One man’s trash may be another’s treasure, but when it comes to manga, there seems to be a general consensus on what constitutes a bad comic: over-the-top fanservice, sexist plotlines, a complete disregard for logic, and lousy artwork. Choosing a winner for the Worst Manga I’ve Ever Read contest was difficult, as all the contestants made persuasive cases for the titles they nominated, but Erica Friedman edged out the field with her funny, take-no-prisoners assessments of Pretty Face and Weather Woman:
Pretty Face by Yasuhiro Rando is inexplicably described by Publisher’s Weekly as “a tightly written, cute little shojo manga with promising dramatic undertones.” I think they must have been reading something else, because not only is there no way this is shoujo, it is not tightly written so much as tightly wound. Punk boy Rando is involved in a car accident and is badly messed up. Instead of ending up in a hospital, he’s found by a a rogue surgeon and his upper body is rebuilt to look like the girl in the picture he carried in his pocket. (Of course his lower body is just fine and needed no work.) Instead of being totally creeped out, the girl Rando now looks like, conveniently has a missing twin sister which she takes Rando for. And, of course, in natural sisterly fashion, she wants to take baths and sleep/snuggle with her now-returned sister. Only, haha, Rando still has his male appendages, if you get my drift. This over-hormonal, entirely unfunny, undramatic, untouching newhalf fantasy gag comic is gag-inducing.
My second entry submission is a manga that, despite everything, I adore. Weather Woman, by Adachi Tetsu, is softcore porn filled wrapped around a black heart filled with evil. I love it with all my love. It starts off at a place so low, and just drops lower and lower into squelchy masses of decadence and insanity that you keep reading just to see how low it will go…then you turn the page to see it goes even lower than that. The story follows sociopath Nakadai Keiko is her quest to become the most popular TV “weather woman.” It starts off with sabotaging the current “weather woman” with laxatives, then moves quickly into turning shamed Michiko into Keiko’s personal slave, with extra helpings of mortification. The series is not above blackmail… in fact, it wallows in blackmail and coercion. This manga is vile from the first page to the last, only one volume of which was ever translated into English (by CPM, so we’re going a way back now.) There is not a single redeeming quality about this series. It’s great. Also… totally shameful.
Sean Kleefeld‘s take-down of the Twilight manga earns an honorable mention, in part because it was thorough, and in part because it was funny:
Calling Twlight: The Graphic Novel a comic also means that you have to accept it as a form of sequential art. Which it is, but only in the sense that it’s a book that has art in a deliberate (to someone) sequence. It’s not really sequential art, though, in that it doesn’t actually flow as a cohesive narrative. There’s a bunch of images that seem like they should be related, but there’s no real sense of what the f*** is going on! Seriously, it just makes no sense. There’s some stuff going on with some characters, but you can’t make heads or tails of how any one sequence relates to any other sequence.
Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe it’s NOT a deliberate sequence. Maybe the printer got the pages mixed up accidentally and just bound them all together in whatever order he happened to pick them up. (I’m going to run with the assumption that the printer here was a guy. I don’t think I’m sexist, but I just have a hard time believing a woman would screw up something that royally.) Seriously, that must be what happened. That’s really the only explanation that for this. No, wait! I tell a lie. It’s possible that the printer just mislaid half of the pages. What’s in the book is in order, but every other page is missing. That must be it!
Of course, to find out for sure, I’d need to sit down and actually study the artwork. Which I’m pretty certain I couldn’t bring myself to do. I mean, yeah, she can draw people and knows basic anatomy and whatnot, but those page layouts are atrocious! They are an absolute muddled mess of lines and shading with no sense of composition or structure. People’s heads get cut off because there wasn’t enough room left in the panel, significant pieces of art get covered by word balloons… panels are so crowded with art, there no place for your eyes to rest, no room for the artwork to breathe. It’s really just a jumbled mess. I can’t imagine anyone reading this being able to follow along unless they already knew the story.
Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Well, he’s just bashing this because it’s part of the Twilight property and comic fans have been at odds with Twilight fans for a few years now.” But that’s not it at all. I haven’t read any of the Twilight prose books, nor have I seen the movies… For that matter, I have yet to meet anyone who actually has read any of the books or seen any of the movies. It’s true. No one I’ve actually encountered, to the best of my knowledge, has had any dealings with the Twilight property in any capacity. That means I haven’t tripped over any Twilight fans at a comic convention, I haven’t been stuck in line behind a couple of moms eagerly talking about the latest book, I haven’t had to listen to a group of girls squealing next to me on the bus about whatshisnamedudethatplaysthemainvampireinthefilm, I have had zero interaction with any of them. The sum total extent of my association with Twilight is the graphic novel.
For all I know the books are excellent pieces of literature and the movies are cinematic masterpieces. I wouldn’t know. So I don’t hold anything against the books, the movies or anyone who enjoyed them at any level. If those fans get something out of those media, more power to them! I didn’t get anything out of what I’ve seen, but that’s only because the graphic novel version was a piece of unintelligible crap! Seriously. I read the whole thing cover to cover and I still have no idea what the story’s about. I got vampires and high school and there was something about a Native American werewolf, I think. I was going to say that I got two-thirds of that from the sales pitch on the dust jacket. But the dust jacket doesn’t even say that much!!!
The book makes no frickin’ sense! None! You think the wildfires burning in Russia are a waste of trees? That’s nothing compared to what got pulped to make Twilight: The Graphic Novel! And that’s before you even consider that at least the wildfires were accidental; several people actually put effort into making such a bad comic!
Psst, Sean… the Twilight adaptation was done by a female artist. So much for your theory of innate feminine superiority!
Also offering his expert opinion was Ariolander, who named Psychic Academy the worst manga he’d ever read:
I would show off my copies of Icarus published manga before my copies of Psychic Academy. The series doesn’t have plot development so much as bust development…
Speaking of story, I wish I could say the story was comedic and was an excellent parody of bad sci-fi, but I have the sinking feeling that it was written in all seriousness. I think the only thing worse than the manga is its web-only anime counterpart which was so bad it couldn’t even make broadcast TV and it tried to pass it off as being “hip and cool” since it was internet-only and not meddled with by some network exec.
Fanservice run amok was a common motif in many of the entries. Christopher Joy joins manga expert Jason Thompson in naming Eiken as one of the worst manga he’d ever read:
Big breasts and bad jokes seemed to be what this series was all about. Stereotypical ‘harem’ manga with more focus on fan service than story. I couldn’t get past the second volume (hoping the story might improve after the first volume), so admittedly I don’t know if it did get better or not, but the increase in ballooning breasts storyline just turned me off.
Also panning a manga for its less-than-flattering depiction of women was Hiram Lozano, who nominated two titles for the Hall of Shame:
Ikkitousen: What better way to retell the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Saga than with women with exploding garments?
Seikon no Qwaser: This looks interesting, the plot is captivating, wait… did he just gain power by someone breastfeeding him?
Ayana Mudou concurred with Hiram and Christopher about excessive fanservice: sometimes it just ruins a manga:
High School Girls: Because we all need to know the habits and hygiene issues of high school girls.
Girls Bravo: Because everybody loves a man who breaks out in hives in the presence of women and the plot needs the women to be scantily clad.
Najica Blitz Tactics: Because one could not enjoy an action series without pantyshots.
Offensive gender politics landed Hot Gimmick! on Aaron Kooienga‘s Worst Manga list:
The worst manga (in full disclosure but never finished) I have ever read has got to be Hot Gimmick! by Miki Aihara because of the protagonist Hatsumi Narita, who has got to be the single most spineless shojo heroine I have ever seen. Her ineptitude and complete spinelessness made me quit reading after chapter four it made me so angry. That she would put up with Ryoki’s abuse and then finally ends up choosing him: what kind of message does that send? It’s like some warped version of “the power of love.” Forget self respect and self confidence — even if a guy threatens to rape you and treats you like a slave, if you love him enough maybe just maybe he’ll “come around.” That’s a horrible message! I mean, all the choices for love interests she has are ether morally repugnant (Ryoki), two-faced (Azusa), or related to her (Shinogu). The fact that Shingou is considered the best choice shows what warped world view this manga has where an incestuous relationship is looked upon as the “healthy” choice… I nominate Hot Gimmick! as one of the worst manga I have ever read for its completely demeaning portrayal of women and its warped perspective on love.
A man after my own heart, I must say.
A strain of masochism seems to run through many of entries I received. Yan Vernikov, for example, admits to “having a high threshold for pain” and almost never abandoning a series. But one title was so offensively dumb he jumped ship:
And then there was Kämpfer. Based off a series of Japanese light novels, this seinen manga is about sex change and fighting. At least for the main character, Natsuru, it was. Guy wakes up to find himself a girl. A random “gored” stuffed animal named Harakiri Tora tells him he has to battle other “Kämpfers” (female fighters) in this form. What ensues is this Ranma-esque series of transformations between male and female. Too bad this juggling back and forth feels entirely soulless compared to Rumiko Takahashi’s classic. Along the way, Natsuru is tossed into all-girls classes, takes part in drearily boring “fights” mostly consisting of bewilderment and random natural elements, and meets these other girl fighters some of which are on his side, others not so much. Each one of these fighting girls has a quirk of their own: a shy girl turning into one insane with bloodlust and a gun, a childhood friend that eats nothing but curry and fights with a katana, a stuffed animal-loving freak who fights with all sorts of swords and plays devil’s advocate, etc… Finally, throw in some ridiculous romance obsessions that go nowhere, with mostly everyone fawning over the male/female protagonist.
At the end of the day, Kämpfer doesn’t exactly know what it wants to be so it tries its hardest to blend everything that panders to moé-loving older male otaku and serve it in the form of a cohesive story with likeable characters. To this reader, it failed. Miserably. Although, it seems its success was opposite of how I had graded it, what with an anime with a second season on the horizon having been released. I fear for the industry now more than ever.
Special thanks to everyone who entered the contest! I enjoyed reading everyone’s entries, and am relieved to know that I’m not the only person who found Eiken, Qwaser of Stigmata, and High School Girls in extremely poor taste. I also wanted to thank the folks who didn’t enter the contest directly, but who blogged about the manga they loved to hate: Johanna Draper-Carlson, who also nominated Hot Gimmick! for The Manga Hall of Shame; Connie of Slightly Biased Manga, who made a solid case for Gloom Party and Queen of Ragtonia; David Welsh, who named Earthian and Air Gear among his least favorite titles; and Daniel BT, who posted an eloquent, hilarious assessment of a web-manga that he calls Twilight for Guys.
Thanks for choosing mine I sure didnt expect my pick to be chosen because Hot Gimmick (to me) is so obviously bad and because of my own perceived defences as a writer. thanks again it was a nice surprise for me in the morning.
Aaron, I thought your comments about Hot Gimmick! were perceptive and right on the money. I’m glad to see many other people had a similar, WTF? reaction to the series as I did.
I’m a little disappointed not to see Sean Gaffney’s review of Qwaser of Stigmata on your list. It’s certainly worth reading:
http://suitablefortreatment.blogspot.com/2010/08/qwaser-of-stigmata-volume-1.html
I think there is a need for a Best Worst Manga list. I enjoy series that are terrible in that funny way, but have been disappointed so many times (Qwasar of Stigma, for example). I wouldn’t mind something to guide my later bad purchases.
Thank you, thank you. /bows/
I have more where that came from, as there is a never-ending supply of appalling crap that gets published and somehow a whole lot of it seems to cross my table. Lucky me.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to this novel in which two huge-breasted “cybernetic” (whatever that means) policewomen pretend to be a lesbian couple to infiltrate an illegal fight club.
Cheers,
Erica
I love Pretty Face! Of course I am biased because I spent two years harassing Viz to release it so that I could edit it, but how could you not love involuntary partial sex changes!
Hi, Jason! From a female perspective — and I don’t pretend to speak for All Womakind or anything of that sort — it’s not the idea behind Pretty Face that offended me; in the right hands, the story could have been a wickedly funny critique of adolescent gender roles. It’s that the author uses the set-up primarily as an excuse for breast-groping and panty shots and glomping; the hero never seems to have much insight into what it’s like to be a girl, save for the fact that having a mean right hook can be both a blessing and a bane. I would love to see what Ai Morinaga could do with the premise; I have a feeling it would be just as un-PC, but a lot more pointed.
Pretty Face, a cute shoujo manga with dramatic undertones… Does that mean Swan is a feisty shonen battle to the death?
Who is this Mudou Ayana? I must stalk her.
If only CMX had thought to describe Swan that way, it might have sold more copies!
It occurs to me that one could think that Pretty Face was a shoujo if your only experience with shoujo was Hot Gimmick.
@morscerta – I think that’s the dark-haired glasses lead in Hayate x Blade. Your urge to stalk her is one of her defining characteristics, coincidentally.
@general – Um, um, I’m a Pretty Face fan too…*hides* Honestly though, it’s something I’m normally not offended by, but I thought all the fan service in Pretty Face was just so goofy and farcical that I couldn’t take it at all seriously. Underneath that was a nice mix of stupid fun and stupid drama served with some skillful pace and storytelling.
Eikan and Girls Bravo are complete inversions of everything I said about Pretty Face though.
I wanted to enter this, but I really love a lot of incredibly bad work like say, My Dearest Devil Princess. The only thing that’s truly bad in my book is mediocre. Mediocre is the depravity to my manga-reading Bene Gesserit.
Yeah, Eiken, Girls Bravo, Pastel, and (forgive me Jade) My Dearest Devil Princess… now *those* are awful fanservice manga! Pretty Face is William Shakespeare in comparison.
The fanservice is, of course, the whole point of the manga. -_-; That and the crossdressing. I think actually Pretty Face serves two functions which may be intended to appeal to different sets of readers: (1) the continual kinky fanservice and (2) the continual images of a girl — I mean, a guy with a girl’s face, but visually he looks just like a girl — kicking the crap out of obnoxious guys. Since he’s really a guy, obviously it’s not *actually* showing any sort of female empowerment (even if it were possible to show an anti-sexist moral in such a corny way), but the imagery is of a girl beating the hell out of dudes.
@Anonymous – “Hot Gimmick” is no more shoujo than “Pretty Face.” “Heartcatch PreCure” is shoujo. “Hime-chan no Ribon Colorful” is shoujo.
I’m siting here with Ciao magazine in my lap, having just realized that it runs “Mameshiba,” so I guess that’s shoujo too.
Hi, Jason! Your second point about Pretty Face was also something I read into it, but I thought it was just too implausible to tie it to the author’s intent. It’s really just meant as the gag that it reads as on the service, how plausibly can this guy pass himself off a girl, with its own implications of genders norms stated in the breaking of them. In the end, it’s a story about walking a mile in another person’s shoes though and enough assumptions and pre-conceptions are broken about the two sisters, if not femininity at large, that I can’t see the intent as intentionally sexist.
Now, My Dearest Devil Princess, doesn’t have anything enlightening going for it, but there’s an odd sincerity and devotion to the fan service tropes contained therein. It’s bad, but it seems like such a genuine vision of bad. It’s an interesting look into the author’s interests that, in my opinion, ends up reading a lot less sexist in intent than Death Note or Bakuman.
A dilemma with publication of Bad Books (I believe that many are intentional) is that unlike with good books, where certain demographics will often have fairly unanimous opinion, with a Bad Book, one man’s Cult Hit is another man’s Stupid Sh*t. This can be seen in the discussion of Pretty Face. Also, a lot of the discussion of Quasar of Stigma pre-release had me prepared for something Troll 2-ish, and that is probably what Tokyopop had in mind, not to mention the series’ author, but by trying to create something amazingly bad, we end up with just plain bad. When a comedian says their jokes are funny, one prepares for dull slop, a story described as “edgy” probably isn’t, and the same is true when a series is implied to be awful in the good way.
Anonymous, those are good points. Everyone is going to have their own interpretations of a work and there have been (*ahem* recent) times when I’ve let those interpretations get in the way of my respect for the opinions of others. It’s good to have that diversity though, it’s part of the job description for any audience or analyst.
On the other hand, it’s important to try to sniff out what the original artist intended in a work, especially when it comes to offensive material. It would be easy to just say the creators behind Qwaser no Stigma hate women and make a mental note to snub them if you ever meet, but that’s often the first step towards declaring a book obscene or incorrect and demand its destruction. I think if something is already worth the energy to react negatively to it, it’s worth trying to ascertain what the creators may really be trying to say as fellow human beings. I may end up giving the benefit of a doubt to a lot of terrible, terrible books, but it’s just funner that way.
Hi!
I was actually trying to find some information on an entirely different manga called ‘Gimmick!’ (and not the shonen-ai one, but rather the one about special effects makeup), and…Well, the little section on Hot Gimmick caught my attention.
While I agree with most of everything that was said, I would like to point out that Shinogu is NOT related to Hatsumi. It’s actually a large part of the story. He is adopted, and actually annuls his adopted child status later in the series. While the rest of it is on the mark, I would just like to have that one little point clarified…especially since the author admitted to making such a judgement without actually reading the entire story.
Hi, Kichy! Thanks for the clarification about Hot Gimmick!. It’s been ages since I last read it, so I didn’t remember that detail (though I had a vague memory of author resolving the “incest” plotline with some convenient device).
If you’re looking for a review of Gimmick!, Phile Guie posted a nice review of the first volume at PopCultureShock: http://www.popcultureshock.com/manga-review-gimmick-vol-1/43774/. Phil was pretty bullish about the series. You’ll also find a lot more review links at the Wikipedia entry on Gimmick!: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimmick!_%28manga%29. It’s been on my to-read list for ages, so maybe I’ll make an effort to track down the first few volumes for a review.