Happy!

A wholesome mamga i love monster, 20 century boys and pluto that’s why i read this Urasawa manga its a very good slice of life tenis manga, its not memorable but its ok, the problem for me its the lenght its very long 254 chapters, overall good, i don’t have anything more to say, i almost forgot i hste choko she is annoying, and ghe rest of characters are ok and funny sometimes expecially the debt collector he is my favorite character of this series, and the madam i didn’t like her either, so tes just great and im glad i read this

Happy! is an ironic name for this manga as there isn't really anything happy about this manga at all. Happy! is a story of beating the odds and taking everything to home through tennis. In this story, you will meet everyone trying to screw over Umino, but she always proves everyone wrong as she overcomes any impossible hurdle placed on her by her enemies. You will end up rooting for her because of her unhappy circumstances and how she overcomes these issues as well as how useless some of her companions are. Naoki Urasawa is a pretty sneaky writer, the more you read Happy! the moreyou realize tennis is just a plot device for him to insert the psychological elements which he is most known for. If you are thinking Happy! will have a lot of technical shounen-esque tennis content, you are reading the wrong manga. A lot of Happy! is about dealing with human relationships. I would say this writing strategy becomes very repetitive as almost every arc is about Umino's enemy setting her up to get the reader's blood boiling because Umino seems to be always oblivious about it. Now for the characters, besides Sakurada, it seems like all the antagonists in this manga are heartless and one-dimensional. They all have the same mindset that they think Umino is a fake, got lucky in al her wins, and they all want to ruin her life. The same could also be said for Umino's rivals with a few exceptions. Oh and as far as the sport rivalry dynamic is concerned, there is very very very little if any. It is really about Umino overcoming life hurdles thrown at her, so there isn't gonna be any training camps or that rubbish you see in every shounen manga. The art is pretty good, very easy to interpret the panels and very easy to tell which character is an antagonist and who isn't. The games are also drawn really well, no flashy crazy name techinques or exaggerated movements. Just simple run back and forth and different strikes. I would have to say the only thing I did not like about Happy! is the ending, it felt like there should've been more to say and I didn't like the result of the last game, it felt very forced.

Read this after you read the manga, it may contain SPOILERS. Well, i start this review telling that Urasawa is one of my fav mangakas, Billy bat and 20th are in my fav artists ever, but, reading Happy! i felt some problems. In the beginning there were some few unfortunate moments, the problem is that chapter after chapters these unfortunate situations always repeat, literally the same situations. I get the message is to be happy even if the world crush you no matter what, but this was maybe a bit too much and unrealistic. Chouko make the usual "joke" -> Everyone becomes stupid and believe her -> Miyukiwin -> Booed -> some tragic situation -> REPEAT I really was giving 7, but the ending is just so... happy that i almost cried. Maybe after all these repetitive bad moments, seeing everyone, audience and enemis and literally the Japan cheering for Miyuki made me feel even better for her. Or seeing Sabrina help her rise while everyone cheering them putting the cardigan on her shoulder, i waited 254 chapter to see some happines in this story. So i gave it 8. I didn't feel this plot problem in the successive works. And Urasawa made Happy! along with Monster, so maybe he was more focussed on this, who knows. I've never had hard time like this judging something, it's just that it has very high moments, and very low and unbearable moments, just like literally the 150.000 time that the reader see Chouko plotting the same bad deed for Miyuki sat in a table with someone. Or, when literally Miyuki went around the world and everyone still deny her talent and skills, and hardly know who she was, come on. So stressful, weak and unrealistic. Crticisms aside, i'm happy that Sabrina returned after the loss, and that Miyuki still play, probably in the last pages Urasawa told us that the next match was the next month, cause the time being she recovered her leg. It's just weird that the Wimbedon champion, now free of debts, still live in that place, well i guess she's very humble after all. I think she'll return in the pro tennis more carefreely and one championship at a time because of her last injury. We don't know how the relationship between her and Madam Otohri and her son is, but according to the last chapters, i assume that the madame took her as a player and in the future she'll be happy with her son. I'm not sure about Thunder, i hope he's happy too, becoming a legal coach. Or, maybe he's retired. After all, his dream was to dethrone Sabrina, who knows.

Can Umino Miyuki get HAPPY? Probably not. I began reading without any context as my first Urusawa work. I saw a YT video thumbnail saying it was his "Most Depressing" work, and decided to read it on a whim to surprise myself. It's hard for me to say that this manga was really "good" or "bad" because it's both incredibly frustrating but also fairly rewarding. The story starts off with an interesting premise, and immediately heaps misfortune upon the main character, Umino Miyuki. Almost everything she tries (with the exception of plot points required for the story to progress) goes wrong, and in almost everycase, it's out of her control. This is the formula for the entire 254 chapter manga. However, this constant misfortune is an excellent plot driver, as Umino must dig in her heels more and more to press beyond the struggle between her and her goals. However, after about 70 chapters, I will admit that I was more upset with the manga than anything else. But because you get so upset at everything going wrong, when things eventually go right, it feels like a much greater payoff. However, the ratio of negative-to-positive is around 60-40, with more frustration than payout, especially in the middle. I don't know if I should think it's brilliant or just dumb to write in a style that punishes the reader for liking the characters, all with the intent of making the rewards seem bigger. It's a really weird development style, and I would compare it to "Stockholm syndrome," a condition where a victim develops sympathy or emotional attachment to the person who harmed them or kept them captive over time (I was kept captive by the story, too). In terms of the ending, this manga has one of those "one chapter" endings. Yay, everyone can be "HAPPY!" Except for the reader. Well... Maybe not. At the end, the story still seemed unresolved in a few places. What were Sabrina Nicolic's (the undisputed champion of women's tennis) true motives for playing tennis? Was she HAPPY with her tennis? What about Hina and Thunder Ushiyama? Were they able to get HAPPY? diD uMInO mIYUkI gET HApPy!? A lot of the characters were developed well, but at the end were unfortunately forgotten about (this may have been purposely). In this case, I don't believe one chapter was enough to round-off the story and make up for the parts that made the manga really frustrating to read. It's well-written, and I must admit it was hard to put down, but also felt like a constant grind to get through. Pretty much anything bad that can happen will happen in this manga, in a Oliver Twist sort of way. Misunderstandings and heartless villains without a shred of humanity trying to either use or destroy Umino are stacked against her. And how heartless the villains are! But she continues to fight! She must! For the sake of her family. For the sake of her brothers and sisters. No one else can do it; she's the only one! And because she is the only one, a lot can (and does) go wrong for her her and everyone who is sympathetic to her cause. The main problem I have with this is that it's a very one-dimensional writing approach. The villains are evil, and the main character is pure. We have extremely defined "good" and "bad" roles. Her friends REALLY want to help her (but they can't)! The characters are treated too much like characters, and not enough like people, if that makes sense. And I'm over here wondering, "Why is the villain evil? Does she even think she's a good person?" Most people IRL, no matter how evil, think in some they way they are a good person. This isn't a complex work. It's a simple sports story that follows all the main tenets of a simple sports story. So is it bad? No. But is it good? Depends on how much you can tolerate Umino vs. the world. In terms of pure enjoyment, it was... eh. When you write a story that really leads the reader on, it's all about suspending their disbelief, like "wow, this could happen." This manga does that pretty well, but it gets to a point where it's like, "This again? Oh, another bad thing is gonna happen. Oh! There it is." For this reason, I don't say Happy! is written "poorly" but I don't think it's written as well as it could be. I actually don't like Urusawa's art, and this was compounded by the fact that the villains look SO annoying. You'd hate them even without knowing how disgusting they act. But I should praise Urusawa for making such despicable villains. As expected of the creator of the highly-acclaimed "Monster." Despite my opinions, the manga is well-drawn (objectively). The action is easy to follow, the paneling is pretty much never confusing, and there aren't too many really annoying two-page giant scenes that are hard to parse. Urusawa is incredibly good at conveying emotions through his art, and the dynamic flow of the action is decent. Overall, I don't think this is a "bad" read, or it's terrible or anything, but if you decide to read it, you should know what you're going to get. It's emotionally unforgiving with a fairly one-dimensional plot and characters, but if you can get past that, it's a decent story about grit and dedication to a cause, and how passion, virtue, and hard work are all rewarded in the end.