Behind the premise of High School Girls, Volume 9 runs a strong feeling of nostalgia for the bygone days of youth. “Time Stopped at Age Seventeen” screams one header prominently, which immediately causes me to cringe with a feeling of horror crawling up my spine. It wasn’t that my high school years were bad – far from it, I had a great time. However, there is NOTHING that would ever be incentive enough for me to want to have that time extended by a single second. lol

Not so for Eriko or the other girls in the Idiot group, each one of which is determined to wring as much fun from the rag of life as they can. And I approve. What the hell good is being 17 if you’re not going off and doing incredibly dumb things that must be fun because everyone tells you so? Heck, what’s the good of life at all if you’re not having fun doing dumb things? When was the last time you did something fun and dumb?

Anyway, the trip to Okinawa draws to a close and everyone on the trip is as annoying as possible, as all high school students are on trips. (Flashback to Virgina Beach, 1982. Oh. Gawd.)

And in the middle of the crazy fun dumb annoying things, we learn the deep dark secret of the Takarazuka couple…which turns out to neither be all that dark nor deep nor really even important. But it does short of shape their relationship…which is no less Yuri because of it. If anything, I’m now inclined to think that they are lovers, and are just hiding it behind a clever mask of obviousness. Why not – they are only fictitious characters and I can pretty much think anything I want about them. ^_^

So, while this series is actually meant for adults males to look back fondly on the dreams they have of a girl’s school and have those dreams crushed cruelly, as an adult woman who does not like to think about high school except when it can’t be avoided, it was all still pretty funny. With a little Yuri on the side. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7 I liked the tour guide and her hostility
Characters – 7 Did I mention I liked the tour guide?
Yuri – 5 Just because they’re obvious doesn’t meant they aren’t together
Sevice – 6 Tempered by all sorts of brutally blatant “womens’ issues”

Overall – 7

I have to mention the quality of the reproduction. It is so far improved from the early volumes that it’s almost like a completely different company is doing it. Dr Master has really shown incredible improvement over the early days. No question, this reproduction is tight.

4-koma comics, the Japanese analogy to the western comic strip, tend to follow a pattern. Like comic strips, they focus on talking heads, doing rather formulaic things. Think of any mainstream comic strip or even popular webcomics, and you can see the pattern pretty quickly. The most common formula is two to four people, conversations about topical or typical situations, with a punchline that relies on irony, wordplay or a twist of meaning. 4-koma are similar, although they rely a little bit more on the vaudevillian formulas of Manzai comedy. This makes them a little repetitive over time. Crazy cosplay-obsessed teacher will always be crazy and cosplay-obsessed. Wacky offbeat girl who is always hungry will be wackily offbeat – and hungry. The ambiguously gay couple will always be ambiguously gay and average girl will always “try her best.”

Which brings us to Sunshine Sketch, Volume 3 in which all of the above is what it is. No new ground is covered. Instead of plot complications, we get characters added to the cast. In this book, Yuno’s parents arrive. They seem pretty normalish, which makes sense because Yuno is pretty normalish. Everyone else remains the same, the gags become well-worn, comfortable in-jokes that we can all smile and share in, because we are all in the in-crowd here. When new characters move off, we introduce *props*. The highlights of the end of volume three is the addition of a cat, a bicycle and a Polaroid camera.

Sunshine Sketch isn’t a story, really. It’s a series of the same 12 or so gags, recycled over and over again. It would be well-suited to a webcomic, in fact. But new territory isn’t what we’re looking for with this manga. We’re just killing some time in the company of a few of the residents of the Hidamari Apartments. That’s all we want – and that’s all we get. But that’s just fine by us. ^_^

Sae and Hiro are ambiguously Yuri. I think Hiro would be fine with them as a couple. Sae is your basic clueless butchy character. Remember, in Yuri (as so often in real life) butch=uke, not seme. It’s up to Hiro to do something. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 7
Yuri – 3
Service – 2

Overall – 7

Another amusing 4-koma comic strip that makes pleasant reading, but leaves no lingering flavor. Which is exactly what I said about it last time, but I might as well have a formulaic review template for formulaic books. :-)

Thanks to Okazu Hero Amanda M for sponsoring today’s review!

Lapan is the worst Shinigami ever. He’s a slacker, a layabout and a perv. Alice was the most beautiful and popular girl in her elite girls’ school, but since Lapan arrived, poor Alice is forced to watch as day after day Lapan abuses her own body after accidentally being incarnated in it, leaving her stuck as an animated skeleton. To make things worse, another Shinigami, Ume, is spending his days trying to seduce Lapan, while trying to get rid of Alice behind Lappan’s back.

And that is not all that Alice has to deal with in Volume 2 of Alice on Deadlines. She learns a bit about Lapan’s and Ume’s past, takes on an underwear-stealing Shibito and is captured by Mad-sama, the crazy lord of Shibito, who takes a liking to her new skeletal form. On top of all that, she may be falling for Lapan…which is to say that she’s kind of falling for herself.

Yuri in Volume 2 is Ume’s attempts to gain access to Lapan’s body, Lapan cultivating Alice’s hordes of admirers for more “personal: relationships and, I guess, Alice falling for Lapan/herself. So, if a boy pretending to be a girl and a girl vying for the attention of a guy in a girl’s body = Yuri to you, go to town.

There’s lots of wackiness and screaming and scythe-slinging and internal politics among the Shinigami, since the Japanese tend to think of the gods of death as working for a beauracratic organization.

And, uh…that’s about all there is to say about this volume.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 3
Characters – 4
Yuri – 4
Service – 7

Overall – 4

Okazu Superhero Daniel P superheroically sponsored today’s review! Thanks from all of us. ^_^