Junjou Karen na Oretachi da!

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After watching and reading all of the popular volleyball anime & manga Haikyuu!!, I decided to delve deeper into the forgotten volleyball mangas of the world, one of these being Junjou Karen na Oretachi Da!, a three-volume manga about a self-centered setter named Akira who gets kicked off his team and is left on his own to find a new team that will accept him.

Story: 7/10 - good

I wasn't quite sure about the story at first, it seemed very similar to the backstory of Haikyuu!!'s Kageyama: self-centered genius setter whose teammates eventually get fed up with and leave behind, who then finds a short but ... high-jumping spiker and they learn to work together. The story seemed a bit rushed at times, with not much development or world-building done, but I liked the basic plot of an underdog team working hard to rise to the top. Simple inspiring stories like that can never really get old.

Art: 7/10 - good

Honestly, I wasn't quite sure about the art for this manga, even after finishing volume one. The main team, Johnan, was drawn pretty well and they looked like realistic (and very fit) high school boys, but the Seiryoh team (the main opponents) looked like full-grown men who were also bodybuilders or something. No high schooler has a back that broad, okay? That aspect of the drawings made it a little hard for me to take the manga completely seriously at first. The art style looks like a generic sports shounen manga, with plenty of dramatic moments, flying sweat, and a lifetime supply of action lines, but each character looks unique and their appearance matches their personality, which, as someone very interested in character design, is a great thing for the mangaka to have been able to do. Overall, I think the art was nothing special, but it was great nonetheless.

Characters: 9/10 - great

This manga has two main characters, Akira and Katta. Akira's character started out very focused on himself and expecting too much of his teammates, who weren't on the same level of skill as he was. Akira is very focused and takes lots of notes and makes predictions about volleyball matches, working hard to turn everything to his favor. I think it's a bit of a stereotype in volleyball manga that setters are self-centered, manipulative, and calculating geniuses, and although being smart and being able to quickly collect data on the other team is a great skill for a setter to have, not all setters are jerks.

Katta is a short (compared to the other guys), curly-haired "delinquent" from Okinawa who doesn't like setters and just wants to play volleyball "his" way. He's wild, rebellious, likes to roll up his sleeves really high, and some of the girls at Johnan think he's cute. He's got lots of energy, doesn't like to follow orders, and is a little bit simple-minded. As a Haikyuu!! fan, I would compare him to Hinata. He even said something like, "I may be short, but I can jump!" Katta follows the volleyball manga stereotype for spikers - loud, energetic, strong, and with a disregard for authority.

The rest of the Johnan team is a little bit off the beaten path when it comes to stereotypes, and everyone seems a bit like a mixture of them. My favorite of them would probably be the buff and tough libero, Mori. He may be short, but he's probably the toughest member of the team once he got over the idea that Johnan's current team was weak and could never rise past being in eighth place. His character design is one of my favorites, too - he's strong-looking and has a little more chubby face than the other players, has a chipped tooth, and wears his thick, dark hair in a messy, short ponytail. Simply imagining that gives off the impression of a very tough, yet short, volleyball player.

Another point about characters I'd like to make concerns the manga's female characters. There are only two main girls - the cute female manager, Sango, and the coach, Kiriko. Sango first met the boys when she flying-kicked Katta out of the way as she ran to the interview to become the soccer team's manager, and Kiriko was sent in as a substitute coach for Johnan's first game. Although Sango is short and cute, like a stereotypical anime/manga girl, she still does her best as a team manager and comes to really care about the team. She understands volleyball quite well and gets along with the boys, and when Kiriko isn't paying attention to the match, Sango takes over as coach, since she understands the rules and is able to make decisions on her own. I was pretty happy with Sango, and I like how she's able to have a sweet relationship with Katta without being pushed into the role of love interest. Kiriko, on the other hand, seems a bit boring, since her first appearance involved listening to radio reports of horse races instead of paying attention to the boys' game, but after she noticed how serious the boys played, she started to take her role as substitute coach more seriously and even interacted with Sango. Neither of the girls were the subject of fanservice-y scenes and their bodies were drawn quite realistically in contrast to many other shounen manga, so that was yet another great point in relation to characters. These ladies have their own distinct personalities and their own goals, so I was happy to see some female characters in a shounen sports manga that were actually involved the way they should be.

For such a short manga, I'd say the characters are developed quite well, and each have their own distinct personalities and their own ways they improve. They have different challenges and grow in different ways, and that's why I think the characters are probably this manga's best point.

tl;dr: each character is unique, but obviously built on stereotypes. good guys. feminist-friendly.

Enjoyment: 8/10 - very good

This manga was fun, if nothing else. It was short and simple, making it a breath of fresh air after being confronted with long, over-20-volume manga. I came to care about the Johnan boys and I was happy when they *SPOILER ALERT!* won their match against Seiryoh, and I liked seeing how they let go of feeling inferior and worked to reach their full potential. It was a great feel-good motivational story and definitely made me smile. The volleyball scenes were drawn quite well, too, and as a volleyball player myself, that definitely made it easier to enjoy JunKare.

Overall: 7/10 - good

Not the best manga I've ever read, but it was quite good and definitely deserves more attention than it gets. One of the hidden gems of forgotten volleyball manga, for sure. There are many things that I think could have been done differently, but those things don't detract from the overall goodness of this manga too much, so I'd definitely recommend JunKare to anybody looking for a short yet good-quality volleyball manga! Don't go into it with really high expectations - this probably won't become your new favorite manga, it probably won't get you super invested in the story & characters, but it's totally worth a read.