Binbougami ga!

Back in early 2013 I decided to give this manga a shot. And a couple of chapters in I had putten it on hold. Now 7 years later I find myself finishing the manga in just two sittings. So what happened, why did I end up picking it up again in the first place? It would be hard to argue that Binbougami ga does anything different than other shounen series. But it would also be hard to argue that this series doesn't do traditional shounen exceptionally well. The story follows the Life of Ichiko, a lonely rich girl whose life gets turned upsidedown when a Misfortune god Momiji shows up and tries to take away her ludacris amount of good fortune energy. Crazy antics soon presume with Momiji always placing Ichiko in bizarre and hilarious situations while at the same time indirectly teaching Ichiko how to wisen up and overcome her problems. The story doesn't take itself too seriously, but when it wants to, it manages to do so without doing a complete 180. The story unfortunately, at least for me wasn't the selling point of this manga. The selling points were the unique and quirky characters. All the main characters from the masochistic dog god to the rich loli ninja felt real and genuine. And each time one of them joined our main duo it felt so natural as if a new piece was added to the puzzle. Although each of them has a very specific personality their chemistry and compatibility is noticeable as soon as they enter the story. And seeing their bonds being tested and developed was the heart of the story in my opinion. The art was nothing less than exceptional. It sometimes almost felt overwhelming in the sheer number of visual references to other manga, history and pop culture in general. From the very start it is obvious that the mangaka wanted to put as much energy and information in a panel as physically possible. This resulted in a very visual and untamed type of humor that can easily go unnoticed. The other thing I need to praise are of course the character designs which gave every character a distinctive feel. Overall if you are looking for a heartwarming comedy about friendship I would highly recommend this series!

To be honest the story was just ok. It wasnt bad at all, but it wasnt particularly gripping. Now just because it wasnt the most intricate plot doesnt mean that the manga itself was shit in the slightest. Thats mostly due to its immeasurable character development and its masochistic sense of humor (it often made fun of itself and all of the cliches we see in a lot of other mangas). The romance was orgasmically done. With just enough suspense to keep you reading without dragging it out too long. You also cant help but fall in love with practically every character you meet andchange along with them on their journey. It was perfect for a late night pass time. Only thing that could have possibly made this show better would have been more hentai. What the hell man, theres literally only like two things, and you have to preform a black sabbath to find them.

That was an enjoyable ride! It wasn't the best, but I liked the story. I'm glad there was a manga to continue off from the anime! I wasn't expecting so much action though! In the anime I just assumed that this story is mainly just a comedy/fantasy/slice of life, but it gets more intense and emotional in the manga. I was shocked, but I'm not complaining haha. The comedy was the same for me as well, and I would recommend it if you guys like Gintama. Nonetheless, it all depends on the individual's taste of humor. The only thing I didn't like too much was theamount of characters. I know stories like One Piece, or Naruto, has alot of characters as well, but the author kept adding complex stories to each characters or they gave them very dynamic personalities. It eventually began to confuse the heck out of me and I couldn't distinguish who's who unless they were in the story for more than 5 chapters. Romance was also abit mediocre. As much as I liked the main pair together, honestly, I don't know why but I was kind of expecting a thing with Momiji and Sakura. They had more enjoyable moments than Tsuwabuki and Sakura... But still, I enjoyed their moments as well so not that upset... Overall, I procrasinated on my homework for this manga! That's how good it was.

tl;dr: A gag manga with decent comedy and solid character development in it's protagonist that doesn't transition well into having a more significant plot. This manga starts off as a pretty straight up slapstick comedy gag manga centered around Ichiko being incredibly arrogant and other characters, mainly Momiji, screwing with her in a lot of different ways. These chapters were somewhat hit and miss, but were mostly hits in terms of being amusing. The comedy during these chapters, as well as in general, was also a mixed bag in that some aspects like Momiji's crazy antics were great throughout, while other aspects like Bobby and Mamoo'sperversions weren't all that funny and also felt really repetitive. Alongside this, there are serious moments that slowly result in Ichiko developing bonds with others and going through character growth as a result. Watching the development of these bonds and the resulting character growth is pretty satisfying for a pretty large portion of the manga. However, about half way through the manga it pretty much feels like it's hit where it was going to go and there isn't really any significant development after that, at least not any that's strong enough to feel satisfying compared to the earlier portions. This is where the manga shifts from being a gag manga with random nonsensical episodes to actually having a larger overarching plot with intrigue, suspense, and such. The problem is that the this overarching plot simply isn't very good, and the way its told has it dragged on for far too long. The issue with this portion is that it feels like the author wants the reader to take things seriously when the world built up to that point, and the development even after that really, aren't really the type you can take all that seriously. There were definitely a lot of serious moments before this larger overarching plot came into focus, but they were centered more around character drama and more down to earth aspects, while the supernatural elements were all crazy nonsense that pushed the drama forward, but weren't in and of themselves supposed to be all that important. Thus, just in general while we are supposed to care about the characters, we're not supposed to care about the situations more so than finding them amusing. Towards the latter half of the manga, the supernatural elements take on a much more prominent role and we're supposed to start caring about how the world works, the background of characters, etc. but the quality isn't improved much over the point where all of that wasn't important, and thus I wasn't really able to bring myself to care much. Another similar issue with this portion is that the action also becomes more prominent, which similarly wasn't all that great from the start but didn't feel that important at first but became increasingly important as it went on without getting any better. Another problem I think is the cast, which frankly overall I wasn't really fond of at all. I suppose I grew somewhat fond of Ichiko due to her growth and bonds, and I found Momiji somewhat likable due to how amusing she was, but they were the only characters I liked and even then I didn't like them that much. On the other hand, there was a lot of characters that I found immensely annoying, essentially every male character. Furthermore, Ichiko is the only one that it felt like went through proper character growth, with there being a lot of other characters that I think the manga tried showing something or other for, such as Ichiko's friends Ranmaru and Nadeshiko, but I don't think their stories were told well enough, probably because there were simply too many characters by the end. This becomes a problem for the ending, because it tries so hard to shoehorn every single character into the final battle, and give all of them at least somewhat decent roles, thus resulting in pretty much all of them not feeling like they got much of any role at all outside of Ichiko, Momiji, and the villain. Another issues with characters, is that while Ichiko's bonds with others as friends are pretty solid, the romance was really weak. Despite that, her's was still the best romance in the manga and the romance involving all the other characters being really random and especially abrupt at the end. The ending was okay, in that it was pretty much what I expected but it didn't really do anything all that major, so I wasn't particularly satisfied or dissatisfied with it. The character designs and art in general were pretty great. Great color art too.