Category Archives: reviews

Ao-chan Can’t Study!, Vols. 1-2

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By Ren Kawahara. Released in Japan as “Midara na Ao-chan wa Benkyou ga Dekinai” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Shonen Magazine Edge. Released in North America digitally by Kodansha Comics. Translated by Erin Proctor.

Sometimes when reading manga you are looking for a well-characterized, touching work that will heal your heart and make you think. And sometimes you’re looking for silly sex jokes. If it’s the latter you’re after, I am pleased to say that Ao-chan Can’t Study! is here for you. It’s about as subtle as a brick to the head, but why would you want to be subtle in a case like this? It’s a sex comedy. With the emphasis on the comedy, I hasten to add – there’s tons of sex talk, but don’t expect any forward progress, at least not at the start of the series. It sort of feels like Seitokai Yakuindomo to a degree (and I could write an entire POST about why Kodansha Comics never licensed that, complete with them indirectly dissing it when they picked up Aho-Girl). Despite all that, though, things still remain on the innocent side here, adn the kids read like normal romance comedy heroes and heroines and not perverts. Well, mostly.

Ao-chan has had difficulties with her childhood almost from the start, when she introduced herself to the elementary school class as Ao, “A as in apple and O as in orgy”. We find out why fairly quickly – her father is a famous author of erotic novels, and also the equivalent of Happosai from Ranma 1/2 (he even looks like him), and despite her best efforts, Ao is now in high school and has a mind that quickly turns filthy at the slightest provocation. Not that she has any experience or anything, but just being around her father has sort of led her to be a pervert by osmosis. She tries to repress this by being a stoic ice queen, with perfect grades and no interest in men. Sadly, she has piqued the interest of Takumi, the class’ resident hot guy, who doesn’t study very well but finds Ao interesting. She attempts to drive him off, but her dad has decided now is the time to get his daughter laid. What’s more, Takumi’s feelings appear to be genuine. And worst of all, there’s a rumor going around that he is… well, larger than average.

Shonen Magazine Edge tends to push boundaries a bit, and despite being clean at heart, so does this title. There’s Lots of discussion of penis size and how it can actually hurt for a woman when a guy’s too big. In the second volume, when the class goes to summer camp, Ao somehow gets it into her head that she’s going to be invited to a “fuck party”. As I said, things you wouldn’t normally see in Fairy Tail (UQ Holder, maybe), and you can see why it’s a digital-only series. The reason it avoids being pure skeeze is Ao, who is pretty innocent – she has no idea what a dick really looks like, and most everything that she gets in her head is either exaggerated or wrong. Plus she’s falling for Takumi too, and has no idea how to deal with her feelings – and her libido. Add in a rival or two, and you’ve got a fun if ecchi comedy, recommended for those who don’t mind that sort of thing.

I Want to Eat Your Pancreas

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By Yoru Sumino. Released in Japan as “Kimi no Suizō o Tabetai” by Futabasha. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Nathan Collins.

The book spoils you on page 1, so allow me to do the same: the heroine does not survive the book. That is in fact, the point of the book, which is a novel rather than a light novel, and has its feet planted firmly on the ground. Despite the title, this is not about zombies or anything like that. Sakura, the heroine, has something wrong with her pancreas, to the point that she has a year to live at most. Our hero, whose name remains deliberately obscured for most of the book, accidentally finds out about this (they’re classmates, but she’s only told her family and is hiding it from everyone else) and the bulk of the book is the two of them gradually getting closer and hanging out. They’re not quite falling in love (I suspect were it not for her illness they’d get together much faster, even with the hero’s personality issues), but most of the prose till near the end consists of either school or “dates”.

The handling of the hero’s name is quite interesting, if a bit aggravating at first. He’s defined by how others think of him – for most of the first half Sakura (who he also avoids naming, so her name also rarely comes up) refers to him as “Classmate I Get Along With-kun”. but this changes depending on circumstances, and other people like classmates also address him this way. It ties into the book that Sakura is writing, called Living with Dying, and while the text of this novel isn’t that book, it does sort of follows the rules of said book, which also avoids using him name. Speaking of the hero, he is a loner and something of an outcast – always reading, self-proclaimed with no friends, but very perceptive in a negative sort of way. Of course, he’s not as perceptive when it comes to emotions, and one of the highlights of the book is a fight that he and Sakura have over a misunderstanding.

Again, I will try not to spoil too much, but there is a definite sense that the book is going to end the way you’d expect (I mean, it begins with her funeral, which our hero does not attend), but the book has a few surprises in its last quarter or so. The surprise might upset a few readers – it’s foreshadowed, but not by much. That said, it’s mentioned that “real life doesn’t work like an novel”, and you get the feeling that the way things played out was the author’s way of avoiding things simply being too predictable. I also felt the epilogue, which jumps forward in time and avoids showing us two characters’ growth more than I like, was a bit abrupt, but that’s likely because the payoff of everything right after Sakura’s death was the best part of the book, and very emotionally raw.

This is not, for most of the time, a depressing tragedy of a book. I tweeted that it felt like a darker Teasing Master Takagi-san, and given that Sakura spends most of the time imposing demands on our nameless hero’s time, there’s a lot of Haruhi Suzumiya here as well. It’s a touching story of two people who have a deep and affecting impact on each other’s lives over the course of only a few months. I really, really enjoyed it.

Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?, Vol. 1

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By Dachima Inaka and Iida Pochi. Released in Japan as “Tsujo Kogeki ga Zentai Kogeki de Ni-kai Kogeki no Okasan wa Suki desu ka?” by Fujimi Shobo. Released in North America digitally by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham.

This book is straight up ridiculous. I realize that may be the most obvious thing to say, but I want to say it up front because I went into it thinking that the ridiculous content would take a back seat to sketchy mom-son sex humor. And there is a bit of that, but mostly the comedy is first and foremost the important thing here. This series is not trying to titillate its reader, it’s going for fun. And it pretty much succeeds. We get a lot of amusing riffs on the standard “adventure game” tropes, the characters are all obvious cliches but fairly likeable. Best of all, despite the occasional lewd joke or ogling, there’s absolutely no sense that Mamako (yes, really, that’s her name) and Masato view themselves as anything other than mother and son. This allows the reader to relax and focus on what’s important: Mamako is hilarious.

Masato is our hero, a 15-year-old boy who is dealing with a mom who a) looks about seventeen and is gorgeous; and b) doesn’t seem to realize that he’s not six years old anymore, so is overly doting and smothering. One day he comes home to find a government worker there who tells him that he has been chosen to play in an ‘MMMMMORPG’. He’s not sure why there are so many M’s, but he agrees… and finds himself in a virtual game world. He’s a hero! He gets an awesome sword! He has party members who are an adorable and trusting 12-year-old girl and a tsundere but clearly future love interest mage! There’s just one problem. His mother has come along with him into the game. And she has TWO swords (the two he didn’t pick when given a choice) that do so much damage that he never has a chance to shine. She may not know anything about adventure games, but she certainly knows how to make him feel awkward and embarrassed.

As you can see, we’re not going for subtle here. In fact, the overtness is part of the point – the series works better for it. The game that Masato and company are in is a beta release, and they’re meant to be testing it. This leads to many of the NPCs simply reciting the guidebook, or speaking in actual gamer talk rather than having it filtered through a fantasy world. Wise, the tsundere girl (she spends most of the book in a state of fury, but there are good reasons for it) is amusing, and you get the feeling she’d be nice if she ever calmed down. Porta, the girl, is a parody of the ‘little girl party member’, and this about as deep as a small puddle, but her pureness is almost endearing. As for Masato and Mamako, they start off exaggerated types, and by the end are slightly less so. Believe it or not, there is a bit of plot and character development in this, and by the end of the book Masato has learned not to take his mother’s actions as a personal attack, and Mamako has (possibly) learned to allow her boy to grow up. (I say possibly as, well, there’s more books in the series, and the premise is that Mama is more powerful and steals the spotlight.)

I also need to mention the main reason to read this series, which is Ms. Shirase, the government agent who starts this entire mess. She is amazingly funny in a deadpan sort of way, and I was delighted at her appearances throughout, as well as her constant fourth-wall breaking. I really hope we get more of her. The series reminds me a lot of KonoSuba in terms of its style and laughs, and I think fans will enjoy it. Yes, there’s some incest parody – that’s the premise! – but I feel safe that it won’t go anywhere and isn’t serious. Recommended for fans of comedies and mothers.