Maison Ikkoku

Title : Maison Ikkoku
Total Episode : 96 episodes
Genre : Comedy, Romance

Summary
Kyoko Otanashi is a kind hearted, beautiful young woman, who recently lost her husband of only a short time and has now come to work as the building manager of the run-down boarding house owned by her late husband's father, Maison Ikkoku.

Yusaku Godai is a young man on his second try at passing his college entrance exams and has had enough of the heavy drinking nut cases living at Maison Ikkoku, who seem to exist only to harass him, so is now determined to move out. When he goes to tell the building manager his intentions, Kyoko enters the old boarding house and announces that she is now the new building manager.

Instantly falling hopelessly in love for the first time in his life, Yusaku now has no intentions of leaving, but what chance does young Godai have with such a beautiful woman when he's having a hard enough time just getting into college?

Instead of watching the anime (who has time for downloading 96 episodes) I chose the manga version, namely the Viz first edition.

This is another classic. As a Romance/Comedy it was a good read, even though I hesitate to read such works, especially if they span over 14 volumes, where every volume has over 230 pages.

It was enjoyable but somewhere around the middle it started to get repetitive. Fortunately in the last two volumes it reached a conclusions to my relief.

As a Romance manga it is really difficult to be credible and move the readers feelings with so many coincidences and silly decisions occuring. What the reader can expect instead is the comedy deriving of almost all of the characters and the protagonist's amazing indecisiveness. Godai tops the list as one of the most pathetic and indecisive characters I've encountered. THough without these traits the manga wouldnt be so funny.

As for the other tenants of of Maison Ikkoku I must admit the mangaka was very inventive. They were perfectly fit for comedy. They always delve into Godai's private life and he cant do anything because he wants to stay at MI so as not to be separated from the house manager. I have yet to see such weird and funny character as Mr. Yotsuya. He's by far the most impressive character and too bad he's not given that much space in the manga.
That was the main reason why the manga turned a little boring in the middle.

As Godai's rival theres also Shun Mitaka. Basically he thinks the same way with Godai, except that he's more wealthy thanks to his family and more succesfull at sports and women. Both are in love with the house manager Kyoko.

The manga focuses exclusively on that trio (Godai-Kyoko-Mitaka) often ignoring or putting aside the other characters. One character I liked, probably more than Kyoko was Kozue and it is a pity only in the last volume the reader sees her do more than just dating with Godai and expecting his answer. Same thing with the student Yagami later in the series.

Basically the only flaw of the manga is that all the characters are never too deep to arouse the readers feelings for them.

The character that should have been better developed, namely Kyoko, is perhpaps the most flat of all. Flat for a drama series.

I expected MI to be more dramatic and a tearjerker but this is not the case. If the reader sees it as a romance/comedy then it is one of the good enjoyable mangas around.

It has so many cultural references and so many features of the 80's that it is one of the few mangas I'd prefered to read in the original. If you'd like to see the era of the 80's japanese urban life come to life (no abundance of TVs, phones or mobile phone here) this manga offers some enjoyable insights.