Flipped!: David Welsh Surveys Entertaining College Comedies



By David P. Welsh

Del Rey has recently released the first volume of the eagerly anticipated Moyasimon: Tales of Agriculture, written and illustrated by Masayuki Ishikawa. It's set in an agricultural college in Tokyo, and its protagonist can communicate with bacteria, so essential to many agricultural processes, not to mention life in general. The series gets off to a promising start, blending low comedy and hard science in amusing ways. (Bacteria are also essential to digestion. Let's just leave it at that.) It feels too early in the semester to give Moyasimon a firm grade, but it has inspired me to take a quick run through the abundance of entertaining college comedy that's out there.

Genshiken, written and illustrated by Kio Shimoku, Del Rey: The cast members of this series constitute a club so geeky that they can't even settle on a single pop-culture niche on which to obsess. Their office is packed with manga, anime, games, and toys. Their individual levels of social dysfunction range from apologetic awkwardness to unflinching self-loathing. Fortunately, Shimoku treats them with warmth and specificity that spares the reader a by-the-numbers nerd parody. For me, the heart of the series rests with the unrequited love hardcore otaku Madarame harbors for Kasukabe, the pretty, normal girl who views the club with undisguised contempt but hangs around because her outwardly normal boyfriend is a member. Her prickly disdain for the club in general and Madarame in particular softens into something almost like affection, though the average reader will have reached that point well before her.

Honey and Clover, written and illustrated by Chica Umino, Viz: Unrequited love is central to Umino's shôjo look at art school. There's less romantic geometry here than arrows pointing from yearning hearts to people who either don't reciprocate or don't even recognize that they're adored. But Honey and Clover isn't all mooning; it's more a quirky, funny ensemble piece that does a fine job describing the anxieties of artists in training. These students struggle with inspiration (either its absence or excess), the deprivations of daily life (cheap food, crappy apartments, not enough money for beer), and decidedly uncertain prospects for employment after they graduate -- assuming they graduate at all. Of all the series on this list, I think Honey and Clover does the best job of evoking a specific kind of university experience, halfway between the relative cocoon of high school and the harsher realities of working life.

Ichigenme... The First Class Is Civil Law, written and illustrated by Fumi Yoshinaga, 801 Media: When Yoshinaga creates gay romance stories, there's usually a recognizable structure. In the first volume, she meticulously builds a relationship between her protagonists, exploring the interplay of their dispositions and backgrounds and bringing them together. In the second volume, the couple has lots and lots of sex. As a side note, one half of the couple usually likes to cook. This structure is in place in Ichigenme, but Yoshinaga's comics always have at least some level of idiosyncratic charm, and this is one of my favorite of her yaoi titles. Set in law school, it features hard-working Tamiya (he cooks), who's aghast at the laziness and entitlement of his privileged classmates. He's also shocked by his budding feelings for the laziest of the bunch, politician's son Tohdou (he eats). One of the great pleasures of Yoshinaga's yaoi work is the way she incorporates the real world into her romantic narratives. Class, career and essential questions of identity all play a role here, which makes the romance sweeter and smarter.

Nodame Cantabile, written and illustrated by Tomoko Ninomiya, Del Rey: For whatever reason, I've spent a lot of my adult life at least partly in the company of classical musicians. And you want to know something? A lot of them are just plain weird. (I know a bassoonist who insists he channels Courtney Love before each performance.) As a result, the decidedly idiosyncratic behavior of Ninomiya's characters seems less extreme to me than carefully chosen. Shinichi Chiaki yearns to study conducting in Europe, but he's terrified of plane travel. Megumi Noda plans to teach music, which is a slightly terrifying prospect given her rather limited life skills. The slovenly Noda dotes on the persnickety Chiaki, who softens towards his gifted, unpredictable classmate. Musicality isn't easy to convey in a comic, particularly orchestral music, but Ninomiya succeeds in communicating her cast's passion for music. The quirkiness threatens to overwhelm other elements at times, but it's a very likable romantic comedy on the whole, and the orchestral background is refreshingly different. Nodame Cantabile is one of those titles that's hugely popular in Japan but hasn't found a sizeable audience over here. I'd love it if more people gave it a try, as it really is charming.

Ohikkoshi, written and illustrated by Hiroaki Samura, Dark Horse: I've never quite understood why Ohikkoshi didn't garner more attention from fans of independent films. The titular novella in the collection is structured very much like an amiable art-house flick, with a group of near-college graduates spending a long night drinking, hanging out, and stumbling across funky misadventures. It's a change of pace for Samura, best known for his award-winning samurai epic, Blade of the Immortal, and it's distinct from the rest of the items on this list in that it's most focused on the end of college -- the last threshold between adolescence and adulthood. The cast's night of revelry is akin to a bachelor party, a celebration of a last night of freedom before the ball and chain is affixed. These students believe they have unfinished business that can only be accomplished in the relative freedom of school, and they don't want to miss the opportunity. They're sweet hipsters looking for that special memory that will help them through the slog that's to come.

Venus in Love, written and illustrated by Yuki Nakaji, CMX: This is certainly the most conventional romantic comedy of the lot. Suzuna is eager to start her college life, anticipating the thrilling possibilities of independence and the expanded social opportunities of a co-ed college after an all-girl high school. She settles into her apartment, makes a new friend, and sets her eye on handsome, athletic Fukumi. She soon finds that she has a rival for Fukumi's affections in the form of his best friend, a guy named Eichi. Since manga is the natural habitat of the friendly rival, it's not surprising that Suzuna and Eichi bond over their shared good taste in boys. It is surprising, and pleasantly so, that Nakaji eschews conventional love-triangle antics for a more sedate, slice-of-life approach. She establishes an easy chemistry among her four leads and allows them to bond interpersonally and as a group. Venus in Love isn't an especially ambitious work, but it's very sweet and likeable.

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David P. Welsh has loved comics since his parents first used Archie and Casper to sedate him during long trips in the family station wagon.

He's worked as a reporter and editor for daily and weekly newspapers, and later sold out for the glamorous world of public relations. Prior to relocating to The Comics Reporter, he wrote his Flipped column for Comic World News for just over three years. He's written articles on comics for print outlets and a variety of other web sites.

He lives in West Virginia, which he says has gotten a lot easier since the Starbucks and Barnes & Noble opened up.

You may e-mail David with questions or commentary You can write to this site about David's columns

Please bookmark his site, Precocious Curmudgeon.

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