Just A...Quick Lick?

 

Saya Namekawa, bullied by some of the other girls in her middle school, has resolved over the summer to become a badass delinquent that nobody will mess with.  Resolved to, sure, but she still hasn't quite gotten the hang of it.  Sure, she does talk in a 4Kids-dubbed Joey Wheeler tough guy accent (no doubt a speech pattern hard-translated from the Japanese), but she's always trying (and failing) to act like a delinquent to get people's attention, however positive or negative that may be.

 

Whatever side of the spectrum it falls on, this new persona puts her at odds with the serious-minded class rep Tojo.  Funnily enough, however, Tojo not-so-subtly hides a distinctly perverted side that seems to only come out around Namekawa.

 

This leads to our heroine ending nearly every short chapter being comically molested and licked all over by Tojo, one way or another.  (All kept PG-13, for better or for worse.  Not even any undie-flashes or shirt-lifting!  But at least the vagueness is there, so us pervs can theoretically imagine anything we like.)

 

The series is basically a very readable fusion of the Japanese-style humor that I have mentioned once or twice already on this blog, as well as tasteful ecchi.  There’s almost no story; it’s a gag manga.  I will say that would probably work against it for any serious readers hoping to get invested.

 

Another interesting thing about Namekawa-san Won’t Take A Licking is that our two protagonists’ antics also seem to awaken lesbianism in many passersby who happen to witness them together, most notably a pair of visiting underclassmen girls and Namekawa’s other friend, the pet-keeper Inukai, who quickly gains a desire to add Namekawa to her collection.

 

That is, cage her up, teach her tricks and order her around.

 

So there's likely going to be escalating levels of both silliness and perviness.  Fingers crossed.

 

Don't Let The Name Fool You

 

 

Yes, dear readers, Shuzo Oshimi, the master of pervy, adolescent hormone-addled psychological horror, the man behind Flowers of Evil, Inside Mari and Happiness (the vampire manga) is at it again.

 

(Though, thankfully, this time, despite its title, he has not yet gone and warped Alice In Wonderland...yet...)

 

Long story short, the bespectacled Yo is crushing on Yui.  Also in the mix is popular boy Kei.  Given that this is an Oshimi manga, it should come as a surprise to no one that Kei teaches Yo how to masturbate (albeit thankfully not in graphic, depicted detail).  Yo later witnesses Yui confessing her love to Kei, as well as a kiss.  This triggers one of the few lust-induced nosebleeds I’ve seen in a manga that was not played for comedy.  Then Kei suddenly moves away to Hokkaido soon after, without any warning.  Years later, our protagonists are now in high school, although Yo and Yui’s relationship has become strained.  He still wants to date her, though.  On the day of first entry, a new girl appears in class who uses male honorifics and talks crudely, who hits on Yo.  It is then revealed that this new girl is their old friend Kei, returned to their hometown apparently “done with being a guy”.  There is also a scene where Kei kisses Yo in the (male) bathroom and Yo runs away.

 

The flirtatious Kei invites Yo over to her house (where she lives alone) in order to help her unpack.  Yui is also invited to this little “reunion party”, though she does openly lament the loss of the male Kei that she kissed those few years ago.  This does not turn out to be a deterrent to Kei kissing her again.  Yo promptly breaks it up and Yui runs off after Kei now turns her attention to Yo and kisses him.  The volume ends with Yo running out of the house after Yui.

 

Well, technically that’s a lie: the story of the volume ends there, but we are also treated to a brief autobiographical omake, wherein Oshimi tells us the story of his own sexual awakening and his own concepts of manliness and what it means to be a man.

 

I will admit, I had initially only picked up the title because not only were there slim pickings on my local B&N shelves, but also because it had "Alice" in the title.  (My own hang-ups and masochistic self-sabotage after the Tim Burton live-action disaster being a subject for another time.) 

I have said before that I support the rights of everyone to find love and to be who they are, and I stand by that.  And at least this is a relatively-positive (by some definition of the word) exposure of the transgender/agender/genderfluid/something-or-other experience and lifestyle.

(Actually, as of Vol. 1, Kei only says that he is "done being a guy, but is not necessarily interested in being a girl", whatever the glittery hell that means.  But I support his decisions and his rights to be so; but I just hope that it doesn't all come to a too-horrific end for any of them.)

Wish It Was Invisible

 

If you’re like me, then you use a Samsung Android phone.  And that means that your Google page when you first go on the internet immediately bombards you with ads or with the news of the day.  For a short while, back in the early months of 2022, the top article on my home page was always an invitation from Shonen Jump to look at a free preview of their apparent “new hit” Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible.

 

I did read this first preview chapter, and found it to be nothing worth writing home about.  But then I saw the first physical copies of Volume One available at my local Barnes and Noble, so I figured I would take a look.

 

Sadly, my opinion did not change.

 

Long story short, Junta Shiraishi is basically invisible to everyone at his school.  Other students sit on him and he must work hard to make sure that the teacher (who oddly resembles Ochanomizu from Astro Boy) does not mark him absent by mistake.  The only one who ever seems to notice him is classmate Nagisa Kubo (for plot reasons).

 

The series itself has very average artwork and mild amounts of comedy, but is also deadly boring.  Funnily enough, the first volume includes a translated version of the original pilot chapter that was submitted to Shonen Jump in the first place, and it somehow feels worlds better than the actual finished product that we wound up getting.

 

One small thing that seperates Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible from something like Teasing Master Takagi-san or Komi Can’t Communicate or something like that is that not only does Shiraishi have a baby brother named Seita, but Kubo also has an older sister named Akina.

 

And that’s it.

 

Finally, I should say that even the title of the work seems a bit misleading.  As I see it, the title seems to be saying (or at least implying) that Shiraishi actively wants to remain invisible, but the troublesome Kubo just will not leave him in peace.  She will not allow him to just sit there stewing and wasting his life away.  (This is clearly not the case; Nagisa is a funny-ish character who’s trying to break Shiraishi out of his shell, but there’s nowhere near as much drama as my first interpretation of the title would have led me to believe.)

 

My advice to you, dear readers, is to pretend that this series is invisible.