Reading this manga might change your luck on a bad day
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Cotoji
Translation/Adaptation: Amanda Haley
What They Say
At Tennomifune Academy, students with “negative karma”-the kids who are practically weighed down by misfortune-are all collected into one place: Class 1-7. On the first day of school, Ruri Hibarigaoka (Hibari) meets fellow 1-7 classmates Anne Hanakoizumi (Hanako), a girl up to her ears in bad luck, and the all-too-frail Botan Kumegawa (…Botan). These fast friends just want to have a fun high school life, but are they pushing their luck…?!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
On her way to her first day at Tennomifune Acadamy, Ruri Hibarigaoka seems like a typical melancholy schoolgirl unhappy that she must leave her “special someone” and go to high school. As she crosses a bridge, she hears a dog barking. After looking around, she looks over the rail and sees another girl hanging from a rail where it caught her hair. This is Anne Hanakoizumi who, realizing she can’t be saved, tosses the puppy up to Hibarigaoka. Then Anne falls, but getting wet seems to be the only ill effect. On reaching school, the assembled class learns that the classes have been divided into those with academic talent, those with athletic ability, and class 1-7 are all students burdened by misfortune. The beginning of the first chapter sets the stage of what will follow over the remaining chapters.
Ruri, whose nickname is Hibari, seems to be the early primary character. She seems world weary and laments missing her special person. Once we learn the identity of the special person, a new set of questions opens. While her luck tends not to be as dramatically bad as her friends, she lends them a hand when needed and hides parts of herself from others.
Anne, nicknamed Hanako, has the worst luck of the group, but she remains effervescent in her optimism. Her mother puts cushions at the bottom of the stairs because Hanako regularly falls down them. She loves animals, but those she attracts tend to do her harm.
Botan Kumegawa becomes the last of the group of friends. She is tall, blond, and absurdly fragile. With poor health, she learns to bandage her wounds from her father, a doctor. She goes well beyond self-deprecating when she feels her physical health has created a problem.
Finally, Sensei, the girls’ homeroom teacher looks over them as she guides them through luck building exercises. Sensei is cute with an hourglass figure and a tight skirt and top. Her other attributes include being a trained marksman and the ability to switch from soft and smiling to ferocious with a biting tongue.
Chapters have an episodic quality. Each chapter has a different environment or other attribute to create a situation where the bad luck will appear. Much like the opening where the bridge and dog offer situation for the comedy, a hike, a trip to the lunchroom, or even a character’s home offers a setting for absurd comedy.
So far, none of the chapters offer any character development beyond an initial introduction, but the characters work and the comedy offers a genuinely light-hearted take on the series’s concept.
The book itself has panel images sinking in the gutter, requiring more force than normal to open it enough to see all of the artwork.
Artwork focuses on characters with very little detail given to the background of most panels. Characters often dominate almost a full page, sometimes drawn over several panels. This creates more presence for those characters. Interior scenes have the least detail, often favoring a repeating pattern instead of showing the contents or architecture of the rooms. Exterior scenes have more environmental details with the natural world much more inviting and visually interesting. Because so many of the comedic situations occur outdoors, the enhanced details pay off.
In Summary
Sometimes a fun, silly comedy works to improve a bad day, and in that respect, Anne Happy works a charm. Character designs are not very original, but the artistic choices for conveying emotion stand above similar titles. Characters operate in a cartoon world where the implausible and impossible make falls from a bridge or an attack by a wild animal simply a scary situation that can end with a cute quote. A universe must be kind of magical if it contains a high school class created to teach those born unlucky to be happy, but fantasy elements tend to be a combination of luck in a natural world and the staged environment of a television obstacle course.
Anne Happy offers a light and consistent comedy with likable characters. While very much a gag comic, it feels more rewarding as the story follows the friends on their attempt to get through the class. Fans of gentle slapstick who don’t mind shallow character development will likely enjoy this volume for the breadth of situations and the absurd consequences of bad luck.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: C+
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: Teen
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: May 24th, 2016
MSRP: $13.00