Yamakawa’s fictional dream girl actually came alive for him! Only, reality turns out to be a hard pill for Yamakawa to swallow when she proves to be the complete opposite of her 2D self.
Creative Staff
Story & Art: Suu Minazuki
Translation: Christine Dashiell
What They Say
Sora Nagihara, the girl of Shouta Yamakawa’s dreams, is sweet, demure, and downright cute. The only problem is that she’s two-dimensional…literally . But when Sora miraculously comes to life from the pages of Shouta’s manga, he can’t believe his luck. That is, until he realizes that “sweet” and “demure” are the last words anyone would pick to describe this brazen, brutal babe!
The Review! (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Technical:
Yen Press does a nice job with the production of this first volume, especially the inclusion of color pages at the front of this book as some U.S. publishers have done away with those “bonuses” in recent years. The rest of the book has clean printing and good alignment. That is something I have grown to ignore in the last five years as few books these days have the problem of the text bleeding into the spine and forcing the reader split the books spine just to read some of the dialogue. However, there is a large publisher, who shall remain unnamed, that has gotten lazy with alignment and many of their recent books suffer from dialogue text disappearing into the spine. Thus, now I notice books that don’t have that problem.
Minazaki’s art is standard for this genre; cute girls and a male protagonist often drawn in SD for comedic scenarios. Backgrounds are sparse and the characters often lack detail in their eyes. Sometimes the dead-eye look is done for the story, and other times it seems to be Minazuki’s preferred style or maybe it is just easier and makes the page production quicker.
Content:
Yamakawa isn’t an average teenager. He doesn’t have special powers and he isn’t into standard school clubs and hanging out with friends. No, Yamakawa is obsessed with 2D girls and spends all his time in his room reading. His favorite manga and 2D girl is the sweet and innocent Sora Nagihara. Then one day his life is turned upside down when the Nagihara falls from the pages of his manga and into the real world.
Nagihara appears into this world unconscious and lying next to Yamakawa in his bed. Without a second thought, Yamakawa begins to cuddle up to Nagihara. Only, she suddenly wakes and grabs a fist full of his testicles and demands to know if he “has shit for brains!”. Yeah, that is the kind of book this is; rude, crude, and takes no prisoners!
Many of the jokes in this book play on scenes you would normally find in an eromanga, just without the sex. Personally, I enjoy eromanga, so I find numerous parts of this first volume of Gou-Dere to be plenty funny. But this style of comedy isn’t for everyone. Still, I appreciate Yen Press releasing a series like Gou-Dere.
Yamakawa quickly realizes that this Nagihara that has materialized is more of a tsundere and the complete opposite of the girl in the manga. However, while Nagihara is crude, she does claim that Yamakawa is her Master and that she will do everything in her power to help him produce lots of offspring on his way to ruling the world. Yamakawa has no idea how he could possible rule the world, but Nagihara’s regular intervals of kidnapping women and stripping them naked for Yamakawa to impregnate always ends up with the cops chasing him down and usually slapping him in handcuffs.
In the wake of Nagihara’s destruction, Yamakawa learns that the father of his female friend, Tenka, is the author of the manga about Nagihara. Yamakawa also comes to live with them after Nagihara gets him kicked out of the boy’s dorms. This leads to plenty of awkward moments where Tenka’s mother pushes the idea of Yamakawa giving her grandbabies and even an odd armpit hair battle between Tenka’s father and the instructor of Tenka’s Boxing Club. Yeah, these gags are sometimes so over the top that you can’t help but laugh at them.
Despite Nagihara’s appearance and claims, the manga creator accuses her of not being the “real” Sora Nagihara. But she materialized out of the manga for Yamakawa, so if she isn’t the real Nagihara, then who is she?
In Summary:
Gou-Dere is part battle manga, part sexless hentai joke book, and all over the top. This is one of those series that doesn’t it take itself seriously and recognizes that its fan base is looking for over the top scenarios and plenty of ecchi. These series have a place on my shelf as I get what the author is trying to accomplish, and I’m a sucker for ecchi series that I like to sprinkle between my favorite seinen series. So as far as that goes, Gou-Dere is an entertaining story with plenty of ecchi and one running “facial” gag of spraying women with various drinks and foods that made me chuckle out loud a couple times. Although, that gag will quickly become boring if done to often.
The jokes and mystery of who or what the materialized Sora Nagihara is makes me look forward to giving the second volume of Gou-Dere a chance.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: Mature
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: November 18th, 2014
MSRP: $15.00