Making somebody laugh every once in a while is not, by itself, a huge achievement. Whenever I'm casually talking to somebody, even if it's a person I've just met, I'm often cracking jokes or making witty remarks—and much of the time they land. Let's say one in three or four does. That's decent for an average person in a social situation but not remotely enough for a successful stand-up act. The goal there is making unfamiliar people who aren't predisposed to liking you consistently laugh at a majority of your jokes. This requires a talent for storytelling, some degree of acting ability and enunciation, and
...
a commanding presence that sweeps the audience in the comedian's flow. I have a lot of respect for good stand-up. It's hard, and most people will never be able to acquire all the necessary skills to make it their career even if they try.
This translates to manga as well. Just pasting the text of a joke into a speech bubble, even if it's well-written, won't cut it. The joke needs to be connected to the character(s) telling it, placed into the right context, with artwork that complements it well, and ideally it should feed directly into a different joke or a visual gag to create a comedic continuity. The best comedy manga out there do this so well they can string together multiple pay-offs from a single setup, to the point where jokes pretty much write themselves in the reader's mind with the writer only needing to give it a small nudge: Grand Blue, Gintama, Kaguya-sama, Witch Watch, The Lives of High-School Boys, Detroit Metal City, Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, Dungeon Meshi, Hinamatsuri, Nan Hao and Shang Feng, Cromartie High School...
...Hmm, what is it? Huh? You're saying this was supposed to be a Show-ha Shoten review? Oh... Well, unlike those works listed above, Show-ha Shoten kinda sucks at comedy. Badum-tss!
To illustrate what makes it suck, re-read the previous three paragraphs as if they were an in-universe joke performed and narrated by characters in this manga—because that's exactly what its jokes look like. It would spend some time diligently explaining how to perform comedy and how to find the right psychological approach to the audience to make them laugh—and then it would proceed with some of the most tired, flaccid, predictable punchlines imaginable. As if the actual joke is in how flat the writing is. Watching the characters cracking up at something so profoundly unfunny feels surreal, borderline mentally uncomfortable. At some point you start wondering whether the characters are okay, and then whether *you* are okay for not buying into the humor to such an extent. Not exactly something I want to think about reading a comedy manga.
The reason why it hurts storytelling so particularly badly in this case is that convincing the reader the joke was great if they didn't laugh at it is impossible. If it were a more physical subject, like sports or some kind of a military setting, the artwork could've carried the narrative to an extent, presenting something as an extraordinary feat, and the reader would suspend their disbelief to accept it as true because that's how it was made to appear from their point of view. But when the reader deals with something that can be directly gauged with their own cognitive ability or applied to their own perception and experience, convincing them of feats that aren't there just isn't going to happen. And given that Show-ha Shoten's story is a bog-standard competitive shonen formula based around the characters moving up in the world of comedy, it will be something that will always remain in the spotlight with all of its strength and weaknesses.
Speaking of the strengths, it may occasionally be clever to an extent (or at least be presented as such), but the one time it made me laugh in the entire first volume of the story was when it didn't actually try to be funny on purpose. All the other times I had to be *told* that the characters were doing great rather than it being, you know, self-evident from me having a good time following them. If I'm laughing at something, I can already tell; thank you very much. Acting out of character, saying non-sequitur lines, or being silly for the sake of being silly does not, by itself, make for a good comedy. But, to be fair, the bit at the High School Comedy Battle did make me smile because the physical comedy there was at least *conceptualized* well, something to thank the artist for. With all the varied facial expressions and such, I could imagine it being a hoot if it were a real performance (or at least a well-made anime rendition). But I still needed to mentally fill in the gaps left open by writing. And that's all the praise I can give to about 200 pages worth of content released so far.
Kind of a shame for a comedy series, isn't it. It could've been so much better if the jokes were well-written. Well... at least Takeshi Obata's art is still good. That's what you came here for anyway, isn't it?
 Alternative TitlesJapanese: ショーハショーテン! More titlesInformationType: Manga
Volumes: Unknown
Chapters: Unknown
Status: Publishing
Published: Oct 4, 2021 to ?
Genre:
Comedy
Demographic:
Shounen
Serialization:
Jump SQ. Statistics Ranked: #45332 2 based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded. Popularity: #4271
Members: 4,803
Favorites: 33 Available AtResources | Reviews
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Jan 7, 2022 Mixed Feelings Well-written  Preliminary
(Unknown/? chp)
Making somebody laugh every once in a while is not, by itself, a huge achievement. Whenever I'm casually talking to somebody, even if it's a person I've just met, I'm often cracking jokes or making witty remarks—and much of the time they land. Let's say one in three or four does. That's decent for an average person in a social situation but not remotely enough for a successful stand-up act. The goal there is making unfamiliar people who aren't predisposed to liking you consistently laugh at a majority of your jokes. This requires a talent for storytelling, some degree of acting ability and enunciation, and
...
Nov 5, 2023
Show-Ha Shoten! Is made by the same creators of Death Note & Bakuman, Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, and it really shows! Classic shonen setups akin to Bakuman, where a talented duo put everything into their passion and get better and better while making new rivals and friends.
However, since their passion is comedy it becomes very difficult to show how skilled they actually are without having the characters in the manga bust out laughing while I read with a blank face. They describe all of the techniques that are truly implemented into a good joke and the pros and cons of following up a ... 
Oct 27, 2022
I have mixed feelings about this manga but I'll start by saying that there's actually a few things I find interesting: the art is great and Takeshi Obata never disappoints. Having drawn manga from all sorts of genres, this man always finds a way to make things interesting, even if the narrative doesn't exactly complement it. I also enjoy the manga's way of trying to "explain" comedy. It might feel forced at times that the author feels the need to explain comedy to the readers, but there are actually some very interesting topics surrounding not just stand-up but comedy in general, like the normal flow
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