Book reviews

Chinomi-san7
Apr 03, 2021
Yankee-kun to Megane-chan review
tl;dr: A manga that has a solid build up as a group of friends go through high school showcasing well them enjoying the things high school students do, but has a completely worthless ending. 

This manga starts out pretty great. Watching Daichi and company go through three years of high school is great because the manga heavily focuses on highlighting the great aspects of just normal life, though in a pretty exaggerated fashion. The main cast is a really interesting bunch, and there’s a really solid group of reoccurring supporting characters alongside them that are used quite well in repeating roles. There’s also solid character development in most of the main and supporting cast. This combined with how there’s a good variety of stories that are paced pretty well and how the humor is pretty solid makes most of the manga pretty good to read through.

However, when it starts heading towards the ending it really feels like it drops the ball. When the manga reaches them in their third year and focuses on graduating, it really begins to drag on. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem if it managed to wrap things up with a solid ending, but it doesn’t at all. Rather, the ending is completely half-assed.  The core of that could be contributed to Hana. As the main heroine, you would expect her to be focused on heavily and get a lot of development. However, that isn’t the case. Throughout the manga, a lot of her background is hinted at, but nothing is made clear. Similarly, in terms of relationship development there’s a lot hinted at, but nothing explicit. There’s a lot of buildup that feels like its leading to an impactful conclusion. But that conclusion simply never happens. All that build up leads to nowhere.

To a degree, it felt like the manga ended before it should have, that it was building up for one more major arc in college considering it introduced characters that could be a part of it, but it just doesn’t. As the manga approaches its end Hana disappears from the narrative, which feels like a set up for what had been building up all this time to finally be dealt with, but things keep going, the manga reaches the ending, and Hana simply isn't dealt with at all. There’s an epilogue that kind of tries dealing with this, but it deals with it in a way that’s so abrupt and random that it feels completely pointless, in that it doesn’t actually resolve anything definitively but rather it actually diminishes a lot of everything up to that point, and hence doesn’t fix the mess of the ending at all, leaving an overall feeling of hollowness. The art wasn’t so great starting out but eventually became decent. 
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hexashadow1313
Apr 03, 2021
Yankee-kun to Megane-chan review
To everyone who's hesitating whether should read this series or shouldn't, I highly recommend you guys to read this.

Yankee-kun to Megane-chan isn't any of those stereotypical mangas about romances being included in school life and such, it's different in an unique way. You'll see a really funky opening of the story-- believe me, it IS funky-- and the more you continue to read the series, the more you enjoy it. The characters are all well-made, even though Adachi Hana could get on your nerves sometimes, but she's one of the most hilarious character ever appeared on a series. Her idiocy is so entertaining in some or other ways. And meet Shinagawa Daichi, your extraordinary yankee. I love every bits of his character, especially. Then the art... hmm it kinda looks funny sometimes, but it has the author's characteristics (even though kinda looks like Hiro Mashima's art, dontcha think). I don't mind it. The best part of this series is one simple word: development.

Yes-- I feel it. At first, this story was no more than a stupid comedy that could make you laugh your ass off (seriously) and the story just goes wherever the author wanted it to be. But as the story goes on, you could definitely see the developments: it's still as hilarious as ever, but slowly the story is forming into a more solid, dense one. It's starting to have its own 'core' as time passes by. And not just a comedy, the stories themselves started to have their own meanings. And you can also enjoy the character developments, especially Shinagawa's. He changed a lot in the story. And that is really enjoyable.

Indeed, one of the best comedy-school life ever, I guess.
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andrewww_15
Apr 03, 2021
Yankee-kun to Megane-chan review
Okay... This is my first review. My deepest apologize if i have some mistakes in english. So, yankee-kun to megane-chan, first time i decided to read this manga just because i really interest in school life's story. When i saw the art (honestly, i'm the kind of person who see the cover first and then decided to read) i was sure that it would be comedy. And then i begun to read it. What a surprise. It isn't comedy at all. I mean it's true that japanese manga art never contains a single genre of story. But in this manga we can also learn about how the delinquent's life is.

I also don't mention it's non-mainstream manga because we already know that there're a lot of other delinquent story. Nevertheless one thing that makes me really enjoy to read it is the collaboration of past life story, love and idiocy.
Haha... I'm so exited about the last three points here.

Then, here some synopsis of the story

The story begun with the appearance of the famous Mon Shiro's local delinquent named Shinagawa Daichi. He's a super delinquent who's never care about other people and his entire school environment. His hobby was just sitting down in toilet, smoking, watching a porn and doing other useless things. He was a great shirker. Fortunately his life was changed when someday he met with a glasses worn girl called Adachi Hana.
Adachi was just like a clumsy girl with idiot thinking. She's appearances was really old-fashioned. She had a thick glasses, braided hair style and a sheet of "ahoge". Once a glare Adachi looks like a smart girl but in fact is totally opposite of that. She had a terrible exam scores even Shinagawa can totally beat her in math. Shinagawa just seems like a dumbass but actually he's genius in math.
Somehow Adachi started to drag Shinagawa into several social activity at school such as extra class, school festival, sport, etc. And little by little Shinagawa's mind was opened to a society.

One of the biggest break through in Shinagawa's life is when Adachi asked him to be student council vice-president at the election. That's unbelievable. How could an anti-social person like him have a favor to participate at student council's election? But in fact that's happened. After several miracles Adachi won the election and Shinagawa become the vice-president. During election Shinagawa met another strong ex-delinquent named Gakku Izumi. He is good looking boy and smart. Shinagawa ever had a some battle with him and the result was draw. Instead be an enemy he decided to join student council member as Shinagawa's teammate.

When Shinagawa did his job as vice-president of student council he learnt a lot about sociality. He often dragged into other student problem and unbelievably he could solve their case. Of course he solved it with his own ways. The delinquent ways. He gained many friends because of that. He realizes that he isn't lonely anymore. He starts to concern about the other persons. But Shinagawa is still a blockhead person that wanna do something egoistically. She is just delinquent after all.

If i'm not wrong in volume 6 of this manga was revealed Shinagawa's love story. Actually Shinagawa and Adachi had met before when he took an entrance exam in Mon Shiro High School. Shinagawa just fall in love with Adachi at the first glance. But that day Adachi really had a different appearance. She didn't wear glasses and her hair style wasn't braided. She obviously looked cute that time. Unfortunately Shinagawa hadn't asked her name when he met her at entrance exam. So Shinagawa spent his entire time in high school to search her. Too bad. He didn't realize the person who's he looking for is just really close to him at the whole time
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Memerulesworld14
Apr 03, 2021
Yankee-kun to Megane-chan review
This is genuinely one of the most bizarre things I've ever read.

It may seem strange that this is the case as, for the most part, this manga is just another inoffensive romcom. In fact, I actually believe a large majority of this manga is respectable. It has a unique cast of lovable characters and is supported by its wonderful art. The series does take an obvious decline starting at around the halfway point with constant introductions of pointless, uninteresting characters and overused formulas/storylines, but most of it was bearable. Problems like this exist in most long-running romance comedies, and I am definitely no stranger to this.

What really makes this manga bizarre is the absolutely psychotic ending.

There are plenty of acclaimed manga with heavily criticized endings. Prison School and I Am a Hero first come to mind, but at least those series have endings that are somewhat consistent with logic and have reasons. Prison School's ending is a pretty obviously trolly one and makes sense given the author's attitude at the time, and I Am a Hero's ending is a realistic conclusion to the story (one that I believe is almost genius in how little it cared for standard storytelling rules in terms of structure and completeness). On the other hand, I cannot even begin to fathom the ending to Yankee-kun to Megane-chan.

--sorta spoilers ahead for the last 20 or so chapters (specifics intentionally kept very vague)--

In the final arc, a very, *very* important character is completely removed from the story, and no explanation is given. What's strange is that all of the other characters do nothing about it, and hardly even react to it - not even the missing character's primary love interest! Up until this point in the story, every character had relatively consistent characterizations and they all cared heavily about each other, and so a reader would normally expect the cast to tear up the world if this were to happen. However, the cast only initially reacts with shock and forgets about it pretty much immediately. A rushed theory on what happened is given but is contradicted literally a couple of panels later. In the epilogue of the manga, there is a time skip and every character's future is detailed, with hardly a mention of the missing character, until the very last 5 pages in the most nonsensical, mind-boggling stupid way possible. It is not even an explanation of what happened, it is just a brief cameo of the character.

--vague spoilers end here--

Upon reading the ending, I assumed that this was the result of the series being axed in the middle of an arc or something. However, this is not the case - the series was relatively popular, and the author just intentionally chose to end it like this. There is no greater mystery in the world than why she decided to end it like this. Disappointing is nowhere near enough to describe it - any reader could see that there are gigantic, glaringly obvious plotholes everywhere surrounding it. There is no section of the fanbase that could possibly be appeased with this. It is not just written unbelievably poorly, it also doesn't even accomplish anything. Entire 40+ chapter storylines are rendered completely pointless because of this plot direction. If the author wanted to end the series quickly, there were very simple, safe, and obvious ways to do it. She very easily could have ended the series in a way that would appease her fans, but she went out of her way to add this insane and inexplicable plot direction. And so I genuinely thought that the author must have absolutely detested the series at that point and wanted to end the series in an intentionally disappointing and trolly way.

However, the series received another epilogue 6 entire years after the original ending. This made me start to reconsider. Was the author going to fix everything? Was she going to retcon the original ending, or perhaps give a better explanation for the events of the original? Was she finally going to relieve the fans' from their years of frustration and disappointment?

Nope. Instead, the epilogue pretty much just rehashes everything we knew from the original ending, except with a very obviously different (and worse) art style.

...what

What could possibly be the explanation for this? If she really hated the series so much, why even bother releasing an epilogue for it? The only possibility is that the author wanted to give one last 'fuck you' to the fanbase by saying "Yeah, I wanted it to end like this". This is the only possibility in my head, but nothing online even remotely suggests that the author hated the series. Instead, evidence points to the contrary.

It doesn't make sense from a production point of view or an in-universe point of view. I have never been so confused after finishing a manga. It is genuinely impressive how inexplicable the ending is. What even.


Anyway, I find it pretty difficult to rate the series. I would give the first 10 or so volumes a strong 6 to a light 7, the later volumes around a 5 to a 4, and the ending an obvious 1/10. The ending severely dampers the entire series, and I don't think it is worth reading in its entirety because of it.

Overall, I would recommend reading up to the point where the cast graduates from their second year and pretend it ends there. Otherwise, stay away unless you really want to see a good series crash.
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GGShang2
Apr 03, 2021
Yankee-kun to Megane-chan review
I can sympathize with author Miki Yoshikawa's dilemma. She was a lowly 23 year-old assistant on "Fairy Tail" when she got a chance to write a one-shot in 2005. Yoshikawa knocked it out of the park, coming up with a creative, funny scenario involving two oddball, likable characters in Shinigawa, the "Yankee-kun" of the title, and Adachi, the "Megane-chan". The bespectacled heroine tries to convince the school delinquent, camping out in the bathroom, to go on a class field trip.

After this initial success, Yoshikawa was offered her own series based on the one-shot in a popular magazine at only 24. And what do you know; the duo went on more funny adventures, and new, amusing characters were introduced to the cast. The manga was well-received and its sales were excellent.

Eventually, however, she had run out of ideas for humorous adventures. And yet, every week, there was that brutal deadline for 20 fresh new pages. What to do? Canceling a popular series, especially the first hit for a young writer, was unthinkable. So she soldiered on.

Storylines were repeated. New scenarios were nonsensical pap that led nowhere. In an effort to break up the monotony, many new characters, including underclassmen, were introduced as the main cast aged.

They all invariably sucked, with each being an increasingly paler imitation of the main five introduced early in the series. But they weren't the only lousy ones. Instead of developing more personality and complexity, the central characters all became increasingly trite and one-note. For instance, Izumi by volume 14 was a bland, irrelevant character despite having been an amusing, colorful scene stealer when first introduced.

I noticed this very clearly. A manga that I would look forward to and laugh at gradually became dull when its plot holes and non-existent motivations weren't making it annoying. And as it continued to degrade further, it became outright torture to complete a chapter.

While many readers noticed this huge drop in quality beginning with volume 8 or so, many others continued to enjoy it.

However, it all come to a head with the manga's conclusion, one so dire, lazy, and insultingly stupid that even the most ardent defenders of the series cried foul. Personally, I could almost feel the author's hatred of the characters and desire to be rid of them. Having them all die in a tragic mercury poisoning accident after eating at the same sushi restaurant would have been more merciful than their actual fates.

If nothing else, the last 16 volumes of this manga indicate the flip side of any series attaining success. Namely, the unrelenting pressure to keep going. Yoshikawa should have never let it get to that point, but as a first-time writer, one can empathize with her plight.

My advice? Read the first 7 volumes, enjoy them, and pretend that's where the series ended.
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xfearslovex9
Apr 03, 2021
Yankee-kun to Megane-chan review
From a summary, one would assume that this is a stereotypical high-school romance where opposites attract, but this reviewer assures you, it is far from that. Absolutely ridiculous, yet that's what makes it so enjoyable. We've no average character tropes here; Hana is the total antithesis to the banal class representatives previously seen. She's violent, completely lacks common sense, isn't all too clever. She usually scores lower than Shinagawa, leading to amusing score face offs. Whenever she decides to pull an all niter with regards to study, she ends up falling asleep during the study, and can't be woken the next day, for the actual test.

Daichi Shinagawa is known throughout the school as a 'yankee'. He's foul-mouthed, bad tempered, skips classes on a regular basis, and is failing the majority of the classes. He finds school incredibly boring, until the class representative, Adachi Hana, happens to peer down at him when he's in the bathroom, and attempts to get him to come on a school trip. From this point on, Shinagawa is constantly roped into Hana's schemes, whether he wants to be, or not.

One of the more amusing points of this manga is Shinagawa under the impression that Adachi has feelings for him, hence why he thinks she is always roping him into everything. In one chapter, Daichi even writes, 'there's this girl who clearly likes me, what should I do?' to a suggestion box made by Adachi herself, and she remarks that the guy is 'clearly delusional'.

Although the two main characters are the story's strength, there's an amusing range of side characters, too. We are first introduced to the one time hikikomori Seiya Chiba, where Hana thinks that he won't come to school over Shinagawa being too fearsome. It turns out that Chiba is far more fearsome looking himself. We've Hana's underling from middle school, Rinka Himeji, who goes so far to be at Hana's side that she transfers from her own school to where our heroine is. And there's Gaku Izumi, an exceptionally clever student who's forever locking heads with Shinagawa.

The artwork is rather pretty, and has a certain flair to it. Yoshikawa excels at facial expressions, especially the 'yankee' facial expressions. Whenever a character tends to make a, 'yankee face', one would almost heAR the stereotypical yankee accent resounding in their head.

At time of this review, there are eleven volumes out in Japan, and four have been translated. If you're getting annoyed with the generic high-school romances that adorn manga, I'd advise you to give this a go. Certainly different, and thoroughly enjoyable. Hopefully you'll adore it as much as this reviewer currently is.
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RoadZero9
Apr 03, 2021
Yankee-kun to Megane-chan review
Before I start, I would like to mention that my opinion of this manga is not always a 8/10. It would be like "Wow interesting and fun manga!" to "Kinda a typical school life and school council manga" to "Finally some character history and reeeaaall development!!" then finally to chapter 199, looking at the whole package, I give a 8/10.

Story: 8/10
The story is the main focus of every manga. And the story of this manga seemed to range in quality in huge ways. The focus was often blurred due to new concepts, events and characters thrown in and abandoned in a few chapters (The twins, some love issues). However, it still has great progression (although some of the issues were later on addressed, it seems too late and too little - The history of Adachi for example).

Personally, I felt that the story was more towards the making of Yankee-Kun into a slapstick, school life and slice-of-life manga. There were some inconsistencies that bewildered me, (e.g. identity when fighting).

But overall, the story was captivating, very fitting of a shounen manga and is fun overall. The manga seems to have many small events, or rather "arcs" that were interesting and show how the many characters interact with each other.

Art: 8/10
The art was very shounen-esque, like what you would see in Fairy Tail, One Piece etc. It bears very high resemblance to Fairy tail character designs though, and has great detail in some places.

Reason why the Art was not 9/10 or 10/10 is that it is not remarkably amazing with backgrounds or detail, unlike a few mangas I have read before (e.g. King of Hell, which features a lot of action).

Also, due to the many "regular" characters that are present in Yankee-kun, I assume that there was a problem with differentiating the characters. For example, some characters were practically the same, just that they have different hairstyles =.=. So sometimes, it is quite hard differentiating who is who, although some hair accessories would have helped greatly (For example Himeji with her black beads).

Character: 8/10
Character is the backbone of the story, so it is extremely important in every manga.

There are many characters in Yankee-kun so character development and design is quite an issue.

Firstly, a lot of characters, after they were introduced, were not developed well. For example, the history of main characters were often not explored for many chapters, so for character-wise I was thinking of a 6/10 until recent chapters up to 199. It is quite ironic that the characters we do not know much about the history and the factors affecting the main characters and yet read about them for so many chapters. Thus, we can mostly infer from the way they act and think.

However, they way the characters act seem to have changed a lot over chapters and events. Sometimes a few characters seem very enthusiastic and take the main lead in events, and sometimes it is other characters. Well, honestly up to here I cannot comprehend how some characters' behaviours changed so quickly as there was little mention of their past. Luckily there was clarification of some characters in recent chapters. Focus on events over character development is a flaw in Yankee-kun.

For character design, other than the character art, another issue is the personality and behavioural design of the characters. Some characters behave too similarly to each other, due to the large number of characters. This dilutes the distinct traits of characters and thus most characters are not so distinct. Especially for the main characters, since some of them rarely have 'screen time' for many chapters, it is hard to tell whether some characters are still main characters.

Another issue with character design is that after the introduction of new characters, some characters will have radically different personalities or behaviours which are largely unexpected. Take Kagawa for example...

Despite all the critique for character development and design, as at chapter 199 a lot of character issues have been straightened out and the mangaka seems to have found a focus over the main characters, which is great.

Enjoyment: 9/10
Slapstick comedy and slice-of-life from Yankee-kun reminds me of Gintama, although it is more focused on student council, school life and events.

This is a very enjoyable manga, despite at some points, it seems a bit duuuuhhh..... so persist until the end to enjoy it fully!

Overall: 8/10
A very good shounen manga based on school and student council. O yea, there are also a little romance and quite a lot of harem elements in this light manga. :D

P.S. This seems to be an underrated manga==, seeing how the manga was completed in May 2011 but there is still no anime for this manga.... WHYYYYY?!?!? D:
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Velkan14
Apr 03, 2021
Yankee-kun to Megane-chan review
I've got to say that this manga is probably one of the best ones I've ever read. You know when you feel like trying the manga your friend suggested for weeks? You don't look very forward to do so, but you still think of giving it a chance, even tough you probably think that will be a waste of time. However, after a few pages you're starting to get addicted to it without knowing. Does this situation ring some bells? Well, this is exactly what happened to me with Yankee kun to Megane chan. Such a humorous and fantastic story, I just had to rate this as a masterpiece because it's definitely worth it.

Story: 9

The summary is quite simple. A very powerful, ex-delinquent called Adachi Hana, wants to forget the past and finally be what she desired for a long time: To be the class rep obviously! In order to do so, she wants to stop using any kind of violence so that she can become a responsible and caring class rep.

Unlike many class reps, Adachi Hana really cares about everyone's problems and tries to solve them. Therefore, she starts following the school's No1 delinquent: Shinagawa Daichi. Don't get, however fooled, Shinigawa is not an ordinary delinquent since he actually has a good heart which will be shown more and more as Adachi makes him help different people in the school that are facing suspension etc.

As you go further through the manga, you can notice that Adachi's ambitions are getting stronger because she wants to also be the student council president apart from being class rep. And guess who is she making candidate for the place of vice president? Who any other than Shinigawa?

There are of course other characters that become closer to our Adachi and Shinigawa and they all end up being in the student council. You will see how much effort they will all put in order to makes things right in the school!!


Art: 9

I actually found it amazing. The characters were very nicely drawn, not like in most mangas where you cannot even distinguish who is who.
However, their facial expressions during certain moments were epic. I'm not exaggerating, I had tears in my eyes from laughter. Their expressions were way too hilarious and crazily comic.


Character: 10

Each character in the manga is very unique. It's actually the first time when I don't hate any character, they all have an important role in the story and they will make you laugh till you fall off your chair.

Enjoyment: 10

It is the manga that I mostly enjoyed so far. Every single chapter was amazing and as I was reading further I just felt disappointed that I'm getting closer to the last chapter.

Overall: 10

This manga really helped me to get in a good mood. Therefore guys, if you feel like forgetting about your worries for a while and have a good laugh, this manga is definitely for you.

PS: I RARELY give a 10 or 9 or even an 8, however this manga really impressed me and it deserved an outstanding!!!!

xx






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Yankee-kun to Megane-chan
Yankee-kun to Megane-chan
Author Yoshikawa, Miki
Artist --