Yankee-kun to Megane-chan ch78-80
Stereotypes are often exploited in media and stories. While some may seem to have some truth in it (Asians are smart, Afrian descendents are good at basketball, the French eat snails, etc. etc.), there’s always the individual to consider. Yankee-kun to Megane-chan doesn’t completely break away from the clichés, but it doesn’t need to with such a colorful, jocularly drawn cast full of both stereotypical side-characters and original individual characters to address the commonplace conflict of the typical high school status quo in its own unique and hilarious way.
Before jumping into the chapters, let’s go through a quick overview of Yankee-kun to Megane-chan.
Genre: Comedy, Action, Shounen, Slice of Life, (a tiny bit of) Romance
Currently Scanlated Chapters: 80
Read online @ MangaFox
Shinagawa, a deliquent who couldn’t care less about the class field trip, is hounded down and pestered by the glasses-wearing class rep, Adachi, who wants Shinagawa to come with her to the class field trip. Why? Because she’s not a typical meganekko, but a former deliquent, Hana-san - all brawns, absolutely no brains, and lacking in ability to socially interact with others. From then on, Adachi sticks with Shinagawa and, despite Shinagawa’s initial dismay, he learns to get along with her oddities and impossible quests. Along the way, they and a few other deliquents – Izumi, a genius ex-motorbike gangster; Himeji, punk girl who is never taken seriously because of her cuteness; and Chiba, a tall, misunderstood young man – form the student council and make it their duty to make high school fun for everyone.
「 Ch. 78 – This is the Era of Tactical Warfare! 」
The yankee & the meganekko face off!
A deep, meaningful representation of the public outlook on nerds…
Almost every school has some sort of event which takes the combined effort of all students – culture week, open house, school assemblies. But along with these events follow the wave of groans belonging to the students who don’t give a rat’s ass about retarded school activities that require “school spirit” and “teamwork”; many of us, including me, are not ashamed to say we have no school spirit whatsoever. Who can blame us when the events are so lame and dominated by preps and student body kids? Shinagawa is among such students, and it is not until the end of the chapter he begins to understand why everyone, from the delinquents to the visual-kei boys to the computer club, is very hyped up for the Sports Festival. Infected by everyone’s school spirit, Shinagawa and I are struck by a hilarious, mild shock factor by the end of the chapter. This and the next few chapters, while not filled with the delinquent action or much slap-stick and visual comedy that Yankee-kun to Megane-chan is loved for, is a more a of cute story focusing on Shinagawa’s character development.
「 Ch. 79 – An Old Guy’s Reaction 」
COMPUTER NERDS DOING CARTWHEELS
(ﾟ⊿ﾟ)
Their school takes it to the extreme as Mon Shiro High is divided in two – best friends refuse to talk to each other, boyfriends and girlfriends break-up with one another, and even Adachi does not pester Shinagawa, unless to gloat or spy, which I found every in-character and hilarious. Shinagawa, determined (mostly pressured) to lead the red team to victory, naively puts the team’s emphasis on the six-legged race and the relay race, believing only will-power and fighting spirit is needed for the cheering contest. While will-power and fighting spirit sound nice, we learn the cheering contest involves actual cheerleading, as in cartwheels and pyramids and such. (Unfortunately, they don’t have a 9-year-old prodigy to cheer and win for them.) Recalling Shinagawa’s team (the computer nerds, the visual-kei boys, the delinquents), you could probably tell Shinagawa has one heck of a team to work with… I love-hate the focus on the cheering because 1.) cheering requires skill rather than brute force, so they will have to practice hard or pray for a miracle and 2.) dance-like moves often look cheesy and lame in manga, especially the practice montages.
「 Ch. 80 – You’re Way Too Loud!! 」
A variety of people you'd want to be friends with in high school!
If it wasn’t obvious before, this is when the let’s-work-hard, put-your-heart-into-it, practice-makes-perfect montage comes in, illustrated by Shinagawa’s shining leadership and ability to pull everyone together. So after he and the boys (no girls, strangely enough) finish practicing their highly anticipated cheering routine for the day, they all decide to peek at the white team’s practice session– big mistake. Moral drops and one by one, less and less people show up to the practices. The chapter ends in a rather depressing note, but I have two guesses:
1. Yoshikawa-sensei keeps the depressing note and the next chapter will show that the white team has pulled of the “Five Story Tower”, a move last year’s red team executed during the Sports Festival.
2. The white team’s practice was so horribly, depressingly bad that Shinagawa cannot help but think it unfair for the whole school overall. Afterall, Adachi is leading the other team, and she tends to, unfortunately, fail everything (or pass by a nosehair).
I can only hope that, for comedic sake, it’s the latter rather than the former. Afterall, Yankee-kun to Megane-chan is a hilarious manga filled with irony and the badass yankee attitude - serious stories can only last for so long.
Into a drama instead of an anime?! :O
Believe it or not, I had an ulterior motive to this post — to celebrate the release of the live-action drama of Yankee-kun to Megane-chan! For years I have been waiting for an anime to release, but unfortunately they chose 3D over 2D…
What I’m most concerned about is the emphasis on drama – afterall, dramas are dramatic, right? But Yankee-kun to Megane-chan is, believe it or not, a shounen manga, and the romance is very, very minimal, so I would be very disappointed if they shifted the whole focus on the love-aspect relationship of Shinagawa and Adachi, despite how much I would love to see them get together.
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Tofu
Suu
Vivi
YtM is such a great read~ Sports Festivals are always fun. Lol, I'm not one for participating in school spirity things either xD
Woah, a live action drama? I didn't see that coming! Why wasn't this adapted into an anime earlier? ;w;
Yeah, good thing I’m in college now, school spirit is only necessary to argue with your friends from other colleges XD
YtM would make a funny anime, dunno why no one picked it up… ;-;
There's two things that I don't like about YtM. One is that every time Adachi has her hair down she acts like a different person, Shinagawa is stupid he's not going to be able to tell. The other is that the current translations to actual releases schedule is about 1:2. There's nearly double the amount of chapters released in Japan then has been translated. Makes me sad…………….
Also that drama looks awful, which is too bad because GTO had a great drama.
Yeah, that really bugged me, because Shinagawa saw Adachi with her glasses off before so the hair shouldn’t change much; so yes, he is very, very stupid, but I guess so is everyone living in Metropolis who doesn’t know Clark J. Kent is Superman. On Adachi’s behalf, I figured it was because Shinagawa treated her differently that she reacted differently. Even with her hair in braids she has her serious moments, too, kind of… XD Good thing these sort of moments don’t occur often, haha.
Uugh yeah, I wish there were more scanlators, or else I’ll have to resort to learning Chinese or Japanese…! “orz
I love this manga. I've been reading it for a while and it's really entertaining. For a while though, the artstyle reminded me of Fairy Tail or something like that… You know… >_>
Anywho, WHY THE HELL ISNT THIS AN ANIME YET. Gah, it'd be so awesome. I don't know why i like shows with Delinquents so much o,O!
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Wow, you're right, it does seem a lot like Fairytale!! It always reminded me of One-Piece. All three are pretty goofy and awesome haha
It's because deliquents are BAMF >:D an anime would have captured their "don't f*cking mess with me" or "WTFFF?!" expressions better than any human face can convey!! ):
WHOA, THEY'RE DEVELOPING IT INTO A DRAMA?! I'm probably slow about that, BUT THAT'S STILL KINDA GREAT! I'd like to see how THAT turns out :D Awesome review, Vivi ☆
It is kind of great!! TYTY Tiff ♥
http://www.mangafox.com/manga/fairy_megane/
Someone was talking, art style to be similar to Fairy Tail….you called?
OMG, I can't believe I forgot to mention that!! XD That short is uber awesome, thanks for the link!