Jun 11, 2023
Do Retry by Jun Kiarazaka is a thing of ethereal beauty, like a deer in the headlights of a car with no brake pedal. Do Retry is the funniest manga in Jump, and I'm not sure if it has ever successfully told a joke. Do Retry is hype as hell, and underwhelms with every blow. Do Retry is worth reading immediately.
On first blush, Kiarazaka's art is pretty rough. The protagonist, Aozora Okami, has very few distinguishing features from any other shonen boy. The art style is very reminiscent of that of Yusei Matsui, especially The Elusive Samurai. It is filled with bold outlines and deep
...
shading, but doesn't have Matsui's knack for action composition, tone or raw beauty. It's just kind of... there.
Okami himself isn't very memorable from a character standpoint either. Okami has the same special boxing technique as Homer Simpson, where he can get punched very hard and stay standing. It's not a good sign that I had to reread all the way to chapter 5 to get the smallest handle on his name.
Past these usually important first steps, however, is where Do Retry really comes into it's own. And it's bonkers.
The tone of Do Retry vocillates wildly, between the life of tragedy and horror led by children in post war Japan, into a magical realist shonen boy boxing adventure. The US firebombs Showa one page, and only a page turn later Okami is harassing American GIs for chocolate in unfunny broken English. Two pages later, it's revealed his sister is dying from malnutrition.
The most jarring moments are when these clashing tones collide in the same panels; Do Retry's token try hard shonen protag boy meets a gang of happy go lucky, rough and tumble boxers. Instead of being mentors or even really established characters, they spend the rest of the chapter chasing after him and trying to kill him for no real reason. Once again, the tone isn't just off, it's nonexistent - a mild comedic slant on 50 grown men trying to rip a starving orphan to pieces for an extremely vague reason. A monetary reward? Status? Pride? Fun? I have no clue. It is very, very funny.
The real genius has emerged in its current arc. Okami is facing a boxer around his age, a clear narrative foil. Both are children struggling to thrive in an evil environment. Both are looking to protect their bland, woobified sisters. There is almost a conflict there!
But here's the rub. The antagonist's only power set is that he has a really big right arm. This kid, to Kiarazaka's credit, has the gangly proportions of a child in this age group. This decent proportion work makes it all the funnier when his right arm looks like it belongs to Kenshiro. Never before has a mangaka laid up a joke for an audience to kick perfectly into the end one quite so easily - yes, it's true, my right arm got a lot of work at that age too.
It's a horrible nightmare mess. No chapter has ever just worked, no moment of good isn't complicated by another baffling decision, chapter six (the most recent as of writing) has a double page spread so strangely drawn that I think I'll be thinking about it on my death bed. In short, I love Do Retry dearly. I read eagerly ever week, tell my friends all about it, and will fight on its behalf at every opportunity.
I don't think it will be too long until the bell is rung for Do Retry. Shonen as once gonzo and yet, somehow, formulaic as this one don't last for long in the hyper competitive pages of Jump. I'd love to be wrong and for it to run and run, but looking at its engagement numbers on social media, I don't think that's going to happen. Maybe it will be good to let it down easy, put it to sleep before it experiences any more of the torture it clearly feels living day to day. Like a beloved family pet, there comes a time where death is a mercy. But I hope that, once the towel gets thrown in the ring, Do Retry goes down swinging with an ending as dumb and tonally inconsistent as the rest of it. I will earnestly cheer for it as it misses every punch, because everyone loves an underdog.
tl;Dr it's great read it it's terrible
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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