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Prostitution, infidelity, drug abuse, poverty, discrimination, suicide, heaps and heaps of tragedy. This one can get pretty depressing which will be nothing new for readers familiar with the author's most renowned series Banana Fish. Set primarily in 1970's New York. A period in which the chaotic metropolis was facing financial crisis, full of all manners of corruption, decaying and desolate with criminal activity rampant and the population destitute. A time where women were advised against wearing jewelry in the street. Akimi Yoshida gives an unfiltered depiction of various atrocities that went on in this era centered around the life of protagonist Heath Swanson. Focusing primarily ... on unpacking the psychological impact of his past and present traumas. The story explores a plethora of complex topics including the ones mentioned in the opening line as well as LGBT themes which are prominent in this narrative despite the main character being heterosexual.

18 years old at the start of the manga, we're taken on a journey through the struggles and adversity that Heath and those around him have to confront in both his youth and adulthood. Despite the challenges they're forced to overcome the characters aren't always necessarily portrayed as victims with bad choices bearing responsibility for many of the calamities which befall them. Interestingly despite all the hardship Heath faces the more relatable interpersonal emotional dilemmas take larger tolls on his mental well-being. There's a heavy focus on a variety of different relationships, the common ground between most of them being toxicity. But they're all compelling and well thought out. The manga perhaps succeeds most when delving into the characters psychological circumstances. How they deal with the problems of the environment they're in and their relationships with others. It truly does an excellent job of illustrating characters emotional states. There is although one moment where things get ridiculously dramatic; perhaps excessively so.

Honestly I can't necessarily say that I enjoyed California Monogatari which is somewhat typical for a tragedy. It wasn't fun seeing the characters beset by catastrophe, making poor decisions and hurting themselves or those around them. By the end there weren't many characters left that I still liked. That being said, I can't deny how well written it was. From start to finish almost every little detail or brief flashback became relevant. Incremental psychological struggles of certain characters built up over time. Traits of characters family members eventually showed up within themselves. Most problems that were brought up saw some sort of resolution whether good or bad. Motivations and habits stayed consistent even as characters developed and changed with age. All around it felt like the story was mapped out from start to finish which is rarer than it should be in this medium and something I can always appreciate.

It's an engaging thought-provoking piece of fiction with so many takeaways. The characters have several interesting throwaway takes on other issues or literary works they've read which help expand their characters while potentially giving the readers a rogue perspective on those topics. Even little things like those probably accumulated to making this series worth reading for myself. All in all it was well put together and a good read. This was Akimi Yoshida's first longer running publication which she released while only 21! Currently it's only been completed by 86 MAL users so give it a go if you like her other works or found anything in this review intriguing.

This review is from the perspective of someone who hasn't read or watched anything from GTO whatsoever, with no prior bias towards the characters or mangaka. Many will not have even heard of this prequel despite the success of it's follow up work and let's just say there's a very good reason for that.

Reading SJG you'll find a charismatic main duo, well choreographed dynamic fight scenes, an occasional hilarious slice of comedy and some brilliant highs along the way. Now all of that would be great if not for the extensive amount of abhorrent flaws that co-exist within the story. Unfortunately aside from the action ... scenes all the positives I've listed are completely overshadowed and in fact entirely negated within the same story. It is no exaggeration to say that while this series really did have some enthralling peak points, it also had, not just one, but several of the worst storyline and plot developments I've ever come across within fiction.

So let's start off with my biggest gripe, the handling and overuse of rape. Rape is a tool used in many stories to evoke either shock or a strong emotional response towards a character or scene in one way or another. Now of course there are other more intricate uses of sexual violence as a device in fiction but generally speaking these are without doubt the most common. The handling within this manga is extremely lazy. Half of the story arcs in SJG follow the exact same formula of a girl being introduced, immediately used as a narrative object to vilify the enemy of the week through being raped and/or abused by them, then tossed aside for the remainder of the manga after Onizuka deals with said villain. Subsequently we move on to the next arc and repeat with a new enemy showing up. Now while that repetitiveness was excruciatingly boring at times this is still a battle shounen so it's not as if I went into this expecting much different. However the fact that this series follows the basic structure of your average battle shounen is exactly what brought upon its most glaring issues. If you're familiar with the genre you'll know that the protagonists will often forgive and then potentially even befriend their enemies later and unfortunately despite some of the antagonists raping/abusing friends of Onizuka, SJG is exactly the same in this regard. Some early highs of Onizuka smacking the faces of these thugs are completely ruined later when he, without any context whatsoever sometimes, is suddenly seen to be friends with them.

Minor SPOILERS Ahead!!

For a series completely driven by it's protagonist, events like this that make you dislike Onizuka only serve to compound the disgruntlement with how the manga begins to unfold. Sadly this only gets worse. There are several constant flimsy affirmations of Onizuka being a man of principles and ideals, albeit while also being an angry/horny teenager, such as him believing if a guy gets a girl pregnant they should support her or how he'll sometimes stop other delinquents from picking on the weak or even take other actions such as not sleeping with a girl for pleasure alone. Now you'd be hard pressed to argue against the morality of any of those points. Regrettably they contrast entirely to the behaviour of Onizuka as well as his interactions with other characters. A few examples of this would be when this one guy sold his girlfriend off to be gangbanged by a group of thugs as payment for them beating up Onizuka. Now what happened with this guy and his girlfriend after Onizuka dealt with those thugs? All was completely forgiven. Not just from Onizuka's point of view either but his girlfriend, although clearly having been through the worst experience of her life, instantly forgave him after a few panels of tears. Onizuka himself also thought it was a good idea for her to stay with the guy. Of course this isn't a completely unrealistic outcome, at least between the couple. It's no secret there are people in the world who stick with the wrong partner for whatever reason. However that doesn't make the result any less unsatisfying.

Later on there is another girl who is raped by a gang leader who forces her to be his girlfriend. As punishment when she decides to leave the gang he has his 30 men gangrape her. Or at least he was about too but at the last minute steps in and saves her along with Onizuka. Much like before this man is completely forgiven by the girl and he befriends Onizuka too despite what he'd done to the girl who was one of Onizuka's closest friends. At that point it was already getting to be almost impossible to empathise with Onizuka but that wasn't even a droplet in the ocean of dirt Onizuka would later plunge himself into. The single moment that completely ended any attachment I may have had to Onizuka or any faith in this series whatsoever comes very late on when despite everything he's preached about before, he breaks into his friends house and tries to rape her while she's sleeping. Getting as far as pulling her clothes off and swinging his body into mid thrust before she luckily woke up and kicked him away. What happened after that? You guessed it. She forgives him after screaming at and hitting him a couple of times. I can only imagine how former readers of GTO with prior bias towards Onizuka tried to laugh this scene off and push it to the back of their minds as they continued reading. But let alone Onizuka's character it's hard for me to understand why Fujisawa thought it would be funny to have the protagonist lose control of his libido and go so far to satisfy his sexual urges as to result to such a vile act.

You could go the route of the social justice warrior and talk about how the women are only used as narrative objects for the men with almost every female character being completely degraded and stripped of any dignity whatsoever in this story. Or you could even criticise any use of sexual violence in any manga which leads to a character having their clothes stripped before the viewer. I however won't be doing either of those things. As a story targeted at pent-up teenage boys from the perspective of two horny teenage boys who just want to fight and have sex with any girl who comes into view, it's not such an incomprehensible thing that the women would be portrayed in such a way. Although it's certainly uncomfortable. If that's how Fujisawa wants to set up his manga then I wouldn't begrudge him that. Violence, sex, edginess and cool one liners fired off at the right times sell after all.

Overall I wouldn't recommend SJG anyone at all. If you enjoyed GTO and can overlook the sketchy moments in this manga then I'm sure you'll be able to at least enjoy seeing a younger Onizuka. Towards the end there are also some better arcs you'd likely love. One of them even has no rape scenes whatsoever! If only that hadn't been an anomaly perhaps this manga could have gone somewhere.

Happy! is a manga series about never giving up, no matter how unfair things may become or however many ridiculously tough challenges appear before you. It's about continuously trying your hardest in order to force things to go well for you. If you're looking for a series like that or a series with an extremely hate-able female antagonist then you should definitely check this out. A full cast of intricately explored characters and interesting plot developments around every corner really makes this story hard to put down.

Happy! is set in a deranged world where Japanese Idol culture has somehow been mixed in with professional ... women's tennis. Despite how realistic everything else is, this one point manages to drag the whole series down on it's own. The hate from certain crowds and the support behind tennis players worldwide as if they were Japanese idols and terms such as "The World's Idol" that are used to describe certain girls in this series show a severe lack of understanding of the world outside Japan.

I don't want to be too critical of Naoki Urasawa here because this manga is definitely enjoyable for the most part, on top of that it was being serialized weekly at the same time as arguably his most popular series Monster. So how much he really cared for this series overall I'm not sure. This manga actually succeeds magnificently as an eventful drama. However considering how the theme of Tennis was handled in such an amateur fashion I can't give this series more than a 7.

Slight Spoiler warning for the remainder of the review!
The series started so strongly but towards the end things became very repetitive. Not in any kind of small way either. Most of the final matches followed the exact same formula of losing each match massively at first due to some current issue followed by the protagonist turning things around in the next Sets once she overcomes her troubles. Because of this towards the end I became a little bored and I'm certain that sentiment would be shared by most who have read this series. Anyhow I've given you the negatives and positives of this series; if anything in the first paragraph spoke to you then you'll definitely get something out of this series. Furthermore if you're a fan of Naoki Urasawa's style I'm sure you'll get plenty of enjoyment out of Happy!

A tragic War tale of blood, innovation and love. This series is definitely worth reading. As someone who usually takes about 10 or so chapters to really get into the flow of a manga it was great that Heureka was able to capture my attention right from the first chapter and then all the way through to the 6th. The story follows the silver-tongued Damippos and his lover Claudia as their city Syracuse is attacked by the Romans. However protected by the ingenious inventions of the great mathematician Archimedes, invading Syracuse proves to be a difficult task.

Hitoshi Iwaaki does a brilliant job portraying a ... realistic battle scene, with fluid art and interesting characters. Namely Damippos, a Spartan who exhibits brain rather than brawn gets involved with several different powerful people as the war rages on. Despite his keen intellect and knack for understanding Archimedes inventions, Damippos wonders if those who wage war really have nothing better to do. Ultimately led around by circumstance he faces various challenges as he maneuvers his way through the situations he's given working his way through with his charm and quick wit.

There's not much more to say, Heureka is a simple yet excellently written Manga and only 6 chapters long, so just read it already!!

Billionaire Girl is a short story by Isuna Hasekura, the author of Spice & Wolf. So going into this series I expected a nice little romance with characters at least 1/100th as compelling as Holo and Lawrence. Unfortunately compelling is a word that couldn't be associated with any aspect of this manga whatsoever.

What started off somewhat promising quickly deteriorated into mediocrity and then the characters just became annoying which left little remaining to enjoy. There are definitely a few positives to take from this series and despite what I've said it is by no stretch awful or unbearable. If you want a short series for ... a yearly MAL challenge or have decided to invest in Stocks following the fall of the market due to Corona then you might get something small out of this series. Even then you're unlikely to find anything much in this extremely brief look at stocks and the life of a rich girl who doesn't know anything of the world outside her job.

The single biggest problem with Billionaire Girl would have to be the fact that while several plot lines and issues revealed themselves none of them were actually dealt with. This manga is a whole bunch of nothing happening for 17 chapters. You'll find hundreds of other romance series where a thick headed main character struggles to realise they're in love so you may as well skip this one.

As a side note, if you're surprised by the high scores others gave this series make sure to check when their reviews were written, you'll notice all the high scores came 9 years ago when this manga first started publishing and long before it finished.

I just wanted to draw some attention to Kyoshin Gorg (Giant Gorg). An anime that (at time of making this review) has only been viewed by 205 MAL users. Despite being as good as it is.

If you like adventure anime you will love Giant Gorg, It dives straight into the plot from episode 1, it does a very good job of introducing the initial main characters as well as giving you a nice overview of what's going on. It really doesn't waste any time at all with each episode bringing a new turn to the adventure.

This anime was made in 1984 however the quality of ... the animation was superb for the time, obviously if you're someone who can't handle old styled animation then this isn't for you. However like I said the anīmation was actually very good and flowed perfectly from start to finish. If you hadn't known when it was made going into it you definitely wouldn't have been able to guess how early it was made.

Kyoshin Gorg has a fantastic range of characters, it's definitely the most racially diverse selection of characters I've seen in any anime, it even has aliens.

Main character Yuu is a refreshing protagonist, he has just lost his father and is going to visit his dads companion Dr. Wave in America to find out about Austral Island (the place his dad had spent his life researching). He has a positive adventurous spirit and cares deeply about his friends (he's voiced by the same Seiyuu as Luffy from One Piece).

Dr. Wave is the scientist of the group, he's not much use when it comes to fighting but he has his moments. Dorris is Dr. Waves little sister and the love interest of Yuu (kind of) honestly I found her a little annoying at times and she doesn't do much more than just tag along, but she wasn't a bad character. Argos the dog, he's just a normal dog but he's very clever and helps out in several ways.

Captain, by far my favorite character, he's Dr. Waves best friend but he is also a cold mercenary who has most of the action centred around him. His accuracy with tanks and bazookas is incredible and even his hand to hand combat strength is amazing. This is an anime which is set in the real world so the weapons are guns, tanks, knives, attack helicopters etc. (with the exception of the mecha obviously) and Captain looks badass no matter what he uses.

There are 2 initial antagonists who I wont go into details with. Lady Lynx, a hot gang leader who is very skilled in combat and has many loyal followers and Rod Balboa, the successor to a humongous corporation with an interest in Austral Island and all the money and weapons in the world at his disposal.

Giant Gorg is very enjoyable, in fact the enjoyment you get whilst watching it might even be it's best quality. It's a fun one although it has some really violent scenes and dark moments. It might not be something you watch in one go, it might even be an anime you watch over the course of a few weeks. They just don't make anime like this anymore and I'm sure many of you will find an anime that has no characters with special powers, no half naked girls with ginormous tits and no unrealistic characters refreshing.