Tuesday 8 March 2011

Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo

You kind of have to wonder sometimes how a series is pitched to publishers, especially if your idea has little plot, wobbly artwork and virtually no sense of direction. But despite being in this predicament, Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo (that’s 7 lots of ‘bo’) somehow got itself a gig and went on to spawn 21 volumes, an anime and a further sequel series.

Running almost as a stream of consciousness, Bo-bobo is takes every typical fighting manga cliché youve read and then stamps all over it with loving prejudice. Bungee fights, attacking with nose hair and screaming special moves such as Fist of the Wild Dance of the Infuriated Jelly, theres much to take in but little genuine content. Reading a single chapter requires a surprising amount of headspace to keep up the its random and destructive tendencies, and many will be put off by its constant juvenile stupidity with little else to back it up. There’s a guy with a turd for a head also. The quality of the series? It just. Doesn’t. Stop. Most pages have more ideas than most series run in a chapter. Quite what the mangaka’s inspirations are is anybody’s guess, but I doubt it’s anything legal.

Imagine if you were suffering from food poisoning, had taken laxatives and were high on laughing gas - This is manga diarrhea at its most violent,. Ive yet to even finish the first volume is that even a recommendation?

Note: Doing a little research for writing this it seems that the US release of this is pretty confusing. A solo volume was released a few years ago which actually turns out to be volume 9 of the Japanese release. If you buy volume 1, you’re actually starting at volume 11 and carrying on from there.

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