I picked up Dark Horse’s new omnibus, which has a spruced-up translation, color pages, and some extras by the author, wondering if I could now appreciate the deep and beautiful meaning in the series. But as it turned out, most of FLCL still ends up making me say the same thing: what?

To be fair to its authors, this is probably the reaction they were going for anyway. It’s OK to write something that’s surreal, and if FLCL is anything else, it’s that. The plot, for those who may not know, involves a young boy named Naota and his metaphors for puberty, which in this series emerge from his head and turn into giant robots. He has a crush on a girl named Mamimi, a ditzy older girl who’s in love with Naota’s older brother (who is in the US) and using Naota as an emotional crutch. She’s also an arsonist. He also goes to school, where he has the usual two male friends, plus the class president, who is the mayor’s daughter and is tsundere for him. All of this is turned upside down when a woman named Haruko arrives, bringing chaos in her wake and fighting the robots… or using the robots to fight one another… in an intergalactic battle that is never really explained properly.

This manga ran in Magazine Z, which no longer exists but was basically Kodansha’s media tie-in magazine. And it should come as no surprise to you that this was based on an anime by GAINAX, who were trying to deconstruct everything so they could reconstruct themselves after putting out Evangelion. The anime was 6 episodes long, and the manga is sort of a truncated adaptation. However, unlike the manga version of Evaangelion, which sticks to the same plot/events but makes the characters more likeable, FLCL’s author is allowed to shake things up a bit. Certainly I don’t remember Naota killing his father in the original.

Sometimes the author does actually remember that this is supposed to be about Naota growing up. At one point, all three female protagonists are living in his house, and Haruko and Mamami decide to tease him by pretending to be lesbians, something that does actually play off of male teenage sexuality. The ending is also rather interesting, changed slightly from the original – Haruko actually gives Naota her broken Vespa, and challenges him to fly to outer space after her. Of course, now our last shot is of his bruised and bloody fingers trying to fix/fly the thing. One might argue it’s more downbeat than the original.

The art is very stylized, and may possibly be worth a look-see. And I still like Mamimi despite myself. But for the most part, what read as an incoherent mess 8 years ago is *still* an incoherent mess, even if the author would like us to think otherwise. If you’re looking for teenage metaphors for sexuality, there are better manga than this.

Sailor Moon is at Vol. 5, and the R arc is nearing its end. Things are getting bad. Mercury, Mars and Jupiter are still abducted, Moon’s been kidnapped, and now Wiseman seems to have spirited off Chibi-Usa. Will our heroes be able to stop the rising tide of pervasive evil? Well, there’s 7 more volumes of the main storyline, so the answer to that is obvious. The question is how dramatic and interesting can the author make it before Usagi fires her beam of super-concentrated pureness at the villain?

Quite a bit, as it happens. The villains below Wiseman seem to get a bit more depth to them than their first arc counterparts. In particular, Saphir seems like he might actually betray the villains for the sake of his family. Unfortunately, we’re not at the point yet where the manga starts redeeming minor villains, and the power of Death Phantom within him proves too much. Demande fighting his conditioning was also interesting, though I find Demande so loathsome that the impact was lessened for me. Unfortunately for the Black Moon Family, they find themselves replaced by a more useful villain, who has closer ties to our heroes.

That’s right, it’s time for Black Lady. Take all of the frustrations, desires and fears of a typical eight-year-old girl (again, ignore that she’s supposedly 902, that makes no sense). Then infuse her body with evil, and age her up so that she looks like an adult. This plotline can get a little creepy, be warned – Chibi-Usa’s jealousy of Usagi gets played out here with incestual subtext, and seeing Black Lady kissing her mind-controlled dad is meant to be as unpleasant as it sounds. Still, Black Lady does an excellent job of making the villain’s plan come to fruition – so much so that if they’re going to stop her, it’s going to require the big guns. They’re just going to have to – STOP TIME.

I have to admit, re-reading this volume, I hadn’t realized how emotional Sailor Pluto gets in it. I’d gotten used to the concept of her as the cool, stoic warrior of time – which she clearly isn’t here. Lamenting her fate (she can’t leave the time gate, she can’t let people through the time gate, and she can’t stop time, all rules she breaks in this arc), we realize that her true desire has simply been to be able to fight with the rest of the senshi. This is why she has such a close bond with Chibi-Usa, who has similar feelings of loneliness. Of course, you don’t break the only three rules of your position without consequences, and Pluto’s are particularly heartbreaking, even if you do know how things end up in the S arc and beyond. That said, her sacrifice was definitely worth it, as they were able to get Chibi-Usa back, as well as give Sailor Moon the final bit of determination she needs to beat the bad guys (even if the “name of the moon” speech seems a little jarring after such a serious scene.

The rest of the volume is basically getting Usagi in place to defeat Death Phantom, then getting her back. (Which reminds me, there’s a very amusing scene towards the start of the book where Tuxedo Mask runs off to rescue Chibi-Usa, and a stressed Sailor Moon collapses. They decide to take her back to the 20th Century to recuperate… for about 10 minutes, then the Black Moon Family messes things up so they have to return again. Pacing can sometimes be a problem with Takeuchi.) Luckily, everything works out, and Sailor Moon is even able to briefly meet her future self (hey, they’ve already broken all the other laws of time). We also see the three abducted senshi reuniting with the human side characters who their chapters focused on, which was nice and sweet. (I can’t remember if we ever see them again, but that’s par for the course with minor Sailor Moon characters.)

This volume really doesn’t let up at all, being a breathless race to the climax from beginning to end. And while that may disappoint some fans of the anime (certainly the other four senshi really have very little to do here), it helps to convey the tension needed to support such scenes. And Chibi-Usa goes home to the future! … no, wait, she’s back immediately, as Neo-Queen Seremity apparently regards her past self as free babysitting. Oh well, it’s always nice to end an arc on a cute note. On to the third, and some might say best, arc.

Sometimes you get one of those series coming down the pike where you know, based on your own personal tastes, you’re going to both love it *and* hate it. I sort of felt that way when I heard about Flowers of Evil. It’s somewhat twisted, which appeals to me, and also has a very distinctive cover, which Vertical has adapted well from the original Japanese. On the other hand, it features that classic beloved-in-Japan but not-so-much-here “weak male lead”, which tends to frustrate me quite a bit more than it probably should. If I’m going to be identifying with characters in stories I read, I’d like them to be less aggravating, thanks. In addition, I’d read the author’s Drifting Net Cafe on JManga, and found it riveting yet thoroughly unpleasant.

(Note that the typeface for the cover title has changed between releasing the above picture to retailers and actually coming out – Vertical has a lot of last-minute changes to spruce up their covers, mostly for the better.)

After reading Flowers of Evil 1, I’m prepared to hang in there for the long haul. As with Drifting Net Cafe, riveting is the adjective I find myself using to describe it. The plot itself is not the most original – outcast girl blackmails weak male guy, who’s interested in pretty-yet-unapproachable other girl – but as ever, it’s not the plot that matters so much as what the author does with it. Takao is an *interesting* weak male lead. His obsession with Baudelaire – particularly Flowers of Evil, his collection of poetry from which this manga gets its title – is interesting, but mostly as he almost uses it as a psychological crutch. I read important books, he thinks, so I am better than the people around me. It’s the teen intellectual approach, and god knows I did it myself a bit when I was in high school.

Most of the characterization in this volume goes to Takao. The object of his affection, Nanako, gets a little bit of oblique development towards the end – I liked her discomfort as the other classmates were accusing Nakamura, and she and Takao do actually look like a nice couple. We’re still mostly seeing her through his eyes, though. As for Nakamura, the girl on the front cover… I still don’t quite know what to make of her. She seems to enjoy manipulating Takao for her own amusement, but is that all there is? In this case, the fact that we can’t see what she’s thinking is what drives us on. Is she simply bored with life? Does she have feelings for Takao (something he accuses her of towards the end, and which she very quickly rips apart)? Is she simply enjoying having power over someone, in the way that many teenagers find they love? Or is she trying to get Takao to mature, to develop into a stronger man?

I notice how much I wrote above about how teenagers think. This first volume deals with that subject a lot. What is considered to be perverse, what can you say or not say around your friends… how much you’re allowed to show how puberty is changing you. Takao is actually, compared to some of the freaks we’ve seen in other shonen manga, a rather mild case, but because this is a fairly realistic plotline, it hits closer to home. Likewise, Nakamura seems to have a few perversions of her own. (I like the flush she gets as she’s stripping him in the school library. That and the ending where she screams at him shows that she’s not controlling her emotions as well as we think.) The combination of nostalgia and discomfort drives Flowers of Evil, and it’s done well enough that I absolutely want to see what happens next. Even if I may squirm a bit.

That said, Midtown Comics is still getting a bunch of stuff in next week. Let’s go over it publisher by publisher.

Being around the Manga Bookshelf team has made me feel guilty that I tend to ignore manwha, so I’ll just note that the 11th volume of romantic fantasy Bride of the Water God is here. It runs in a magazine called Wink. Also, I hear there are gods.

Digital Manga Publishing has a bunch of new BL series, as well as some old favorites. Both Castle Mango and Samejima-kun & Sasahara-kun sound much sillier than the usual solicits I see, which pleases me. More silly BL, please! As for Starry Sky, it’s hard to find info on it except that I think it came from Comic B’s Log, so may not be true BL but BL-ish. It does seem to star a female. Lastly, we have new volumes of Private Teacher and The Tyrant Falls in Love, both of which tie for this week’s ‘sounds most like a USA Up All Night movie’ award.

Kodansha gives us Sailor Moon Vol. 5, which wraps up the ‘R’ arc, and features my all-time favorite Sailor Moon manga moment. We also get the 6th volume of the Emily Rodda series Deltora Quest, which Kodansha snapped up and turned into manga before, say, Yen Press could. :)

Seven Seas has the 4th volume of A Certain Scientific Railgun, which says right on the back that it’s beginning the long-awaited ‘Sisters’ arc, thus showing that any attempt to market this series to newbies has long since left town. Should be good, though. I quite enjoyed the last volume.

Lastly, Viz stuff is still trickling in, as we see Naruto 56 (huge good pile of ninjas battle the enemy’s huge evil pile of reanimated ninjas), and Inu Yasha VIZBIG Edition 11, which presumably has Vols. 31-33. It’s more than halfway there! And also features the undead, which is apparently Viz’s theme this week.

So what floats your boat?

Jerry Beck notes that it was originally part of the ‘Super Stars’ sets we’ve seen the last few years, which is why you don’t see any other one-shot mice here, just the ‘stars’. Of course, I put stars in air quotes for a reason. Sniffles and Hubie & Bertie are not exactly Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. The name that’s selling the discs here is Chuck Jones.

A list of the contents:

Naughty but Mice
Little Brother Rat
Sniffles and the Bookworm
Sniffles Takes a Trip
The Egg Collector
Bedtime for Sniffles
Sniffles Bells the Cat
Toy Trouble
The Brave Little Bat
The Unbearable Bear
Lost and Foundling
Hush my Mouse
The Aristo-Cat
Trap Happy Porky
Roughly Squeaking
House Hunting Mice
Mouse Wreckers
The Hypo-Chondri-Cat
Cheese Chasers

The first 12 cartoons on this set range from 1938 to 1946, and star Sniffles. Sniffles was named from his debut, Naughty but Mice, where he has a cold. Despite lacking the cold in his other cartoons, the name stuck. Most of the first 9 cartoons on here feature Chuck’s ponderous, slow, Disney-imitating style. Sniffles is cute rather than funny, and a lot of his more cloying cartoons can be very trying for the adult viewer – or indeed anyone over the age of two.

That said, there are some interesting cartoons here. Sniffles and the Bookworm is a ‘things come to life’ cartoon, albeit a more serious example of the form. The Brave Little Bat features Sniffles trying to deal with a loudmouth bat who absolutely won’t stop talking. And Sniffles’ final 3 cartoons, made in the mid-40s after a three year break, are much funnier and Chuck Jones-ish. Ironically, Sniffles undergoes a personality transplant in them, going from cute and adorable to being unable to shut up or go away – that’s right, exactly like the bat in his last cute cartoon.

The real treat here, even if it involves the most double dipping from prior Golden Collections, is the 2nd half of this set, featuring seven cartoons with Hubie & Bertie (from 1943-1951). These are Jones near the top of his game, and are some of my all-time favorites. They only have a cameo in Trap Happy Porky (one of Jones’ rare mid-40s Porky efforts), but the other 6 have them taking center stage. Hubie & Bertie get what they want, not by violence or cute mischief, but by psychological damage. Seeing them break the mind of Claude Cat is a thing of beauty.

As I noted above, there’s some double dipping here. Four of the seven Hubie & Bertie cartoons have been on prior Golden Collections – Trap Happy Porky, Roughly Squeaking, and House Hunting Mice are new to DVD. Sniffles fares better. Only Sniffles Takes A Trip has shown up (unrestored) on a prior collection. This means 14 cartoons here are new to DVD.

The reason I like this collection so much is because Jerry Beck had noted previously that Warner Brothers had asked them to focus their restoration only on cartoons made after 1953 (as they could be released widescreen). The cartoons on this collection feature precisely zero from that period, and 3 from the 1930s. Given my goal is every cartoon restored and on DVD, this is a big step in that direction. (I am presuming they will also be uncut – though there’s very little to object to here. Hubie & Bertie have some typical cartoon violence. I think Toy Trouble has a blackface gag.)

Buy Warner Brothers cartoon DVD/Blu-Ray sets and support restoration of even more classics! Sniffles will thank you. Probably in a cute, adorable way.

Latest Digital Update For The First-Half Of May Also Features The Launch Of HIGH SCHOOL DEBUT, MISTRESS FORTUNE, SEIHO BOYS HIGH SCHOOL And EXCEL SAGA

Manga publisher VIZ Media encourages fans across North America to visit VIZManga.com and the VIZ MANGA App for the Apple iPad®, iPhone® and iPod® touch every Monday throughout the first-half of May to take advantage of a special 40% off discount on select Volume 1 digital titles (Reg. MSRP: $4.99, Sale Price: $2.99). Five different opening volumes from various manga series will be offered each week, from the hit debuts of BLEACH and BAKUMAN｡, to the non-stop action of DRAGON BALL Z and psychological tension of DEATH NOTE, to the romance of BLACK BIRD and DENGEKI DAISY.

Discount Manga Titles for May 7th Include:

BAKUMAN｡ Vol. 1 · Rated ‘T’ for Teens
DEATH NOTE Vol. 1 · Rated ‘T+’ for Older Teens
DRAGON BALL Z Vol. 1 · Rated ‘A’ for All Ages
ROSARIO + VAMPIRE II Vol. 1 · Rated ‘T+’ for Older Teens
TORIKO Vol. 1 · Rated ‘T’ for Teens

Discount Manga Titles for May 14th Include:

ABSOLUTE BOYFRIEND Vol. 1 · Rated ‘T+’ for Older Teens
ARATA: THE LEGEND Vol. 1 · Rated ‘T’ for Teens
BLACK BIRD Vol. 1 · Rated ‘T+’ for Older Teens
DENGEKI DAISY Vol. 1 · Rated ‘T+’ for Older Teens
HYDE & CLOSER Vol. 1 · Rated ‘T+’ for Older Teens

VIZ Media also delivers a substantial digital manga update during the first-half of May with the announcement of the launch of 4 new series. The new series include the romantic shojo fun of MISTRESS FORTUNE, HIGH SCHOOL DEBUT, and SEIHO BOYS HIGH SCHOOL, as well as the zany sci-fi comedy action of EXCEL SAGA.

The VIZ MANGA APP is available for free through the iTunes Store and all manga volumes are generally available for purchase and download in the U.S. and Canada within the application for $4.99 (U.S. / CAN) per volume. More than 55 series and 500+ volumes are currently available for download.

MISTRESS FORTUNE · by Arina Tanemura · Rated ‘T’ for Teens ·
Available May 7th
Fourteen-year-old Kisaki Tachibana has psychic powers. She works for PSI, a secret government agency that fights aliens. She’s in love with her partner Giniro, but PSI won’t allow operatives to get involved. Just when Kisaki thinks she may be getting closer to Giniro, she finds out she’s going to be transferred to California!

HIGH SCHOOL DEBUT Vol. 1 · by Kazune Kawahara · Rated ‘T’ for Teens ·
Available May 14th
Hapless Haruna needs help finding a boyfriend! After failing to win the eye of any guy in high school, Haruna enlists the help of cute upperclassman Yoh to coach her on how to make herself more appealing to the male species. Yoh agrees, with one catch: Haruna had better not fall for him!

SEIHO BOYS HIGH SCHOOL Vol. 1 · by Kaeneyoshi Izumi ·
Rated ‘T+’ for Older Teens · Available May 14th
Remote, lonely and surrounded by the ocean – this isn’t Alcatraz we’re talking about – it’s Seiho Boys’ High School, where the student body is rife with sexually frustrated hunks! How can these young men get girlfriends when they’re stuck in the middle of nowhere? These are the stories of the students of Seiho High and the trouble they get into as they awkwardly pursue all girls who cross their paths.

EXCEL SAGA Vol. 1 · by Rikdo Koshi · Rated ‘T’ for Teens ·
Available May 14th
Question: What happens when you try to act like an anime character in real life? Answer: EXCEL SAGA. Two groups of neighbors in an apartment building lead secret lives. One thinks they’re trying to take over the city of Fukuoka. The other thinks they’re trying to defend it. Only their bosses, would-be conqueror Lord Il Palazzo and obsessed bureaucrat Dr. Kabapu, know the truth behind this increasingly dangerous private game. Too bad neither lets their underlings in on it!

VIZ Media’s multiple digital manga platforms allow for universal access to read manga from an iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and now, on VIZManga.com for desktop/laptop PC-enabled computers as well as Android-powered devices with built-in web browsers. The free VIZ Manga App is the top application for reading manga and features a rapidly growing library of the most popular manga series in the world. For more information, please visit VIZManga.com or www.VIZ.com/apps.

Sometimes you don’t need deep, significant plots. You don’t need characters that go on an incredibly journey that lets them grow up and learn about life. And you may not need 65 volumes to tell your story. Sometimes all you need to do is be interesting, to have an anecdote to tell and to enthrall the listener with that anecdote. And if it ends on a funny note, well, so much the better. The art of rakugo is beloved in Japan. It’s basically storytelling, but has an element of stand up comedy to it (while, of course, being nothing like stand up at all). The stories usually involve dialogues, all conveyed through changes in tone and pitch. And now we have legendary mangaka Yoshihiro Tatsumi giving us some rakugo in manga form.

There are eight stories here, all about 30-50 pages in length, and almost all being fairly comedic and lighthearted. Even the darkest of the bunch, which involves a down-on-his-luck man who befriends The Grim Reaper (seen on the cover here) is still fairly humorous until its dark conclusion. Since Tatsumi cannot aurally convey what the world of the Rakugo is like, he simply has to do it by drawing us into the stories. And it works beautifully, as I found it very hard to pull myself away, even when I was reading about yet another get-rich-quick scheme (a common theme of these stories is the lack of money).

While I said the stories weren’t stand-up, they are of course devoted to telling a funny story. I was reminded a bit of the longer and less humor-oriented parts of Henry Rollins’ old spoken word albums, where he described photo shoots in Australia and crappy jobs euthanizing animals. The other thing these stories reminded me of, especially since some of them *do* end with a punchline that makes you groan rather than laugh, is the shaggy dog story. Not in as much as you feel that you just wasted 15-20 minutes of your life (which is what the best shaggy dog stories offer to the listener), but that feeling that the journey was more important than the destination. In a story about a courtesan and her clients, all of whom sit alone and rail at the poor beleaguered assistant, the final joke is sort of a quick “the end’ gag. What’s fun is the entire story itself, watching these puffed-up and self-deluded middle-aged men ranting and raving because they aren’t getting any.

My favorite story, in terms of combining all the elements I mentioned above, was the third in the book, Escape of the Sparrows. Featuring a prologue that is seemingly irrelevant to the rest of the tale, this them spins off into another ‘deadbeat guest’ story, but becomes far more fantastical. As the pace quickens and the stakes increase, the story also takes on a fantasy element, and even manages to have some beauty. And then… there’s the last page, which features a horrible, horrible joke that wraps up everything the entire story did in a neat bow. You will groan, but feel like applauding.

Such is the nature of the craft of rakugo. Tatsumi says in his afterword that the performers would retire if they didn’t feel they could convey the different moods anymore. I don’t think Tatsumi has anything to worry about here, though. This is not only a great collection of humorous short stories, but a storybook, the kind that you feel like reading aloud to people after you’ve finished it. Perhaps someone will read these and become a rakugo (or its Western equivalent) of his own!

In fact, Midtown is so quiet I’m going to throw in some stuff not on their list. One came in via Diamond today, the other next week, and both are from Drawn & Quarterly. Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s Fallen Words is a new short story collection from the author of A Drifting Life, each story told in the oral tradition of rakugo. I got that one today, and it looks fantastic.

And next week we get a new Shigeru Mizuki title, NonNonBa, a memoir about his lifelong interest in yokai. Given we are apparently not getting Gegege no Kitaro over here anytime soon, this is the next best thing, and everyone who reads this blog should get a copy. (For those wondering, Midtown apparently gets their ‘indie publisher’ stuff from a non-Diamond source, meaning some D&Q titles take forever to get there.)

Dark Horse has two manga ouit, one new and one a re-release. The new is the 2nd volume of Yasuhiro Nightow’s Blood Blockade Battlefront, which brings a Jump Square mentality to his traditional Western-style gunplay heroics. Let’s hope Shieisha’s editors were better than Shonen Gahosha’s at making his art more coherent, especially in fight scenes.

Speaking of incoherence, Dark Horse is also releasing the FLCL series as one big omnibus. Originally an anime, it was adapted in Kodansha’s Magazine Z, which tended to be devoted to media properties. Tokyopop released it back in the day, but this should have a fresh new translation and color pages and other cool things. I wasn’t too impressed first time round, I seem to recall, but then I found the anime overrated as well. If you liked the anime, though, this should be right up your street.

Another ‘not from Midtown but from Diamond’ title, the fourth in Seven Seas’s A Certain New York Times Bestselling Railgun is coming out, and should be electrifying as usual. So to speak.

Lastly, a Viz title that for some reason didn’t come in with the pile this week. The Story of Saiunkoku is up to Vol. 7, and now that Shurei actually is a civil servant, she should finally be able to achieve her dream… once she stops being bullied damn near to death, of course. The series recently ended in Asuka at 9 volumes (though the light novels go on forever), so we’re in the home stretch. Court intrigue ahoy!

So what are you getting this week? (And yes, Sailor Moon will be out in bookstores a week before comic stores, as usual. I’ll plug it next week, no doubt.)

Volume 11 of this manga was fortuitously focused on Onizuka. I say fortuitously because when you’re reintroducing a series via a different publisher that didn’t sell well in the first place, it’s always best to drum up sales by featuring the one character people absolutely love. This next volume, however, reminds you that GTO: The Early Years didn’t just star Onizuka, but his best friend Ryuji Danma, and he gets most of the focus here.

This is not to say there isn’t also plenty of Onizuka. He gets most of the first half, actually, as we resolve the Joey storyline from the previous volume. As you might guess form a delinquent story set in Shonen Magazine, this is not done through graphic violence and killings, but via a motorcycle race. Joey is on one of the best bikes around, Onizuka is on a legendary old bike whose best days are behind it. Guess who wins. It’s notable that, while we all know Onizuka as a cool character who is constantly allowed to be a giant comedic goof, he also works well in the opposite direction: Onizuka is a goofy, horndog teen who can nevertheless back up his boasts with feats of utter badassery. And of course teaching valuable lessons, which he does with Joey here.

Meanwhile, Onizuka gets to cool moments, but Ryuji gets the emotional turmoil. (Not a surprise: Ryuji has always been vaguely more mature than his best friend. Note I said vaguely.) First of all, he’s dealing with his former teacher and first love appearing back in his life again, right when he’s trying to settle down with Nagisa. Secondly, there’s the ongoing issues with Joey, and his girlfriend being used as “bait” to draw out the two leaders. But both of these pale next to the end of his “castle” and idyllic trailer park life, as the cops arrive to destroy everything, and Nagisa’s parents arrive to take their runaway daughter back home. Ryuji, of course, is forbidden to see her.

There’s a lot of teen angst here, which I can’t help but see from a slightly older perspective. For all that Ryuji and Nagisa were living in their happy fantasy, a bus in the middle of a field, with no real prospects for the future is not something to cling to. I think Nagisa gets that more than the others. While Onizuka and Shinomi are wondering why they can’t be left alone, Nagisa’s the one noting that no matter where they run, adults (and by extension reality) will still exist. They can’t face life as a loving couple on teenage terms. Growing up has to be done. And for the moment, that means dealing with her being under house arrest and having to communicate via written messages.

There is still, lest this all sound like a bummer, plenty of humor – this is an Onizuka manga, after all. The catfight between Shinomi and Saya over Onizuka is ridiculous and hilarious, as is the chapter where Nagisa reveals she might be pregnant, and everyone goes completely out of control. (Spoiler: she isn’t.) Best of all, though, is Onizuka accidentally ending up in the middle of a yakuza job, and finding the horrifying things you would expect – all played for comedy, of course. All in all, the series continues to give us what Fujiwara does best: lots of fighting, lots of goofy faces, a few heartwarming/heartbreaking moments, and lots of a future Great Teacher.