Chimoguri Ringo to Kingyobachi Otoko

Is it even possible to make a manga about blood-diving girls and a serial killer with a fishbowl for a head boring? Apparently, yes. You just need to never move past the concept. Basically, after you have seen the MAL page for this manga, you have seen it all. Here, you can add it to your Completed list now. I understand that you don’t believe me, I also wanted it to be a lost gem. And, I guess, fans could easily offer counterarguments. After all there’re clever things in this manga, like using a pervert, whose nose bleeds when he sees a girl in a swimsuit,to summon the fishbowl man (he reacts to blood near water), or most of blooddiver stuff being inspired by pool and near-pool activities. There’re fun random details, like one of the policemen who always arrest the blooddiver girl having eyepatches on both of his eyes, or a giant girl studying in the same class as the main character. But details don't really help, when the plot of this manga is basically “something happens and there’s also goldfish”. If you look past the surreal glitter, nothing moves ahead – the characters gather stuff, then lose it, then recollect it, then lose it. There’s about one meaningful event that happens out of nowhere closer to the end. But you don’t feel involved, because you never learn the rules of their world – it neither becomes magically realistic, nor gets completely surreal, staying in the limbo of superficial fluff. You don’t feel any tension, the manga is goodnatured, so it’s obvious that nothing will happen. Even the scenes that happen “inside blood” are rather boring, I've seen much better symbolic worlds in this meduim. The characters are cardboard cut-outs, even if relatively nice, the few motivations that are given being your standard shounen placeholders, like “I wanna get better”, “I wanna save”, “ I am a perv”. The fishbowl man is by far the most interesting, but, sadly, he isn’t developed at all. The art is bound to be divisive. It combines realistic, often very detailed backgrounds and highly stylized cutesy (almost chibi-style) characters (except for the fishbowl man, he looks like Slenderman). I like that the art has a lot of personality, and some of the situations and object make for striking individual panels, but cuteness sort of replaces characterization, which I hate, and the author, sadly, lacks the gift for cinematography, so the panelwork is rather bland. The publication includes a couple of shorts, and I like them much more than the big story. Maybe it’s because for them developing the unusual premise is a non-issue, but "Kappa's Dinner Table" is also better at characterization, and "Hell", which is by far the best, has genuinely fun scenes and an actual punchline (and also a fapping skeleton). Right, I have a feeling that "Chimoguri Ringo to Kingyobachi Otoko" is also supposed to have fanservice. I say I am not sure, because the characters are cartoonish, and it’s far behind, compared to modern popular ecchi. It may work only for school swimsuits enthusiasts (this is a recurring topic in the manga itself). Actually, swimsuit fetishism is, probably, the closest "Chimoguri Ringo to Kingyobachi Otoko" comes to having energy. I can see the point in a world that plays with the combination of girls in dark-blue swimsuits, pools, water and lush hydrangeas in a rainy season. It might have been beautiful, too bad the manga doesn’t use well even the context of wetness – we don’t notice, when the characters are soaked and when not. "Chimoguri Ringo to Kingyobachi Otoko" doesn’t have an ending, the story is continued in "Shin Chimoguri Ringo to Kingyobachi Otoko", and the sequel does attempt to change the status quo, as it seems, it also has a lot more blooddiver girls. But here I evaluate the first half, so there’s that: it’s empty plot- and characterization-wise. Maybe this author’s style is not for me, but I can judge only based on my experience. So my verdict is: unless you really like girls in swimsuits (and if you do, I congratulate you, sir, on hitting a bingo and wish you a good fieldtrip this evening) or want some surreal pages to illustrate the range of imagination in manga (without much context), I don’t think it is really worth your time. The sequel has a recap too. Flip through "Chimoguri Ringo to Kingyobachi Otoko" or check out the shorts, reading though the actual chapters won’t be very enjoyable or fruitful. All in all, being happy that a manga with such a plot exist and seeing an example of the artstyle is as much as you’ll get from this.