Manga 445 Shonan Junai Gumi

How come people go all rampage when it's about GTO yet don't bother to read this Masterpiece of a Manga? Seriously, I don't even like Manga all that much, but this one was worth every second I've spent reading it.

This will be a rather short review because I usually tend to review stuff I hate, so I don't know what exactly to say when I have absolutely nothing to complain about.

The plot is, as you can guess, Onizuka's and Ryuuji's backstory, the lovabale delinquent-legends that no one would ever dare to mess with. They're feared by enemies, admired by their peers and were "kicked out ... of school" for their brutal deeds. Or so they say in a letter they left behind, with the truth being these two wanting to polish their image for the sake of finally getting laid in a new school.

These two are just the best duo I've seen in a Manga. You probably already love Onizuka, and here you'll learn to love Ryuuji just as much as him, their friendship is touching (in a completely manly way of course...) and hilarious and you see these two grow into young adults...that basically stay the same idiots until the very end! (though Ryuuji does mature a little in GTO).

So, if you can overlook, or even love the old art style (which I do!), you will absolutely fall in love with the the action packed comedic genius of Shonan Junai Gumi!

First off I’m going to start by saying that this is a great manga and worth every bit of the time spent on it.

Shonan Junai Gumi is about two guys Ryuuji Danma and Eikichi Onizuka, The Oni-Baku duo that have a reputation for being the most badass fighters around. While they can definitely fight they do not have the same luck in picking up chicks which is where the story starts it’s self off. The duo moves to a new school for the possibility of finally getting some ... girlfriends, however it brings them more than they asked for when soon after their life’s are filled with drama, action, romance and most of all comedy.

So the beginning plot is a bit original and a bit cliché. You can average that to being just a normal show but the thing with Shonan Junai Gumi is that it’s not one straight story line but more all the different situations that Oni-Baku finds them self getting into. That seems like it would be a bit repetitive and boring right?

That is not the case here, the manga has the unique ability to make each problem and each situation as interesting as the last, witch of course is because of the flexibility of the story line. It’s not tied down with the Idea of the characters having one goal to accomplish but instead these two hot headed high school students have nothing like an overall goal to accomplish. That lets the story line go in all different directions without it getting repetitive and boring.

Surprisingly enough character development is the biggest contributor and the back bone of the story line and that brings me to my next topic. The characters witch like most Shounen manga, Shonan Junai Gumi has many.With every situation Oni-Baku is put into, new characters arise and that person or that person’s problems are what the duo will end up beating the crap out of. Then with the thing that has always held them back extinguish by Oni-Baku’s maincharacteritis the character will change dramatically.

What we have established so far is that the story line connects all the different elements that makes a story good and that the characters are very dynamic. That all sounds good but what makes this manga go that extra mile to being great is the comedy. Shonan Junai Gumi is one of the most hilarious manga’s I have ever read, this manga is slapstick comedy at it's best.

So if you are a fan of Shounen, comedy or love GTO. I recommend you read this manga.

This review is from the perspective of someone who hasn't read or watched anything from GTO whatsoever, with no prior bias towards the characters or mangaka. Many will not have even heard of this prequel despite the success of it's follow up work and let's just say there's a very good reason for that.

Reading SJG you'll find a charismatic main duo, well choreographed dynamic fight scenes, an occasional hilarious slice of comedy and some brilliant highs along the way. Now all of that would be great if not for the extensive amount of abhorrent flaws that co-exist within the story. Unfortunately aside from the action ... scenes all the positives I've listed are completely overshadowed and in fact entirely negated within the same story. It is no exaggeration to say that while this series really did have some enthralling peak points, it also had, not just one, but several of the worst storyline and plot developments I've ever come across within fiction.

So let's start off with my biggest gripe, the handling and overuse of rape. Rape is a tool used in many stories to evoke either shock or a strong emotional response towards a character or scene in one way or another. Now of course there are other more intricate uses of sexual violence as a device in fiction but generally speaking these are without doubt the most common. The handling within this manga is extremely lazy. Half of the story arcs in SJG follow the exact same formula of a girl being introduced, immediately used as a narrative object to vilify the enemy of the week through being raped and/or abused by them, then tossed aside for the remainder of the manga after Onizuka deals with said villain. Subsequently we move on to the next arc and repeat with a new enemy showing up. Now while that repetitiveness was excruciatingly boring at times this is still a battle shounen so it's not as if I went into this expecting much different. However the fact that this series follows the basic structure of your average battle shounen is exactly what brought upon its most glaring issues. If you're familiar with the genre you'll know that the protagonists will often forgive and then potentially even befriend their enemies later and unfortunately despite some of the antagonists raping/abusing friends of Onizuka, SJG is exactly the same in this regard. Some early highs of Onizuka smacking the faces of these thugs are completely ruined later when he, without any context whatsoever sometimes, is suddenly seen to be friends with them.

Minor SPOILERS Ahead!!

For a series completely driven by it's protagonist, events like this that make you dislike Onizuka only serve to compound the disgruntlement with how the manga begins to unfold. Sadly this only gets worse. There are several constant flimsy affirmations of Onizuka being a man of principles and ideals, albeit while also being an angry/horny teenager, such as him believing if a guy gets a girl pregnant they should support her or how he'll sometimes stop other delinquents from picking on the weak or even take other actions such as not sleeping with a girl for pleasure alone. Now you'd be hard pressed to argue against the morality of any of those points. Regrettably they contrast entirely to the behaviour of Onizuka as well as his interactions with other characters. A few examples of this would be when this one guy sold his girlfriend off to be gangbanged by a group of thugs as payment for them beating up Onizuka. Now what happened with this guy and his girlfriend after Onizuka dealt with those thugs? All was completely forgiven. Not just from Onizuka's point of view either but his girlfriend, although clearly having been through the worst experience of her life, instantly forgave him after a few panels of tears. Onizuka himself also thought it was a good idea for her to stay with the guy. Of course this isn't a completely unrealistic outcome, at least between the couple. It's no secret there are people in the world who stick with the wrong partner for whatever reason. However that doesn't make the result any less unsatisfying.

Later on there is another girl who is raped by a gang leader who forces her to be his girlfriend. As punishment when she decides to leave the gang he has his 30 men gangrape her. Or at least he was about too but at the last minute steps in and saves her along with Onizuka. Much like before this man is completely forgiven by the girl and he befriends Onizuka too despite what he'd done to the girl who was one of Onizuka's closest friends. At that point it was already getting to be almost impossible to empathise with Onizuka but that wasn't even a droplet in the ocean of dirt Onizuka would later plunge himself into. The single moment that completely ended any attachment I may have had to Onizuka or any faith in this series whatsoever comes very late on when despite everything he's preached about before, he breaks into his friends house and tries to rape her while she's sleeping. Getting as far as pulling her clothes off and swinging his body into mid thrust before she luckily woke up and kicked him away. What happened after that? You guessed it. She forgives him after screaming at and hitting him a couple of times. I can only imagine how former readers of GTO with prior bias towards Onizuka tried to laugh this scene off and push it to the back of their minds as they continued reading. But let alone Onizuka's character it's hard for me to understand why Fujisawa thought it would be funny to have the protagonist lose control of his libido and go so far to satisfy his sexual urges as to result to such a vile act.

You could go the route of the social justice warrior and talk about how the women are only used as narrative objects for the men with almost every female character being completely degraded and stripped of any dignity whatsoever in this story. Or you could even criticise any use of sexual violence in any manga which leads to a character having their clothes stripped before the viewer. I however won't be doing either of those things. As a story targeted at pent-up teenage boys from the perspective of two horny teenage boys who just want to fight and have sex with any girl who comes into view, it's not such an incomprehensible thing that the women would be portrayed in such a way. Although it's certainly uncomfortable. If that's how Fujisawa wants to set up his manga then I wouldn't begrudge him that. Violence, sex, edginess and cool one liners fired off at the right times sell after all.

Overall I wouldn't recommend SJG anyone at all. If you enjoyed GTO and can overlook the sketchy moments in this manga then I'm sure you'll be able to at least enjoy seeing a younger Onizuka. Towards the end there are also some better arcs you'd likely love. One of them even has no rape scenes whatsoever! If only that hadn't been an anomaly perhaps this manga could have gone somewhere.