teen graphic novel/humor. ( )

I have made a point to borrow as many manga from my local library as possible. This decision was fueled partially to fray the costs of buying hundreds of volumes a year, but also as an attempt to get the library to purchase more manga titles. One of my recent borrows was Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamoto Vol 1 by Nami Sano, a manga in a genre my husband refers to as ‘strange people doing strange things' but but would also fit into the wonderful 'beautiful boys who do things well' genre.

The story is about Sakamoto, a high school boy who is good at everything. He’s good a great student, a great athlete, and is good at a wide variety of hobbies. On top of that, he’s very clever, always able to get around any situation that may arise in creative and surprising ways. This manga follows Sakamoto through his school days.

The view point this manga is told in fits the story beautifully. We never quite see the story told from Sakamato’s point of view. It is most often told through the eyes of those around him. Those who hate him, those who would try to use him, those who admire or adore him – it is through them and their interactions that the reader gets to know Sakamato.

Sakamato is a very skilled individual, seemingly good at everything. He’s good at schoolwork, sports, and he’s attractive. Needless to say, this leads to some people worshiping him while others want nothing more than to show the world that Sakamato is human just like the rest of us and concoct plans to do just that. This, of course, is easier said than done. Humorous situations abound in this manga as people try to one up, use, or humiliate Sakamato to no avail.

There isn’t much in the way of character development as far as Sakamato is concerned. But those around him do grow. The change in the side characters who we see the story through is very apparent. Nearly everyone Sakamato comes into contact with is changed in some way. Sakamato himself, however, remains much the same throughout the manga.

There is not a terrible amount, if any, overarching plot to this manga. However, I don’t think it really needs one. This is a comedy, with one humorous, slightly unrealistic scene popping up after another. The volume is rather episodic with different chapters telling different stories surrounding Sakamato. It’s fairly fast paced and very easily digestible.

Many school based manga have art that is enjoyable and clearly speaks to talent, but doesn’t have the sort of detail and nuance that something such as, oh, a high fantasy based on beautiful settings, would have. Simply put, that type of attention to detail and background is often unneeded, with focus on expression or storytelling filling in that void. But the artwork in this manga falls clearly outside many of the usual norms I find in school setting manga. Backgrounds are fully drawn, not falling into the stark white backdrops often found in shojo titles. Faces are expressive, and detailed. The illusion of movement is beautifully drawn with several pages in particular standing out, the most notable of which shows several characters moving around a fire.

Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamato by Nami Sano is a series I’ll be continuing with. Though it may not have much in the way of an overarching plot, it is fun nonetheless. If you like lighthearted comedy and a more episodic structure to your manga this is one title you’ll probably want to check out.

This review originally found on Looking Glass Reads. ( )

Excellent! It's just like the anime. Sakamoto is this ridiculous character that everyone either loves or hates. He's great a literally everything. So much so that even the people who hate him for it, eventually begin to fawn over him like the people who love him.

We literally know nothing about him other than the fact that he's awesome. He's never caught unawares, people who try to prank him end up having it turned around on them, he knows the answers in class, he helps people.... It just...he's absolutely ridiculous, larger-than-life. The whole thing is just hilarious. I'm glad I got the manga. There are little editions that aren't in the anime. Little comments and actions that basically expand on the anime.

I think this review sounds ridiculous, and it probably does, but in my defense, I'm at hour 21 of a 24-hour readathon and I think I'm bordering on delirious. Plus the whole this is just insanely funny. I'm definitely looking forward to reading the next volume. ( )

Sakamoto, a new and popular student, coolly and calmly deals with jealous bullies, a wasp, a kid who keeps getting bullied for his lunch money, a scheming girl who wants to make him her boyfriend, and a guy who uses him and other students as his slaves. There's also an extra story called “Broad Shoulders” that I think is unrelated to this series, but it's hard to tell because the main character looked an awful lot like Sakamoto. At any rate, the kid in that story was being bullied for his shoulder pads for some bizarre reason.

I found out about this series via a review somewhere, and I was really excited about it. I figured it would be humorous and weird. Instead, the humor generally fell flat, and the whole thing was weird in an uncanny valley sort of way. The characters looked just “off” enough that I was too busy being creeped out to enjoy this much. I really wasn't a fan of the artwork, which was a little too stiff for my tastes.

Some of the stories were also disturbing enough to make me question whether I have this series' genre wrong. In the story with the kid whose lunch money was being stolen, for example, Sakamoto wouldn't help him until after he'd gotten a job. After the kid tried to stand up to his bullies himself, he told Sakamoto that the lesson he'd learned was this: “I don't need to protect myself or my money, only my pride.” I sort of understand what Sano was trying to get across here, but still...fighting against his bullies could have landed him in the hospital or even gotten him killed if Sakamoto hadn't swooped in to help. In the first story, several bullies tied Sakamoto up and planned to strip him down, take pictures, and send the pictures to everyone. And I still don't know what to think about the story with the guy who was making other students his slaves.

It also bugged me that Sakamoto didn't seem to be interested in helping people so much as studying them and testing his theories about human behavior. There were indications that Sakamoto wasn't human. He refused to say his given name, the only information he gave about his past was that he'd once attended a place called “Innocence Academy,” and he had inhuman physical abilities. He might be a robot, or an alien, or something else entirely. At this point, my best guess is that he's an alien, living on Earth specifically to study human behavior.

If I do continue reading this series, it'll primarily be for the mystery of Sakamoto's origins and identity. None of the other characters were at all interesting or very memorable, Sakamoto's solutions to various situations weren't really that big of a draw, and the artwork kind of creeped me out. I really don't know what Sano was going for here. I mean, the series also included a lot of what I'd normally call fanservice, with many panels of shirtless or barely clothed Sakamoto and other characters, but it wasn't so much sexy as it was discomfiting and vaguely disturbing.

That said, there were still a few nice moments. For instance, I liked the panel in which Sakamoto demonstrated that he could easily remain in a seated position even after his chair had been stolen out from under him.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )

This is a fun school-themed manga - yes, I know, that's most manga to be honest... Sakamoto (the titular protagonist, if you can't read Japanese) is a paragon of students: brilliant, athletic, brave, and capable in any task. You could imagine that this will make for a dull story, which is quite often the case with stories about implausibly skilled protagonists who just end up as Mary Sues. In this case, it didn't bother me at all. It feels to me as though Sakamoto is more of a force of nature than a protagonist here; rather, each chapter has its own protagonist, someone whose life is affected by Sakamoto. Although he is well-known, well-respected and admired by lots of girls, somehow Sakamoto evaded being a Mary Sue, perhaps because the text refuses to make it all about him. I really enjoyed this book - the Japanese was quite difficult for me, since it seems to be very colloquial and teenaged, but it was clear enough mostly. ( )