Reviews

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 when 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 tangible subject matter, 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 could then 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 it's funny; 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?