Medaka Box

Reading more Medaka box. I tend to dislike these over-the-top shounen series, where the super powers make no sense and the outcome of a battle is just whatever the plot demands it to be. But Nisioisin’s writing is interesting and manages to (barely?) create the sense of wonder about how there is some underlying reason and consistency to how the world works. Similar to something like Fate/, the characters are defined by their weird beliefs and their combat abilities are in a way just an expression of them. I guess it’s a core shounen trope that reality will bend to the beliefs of the characters, and the protagonists always win in the end because their beliefs are more pure somehow. So I guess what I like about the good shounens is that they just seem to manage to be more complex and original about it.

I like how, at least so far, characters don’t seem to change in this series. Villains stay villains, but they join the protagonists because it turns out it’s somehow the most sensible thing or what they wanted to do in the first place. It’s also interesting because despite being crazy strong, what Medaka is actually trying to do is change people for the better, but she never succeeds at it.

Reading more Medaka Box. It’s starting to become more interesting, and I’m a bit excited because I know nisioisin can actually deliver. I also realized some pages I’ve seen on /a/ ages ago are actually from this manga. Just now met the character Emukae Mukae and I think this is the one to deliver the page fulled to brim with yandere speech. Her first line to the MC Zenkichi, after falling in love on first sight, is “how many children do you want to have?”.

Oh lol, I paused to write the above and the yandere double spread turned out to actually be on the next page.

Hard to not root for Kumagawa. If villains drive the plot, then good villains drive a good plot.

Reading Medaka Box. Spent the whole day at it, didn’t go outside. Man, this just keeps getting better. One of the most original works I know of, keeps doing stuff I’ve never seen before and can’t predict at all.

Maybe one thing I don’t like so much is how over-the-top everything is, including all the breaking of fourth wall, because I think most of stuff would have worked even with a more serious take. I suppose this style is more suitable for a Jump manga. Monogatari is the only other work of Nisio I have read (I mean whose anime adaptation I’ve seen), and it’s different enough to convince me the author could have made this work very differently if he wanted to.

Reading Medaka Box. There’s so much weird stuff in this manga that I didn’t even bother to write about it because it would just become so long to explain anything and it still wouldn’t convey the ideas properly. So I’ll instead take on a minor point that I really like “second girls” and am rooting for Mukae.

As crazy weapons and fighting styles go in shounen, I don’t think there is an upper limit, but Mukae holding knives from the wrong end might be the creepiest I’ve ever seen. Admittely I’m weak to knives and cuts, but when I saw Mukae’s introduction panel with she holding those knives, I actually stopped reading the manga for days right on that page.