Shouha Shouten!
Show-ha Shoten!

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Show ha shoten does not claim itself to be a hilarious manga. It touches on the difficulties that comes with being a performer in comedy, all while it stays light hearted and respectful of themes such as anxiety and misogyny.

The main characters Shijima and Higashikata are serious about their own individual goals. Shijima is yet to find closure about the girl he once had a crush on as she changed her name. Higashikata has faced obstacles in his past that he now wants to face by looking them in the eye. Both are anxious, but hopeful. Their journeys signify a great love of comedy ... that is emphasised in the way the author details the theory of comedy. Show ha shoten stays true to being heart-warming with endearing characters all throughout. At the exact same time, the stakes are high as every rival character in this story is a true competitor.

This is a story where the characters fail as much as they succeed. If you want a series with true passion, then this is the one for you.

This will likely be the only review I post, but I wanted to give my opinion on this manga since it seems to differ from the rest. Long story short: Show-ha Shouten! rocks, but if you are looking for a straightforward comedy manga you are in the wrong place.

Show-ha Shouten is, at its core, a battle manga. The central plot focuses on the development of the two protagonists, their victories, their losses, and the things they learn. For them, making jokes is not so much a matter of making us as the audience laugh, but learning what techniques will make the audience in the manga ... laugh. Things like timing, delivery, physicality, suspense, and subversion are all explored as though they are a science. But why? Well, for comedians, this is how comedy works.

Show-ha Shouten! resonated with me the way Haikyuu may resonate with those who played volleyball in High School. Many of my high school days were spent watching old SNL re-runs, analyzing the efficacy of Monty Python sketches, and longing to perform comedy in front of a live audience. I would memorize the way comedians shifted their cadence, noting how even the slightest inflection could impact the way a joke landed with an audience; I developed a greater sense of physicality through comic theatre performance, learning what it meant to play with the audience; I would go to stand-up comedy performance and watch the audience more than the comedian to see how they leaned into each joke and waited for release. To me, comedy was a passion, a science, and an art form all in one. Many people I talked to were shocked when I explained that the process of learning how to be funny was a distinctly unfunny one and that I spent more time studying than I did laughing at any jokes.

All of this is to say, Show-ha Shouten! is about the drive it takes to make people laugh. This series is about passion, failure, rehearsal, and lots of studying. It is about the rush that enters a comic’s heart when an audience laughs and the anxiety of entirely bombing a set. It is for every person that watched comedians, learned from them, and genuinely wanted to be just like them.

I believe everyone should give Show-ha Shouten! a chance. You may not be walking away in tears every chapter because of some fantastic one-liner or incredible visual gag, but you will walk away with a greater sense of the passion and hard-work that goes into comedy. Through the competitions you will begin to understand the vulnerability this form of performance necessitates and the dedication of those who choose to compete in this field professionally. You will also meet some fantastic characters along the way. I think this manga has some incredible partnerships and I think that is a given when considering how intimate comedy can be. There are also some pretty kick-ass women in the manga and a discussion of misogyny within the comedy realm (though how appropriately this is handled is subject to debate).

Show-ha Shouten! may not be a traditional battle manga, but it is an interesting one and an exciting addition to an increasingly diverse genre.

Show-Ha Shoten! Is made by the same creators of Death Note & Bakuman, Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, and it really shows! Classic shonen setups akin to Bakuman, where a talented duo put everything into their passion and get better and better while making new rivals and friends.
However, since their passion is comedy it becomes very difficult to show how skilled they actually are without having the characters in the manga bust out laughing while I read with a blank face.

They describe all of the techniques that are truly implemented into a good joke and the pros and cons of following up a ... certain type of act, but majority of the time it feels like the creators are forcibly laughing at their own jokes. The audience members and side characters all feel like a laugh track where their whole purpose is to let the reader know when to laugh and how hard to laugh.

for example (small spoiler warning; somewhere in the second contest their is a team is deemed to be a worthy threat as they've been growing in the comedy duo scene with rapid speed. The duo's skit entailed a small girl punching a buff man that's mocking her, all the whole saying some stupid nonsense phrase. Not once did I laugh at this joke..., but I have to believe they're funny because the audience seems them funny.

Overall this series has all the makings of a great shonen similar to bakuman, but set with the wrong subject that makes the whole series depend way too much on the readers interpretation of comedy. You could enjoy it just for bonds they form and the journey they go through and probably have a fun time. However, to me if a story about comedy duo rising to fame isn't funny than it doesn't seem believable and just takes me out of the story entirely.