Hareluya II: Boy

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Meet the “Invincible man” Hibino Hareluya, a narcissistic delinquent with a strong belief in friendship and loyalty. He enjoys referring himself as “Oresama” which is the most arrogant way of referring to yourself in Japanese. Along with his weighty ego comes his special talent, concealing metal bats and saucers in the back of his shirt for later use. It’s much more useful than it sounds. No ego would be complete without a grand goal, his being world domination. Of course the correct way to complete this objective is to beat up local gangs.

There are quite a few other support characters.

Okamoto: The short and weakest support ... character. Strong willed, though get’s his ass kicked pretty much every time.
Ichijou: The second strongest character. He has a very strong sense of morality and manliness.
Yamana: The love interest of Okamoto. Yeah, I never expected that.

The characters are a little flat at times, each with their own development happening on specific arks. This doesn't effect the manga much. The story is more about the fights, the sense of friendship and loyalty then the growth of it’s characters. Not that it’s a hindrance when it does happen.

The story isn’t special in itself. It’s pretty straight forward. Beat up one group of baddies, onto the next. The plot starts out fairly lighthearted, slowly getting more serious and includes some sensitive subjects. Especially near the end of the series.

In conclusion, this manga is fun. It forces you to cycle between emotions pretty quickly. It usually does it tastefully, you do end up stewing in one emotion before being led into another. If you like fighting manga with an emphasis on friendship this is a must read.

STORY - 7.0
The story mainly has this pattern: we are introduced to someone with a problem, the secondary characters try and intervene and get their asses kicked, then hibino gets in the middle of it and destroys all of the enemies with nothing but his fists and an arsenal of weapons that he pulls out from under his shirt (comically referenced as doraemon) and defeats all the bad guys singlehandedly and easily.

THE GOOD: Lots of back and forth in every story arc. Lots of story arcs with bad guys ranging from spoiled rich kids to biker gangs fighting over territory. One ... sided domination as soon as the main character Hibino gets involved in the fight. The back stories of each of the protagonists is explored with every arc as well, so the arcs aren't completely self contained.

THE BAD: The story doesn't really go anywhere, and if it does, it takes WAY too long to do it. Hibino announces his goal as world domination, but all he seems to do all day long is brawl with the local gangs trying to help his troubled friends. After about chapter 100 you start to see the problems. The villains stop getting stronger and the stories seem to repeat themselves. It bugged me when we went from fighting a massive citywide biker gang bent on conquering all of japan to a high school bully trying to steal a jacket. Also the formula for the show never changes.

I also really hate the character development. We hear stories about their friends in the past and some connection they had which is now coming back to haunt them, but these character developments are badly written. Let me explain it this way, In One Piece, we see Nami early extremely hesitant about joining the crew, and we wonder why. Her character development was thus made more entertaining because it was answering a question we wanted an answer too. In Hareluya II Boy however, a random character comes out of the woodworks, tells some random story about how he/she used to be friends with one of our protagonists and how they are in trouble now. The story basically asked and answered the questions. There was absolutely no mystery involved.

Characters 8.5:
It's fun watching the dominant hibino making fools out of 100 man biker gangs and he has a very entertaining personality in that manner. We also have a rocker who is pretty cool and seems like a good character and is very good at brawling.

The other characters are pretty much hit and miss filler characters. We have a midget art student who is always getting picked on. A hot chick who is dating the midget, the two of them together actually makes the story much more goody goody than it has to be. Always giving a goody goody speech about immorality...

Around chapter 100 they brought in a really old artist. He seems like a completely pointless addition to the cast which makes no sense at all.

Enjoyment 8:
The first 100 chapters or so are really entertaining even if some of the characters piss you off and the story arcs seem really shallow, its really fun watching hibino kick everyone's ass. After that it just gets stale and repetitive because it becomes obvious how shallow the story arcs are.

MY SUGGESTION:
Read it, its a good fun story, and will keep you entertained. The stories are shallow, but you don't really notice it until about 100 chapters in, so my suggestion is read until you get bored. It starts out pretty well and if it was just the first 100 chapters I would score it a 9.

I was gobally pleased by the reading of this manga BUT this mangaka have a things with girl getting r@ped. Every woman character is r@ped or almost and it's doesnt feel necessary for the story. For the reste it's pleasant to see some guys like okamoto be weak at fighting but heartful and stuborn.

In order to complete the lenght of a review i will put wikipedia info on this manga :Hareluya II Boy (stylized as HARELUYA II BØY), also known simply as Bøy, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Haruto Umezawa. It is a sequel to Umezawa's Hareluya, serialized in Shueisha's shōnen ... manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump in 1992. Hareluya II Boy was serialized in the same magazine from November 1992 to February 1999, with its chapters collected in 33 tankōbon volumes. A 25-episode anime television series adaptation by Triangle Staff was broadcast on TV Tokyo from April to September 1997. The anime series has been licensed by Sentai Filmworks.