Ranked #1037

Wa! (Manga)

I got really confused when I started reading this. It was recommended to me by way of another manga I enjoy so I gave it a try. Wa! is essentially many short strips with punchline gags. About 7 or 8 characters in school make pop culture references and spin them into jokes. Think Zetsubou Sensei, Seitokai Yukuidomo, or Lucky Star. A real problem with Wa! is that it starts off poorly. The concepts and writing style aren’t defined… like, at all. So the reader has trouble deciding what it’s supposed to be.

However, once you get a feel for it, it actually begins to grow on you. Now that I’m 8 chapters in, I’m assured of laughing every time I get a new one. All of the characters are clichéd, but that was the intent. Much like Zetsubou, the mangaka overly emphasizes their usually overdone characteristics until you can’t help but be amused and remember why those archtypes were so popular in the first place. To top it off, the art is actually very good. It’s just hard to realize at first because it’s not there all the time. Even good drawing is used as an effect and even sometimes as a pun itself. It’s brilliant when you realize it, but it’s too subtle to understand in the first two chapters, which may or may not be a good thing.

I recommend this manga, but it’s early. Perhaps I’ll revisit a review when it gets to 20-25 chapters.
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