Mar 28, 2024
Since there are no other reviews I’d like to give my take on this Manga. Now if my memory serves right only the first 50 or so chapters are translated into English so you might need to know Japanese for this one.
The contents of this manga are very niche. A lot of the jokes are based on Japanese pop culture in the early 2000’s. I spent a lot of time looking up certain expressions or references to grasp the joke. Luckily my wife who is Japanese knew a lot of the references and was able to explain the jokes to me. This makes the manga
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a little hard to understand for a western reader. That being said once you hit a groove and you start getting the jokes the manga becomes really fun to read. This manga is probably the only one I’ve read that gets me to laugh out loud multiple times a chapter. And while there are lots of reference to Japanese culture, Kumeta Kouji, who also really likes western media, also adds many references to famous movies and actors in western culture as well.
This manga is very similar to Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei. Both of them are gag mangas which are episodic and don’t really have any overarching plot. So if you like Zetsubo Sensei it’s safe to say you will like Katte Ni Kazo as well. I personally preferred this over Zetsubo Sensei. The main reason is the characters. The fact that there are less characters in Katte ni Kaizo really lets each character get their fair share of screen time. The 4 main characters Kaizo, Umi, Chitan and Suzu were all really enjoyable. I’ll start with my favorite, Umi, who has a fun character arch. She starts out as this normal girl who tries to stop Kaizo and his antics and eventually becomes this psychopathic character with multiple personalities. Next we have Chitan who starts off as this sympathetic underdog who is being bullied by Kaizo, but eventually turns into a stalker who gets these huge power trips over the smallest amount of authority. Suzu is the club president who is both beautiful and smart however we find out that she is hiding this huge secret from everyone. The last character and my least favorite story arch is Kaizo. It's not that it's bad but rather the direction it took wasn't as entertaing when compared to some of the other characters. Kaizo starts off as the most insane and eccentric of all the characters. He literally believes that he is a cyborg. He has these strange connections with people from his previous school who are just as strange as him. However, as the story goes on a lot of these creative aspects of him are dropped and he ends up becoming the straight laced character. Don’t get me wrong, I love that the other characters turned out to be crazy too but I just wish they would have kept some of Kaizo’s more interesting personality traits as well.
Katte Ni Kaizo was a really great manga! This kind of gag manga might not be for everyone but I personally found this to be funny and interesting. The jokes were really well done and the ending of the manga was really good. It's a shame this manga wasn't translated so that more people could enjoy it. However, if you can read Japanese you should really give it a go. Overall it's a 10/10.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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