Customer Reviews

Challengers, Vol. 1

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Challengers is Hinako Takanaga's debut work - a four volume story - published by DramaQueen. Hinako also brought us the for the charming and sweet Little Butterfly series. While not as good as her sequel series, in terms of storyline or artwork, Challengers is still a great shonen-ai manga and a very funny one at that.

Mitsugu Kurokawa, a young working professional, is out drinking late one night with his friend. When his friend Isogai falls down and throws up on a passerby Kurokawa meets young college hopeful Tomoe Tatsumi. Tatsumi is a remarkably naive and sweet young man who is in Tokyo for a college entrance exam. However at the same time he is a scatterbrain and lost in Shinjuku while looking for his hotel. Kurokawa, feeling guilty for his friend's drunken behaviour, invites his friend and Tatsumi back to his apartment for the night. The next day Kurokawa, concerned about Tatsumi getting lost again, escorts him to his college and spends the day with him.

While not realising it the normally straight Kurokawa gets enchanted by Tatsumi's childlike innocence and warmth. On their final day together Kurokawa finds himself kissing Tatsumi goodbye - an action to which Tatsumi promptly faints in shock. Believing that this was a normal foreign culturally unique way of saying goodbye, as Kurokawa's former stepfather was American, Tatsumi agrees to move in Kurokawa's apartment as a tenant. Kurokawa meanwhile is confused by his sudden love for a man and undergoing a nervous breakdown on how to show his affection to Tatsumi without scaring him off or getting arrested (as he is just underage). He also has to cope with Tatsumi's good looking but frightening older brother who is over-protective of his younger brother and has figured out Kurokawa's true intentions.

The story and Hinako's artwork are both extremely funny as we watch Kurokawa's inner struggle as he is torn between his friend's encouragement and his fear of losing Tatsumi (and getting killed by his brother). Although Kurokawa's actions are suspicious - as he is always tempted to give into his feelings and take advantage of any given situation - the reader is aware that Kurokawa is a good guy and that his love and affection is real. The art work is similar to that of Little Butterfly and also the Loveless series. This is a very funny, light-hearted and sweet shonen-ai (not yaoi) story about unrequited love (but lets hope its not so unrequited in part 2!)

CHALLENGERS is a funny and fast paced comedy about a young office worker named Kurokawa who helps out Tatsumi, a college freshman who is a genius with robotics, but otherwise very clueless and naive. Kurokawa falls for him like a rock, and when Tatsumi needs a place to stay, Kurokawa offers to share his apartment. This brings him under the scrutiny of Tatsumi's fiercely protective brother, who hates all homos, and is certain that Kurokawa is having nefarious thoughts. Kurokawa hopes to hide his passion long enough to allow Tatsumi to fall in love with him. But he must contend with his best friend Isogai, who enjoys seeing Kurokawa unhappy in love for a change, and mocks him mercilessly. Then there is Tatsumi's openly gay American classmate, who speaks in tortured Japanese and believes in "free rove".

One thing I don't like in the BoysLove genre is when one partner is treated like a cute little wide-eyed pet. But Tatsumi, clueless or not, has self-respect and is assertive of his own rights and needs. He gets into knock-down, drag-out fights with his brother, pursues his own goals, and sets effective boundaries with those in romantic pursuit, even when he doesn't even know they are pursuing him. Kurokawa, likewise, isn't an aggressive jerk, but is trying to keep a lid on his feelings in the hope that Tatsumi will eventually return them. There is more character development than you find in a lot of shonen-ai, even though the focus is on fast-paced farce. The art is like the characters, lively and full of personality.

The overall impression is of a bunch of people that you want to spend more time with, and an author one would like to see more of. And if you need to laugh till you gasp for air, this will do it.

There is one problem; the preview for the art in Book 4 shows Tatsumi looking like a wide-eyed little kid. The author confesses that she forgot he was in college. That doesn't bode well for the development of the character or (since there's already a bit of an age gap) for the relationship. So that is a bit disappointing, but I will check out the sequels anyway and hope I'm wrong.

It is my first DramaQueen manga, and they do a beautiful production job. They are normal sized manga, slightly thinner than normal, with dust covers and lovely paper quality. Unlike with some publishers, the attention to the actual product within is just as impressive, with proper attention to spelling and translation, and actually getting the characters' names right.

Hinako Takanaga's "Challengers" is funny, witty, character rich and very, very addictive.

I actually found this story via the branch-off series this spawned "The Tyrant Falls in Love". After reading this series I discovered that "Challengers" existed and instantly bought all four volumes because I knew it would be brilliant...it was better than I expected. Much better!

The mad over-the-top antic's of the Tatsumi siblings is a delight to watch unfold. The eldest brother, Souichi Tatsumi, is more of a father figure to his two siblings as their father is abroad working most of the time; as a result, he is very over protective of this family.

Tomoe Tatsumi is the younger brother and one of the main characters in "Challengers", he is exceptionally intelligent, but, as with most geniuses, not so good at the day-to-day living. In short he's a ditz and often makes mistakes, gets confused, gets lost and generally floats through life.

Kanako Tatsumi is the youngest, still in school but way, way too perceptive for her brother's liking.

We get to follow they're antic's as Tomoe ventures down a road he never even contemplated, Souichi tries to prevent it and verges on homicide.

Beautifully drawn, very funny, and excellent character dynamic's - Enjoy!

One of the funniest, and most charming, yaoi manga series ever, now sadly out of print due to the continuing troubles of the US publisher.

Hapless salaryman Kurokawa falls like a ton of rocks for cute-but-clueless college-student nerd Tomoe. All Kurokawa has to do to obtain happiness is persuade Tomoe that he really is in love, dodge Tomoe's homicidally homophobic older brother Souichi and Kurokawa's impossibly tempramental drama-queen mother, and keep Tomoe safe from the attentions of his predatory classmate Rick (an Offensive Gay Stereotype and an Offensive American Stereotype in one blond, suntanned, irrepressibly cheerful and utterly immoral package) - with the help of Kurokawa's sarcastic friend Isogai (the straight man - for the jokes, too), of course. After more screwball silliness than you can shake a slapstick at, the happy couple finally elope to America - home of Freedom, NASA, and Legal Gay Marriage*!

Volumes 2 and 3 have side-stories that bring you the touchingly angsty non-romance between Souichi and his long-suffering lab assistant Morinaga, which was spun off into the immensely popular series The Tyrant Falls in Love.

*actual marriage not included (It happens in Tyrant volume 3.**)

**After far too long in publishing limbo, The Tyrant Who Falls In Love (Yaoi) is out from DMP! Yayy!

I've probably read 100 or so Shonen-ai and Yaoi titles over the last year and, of those, the 4 volume CHALLENGERS series is by far my favorite. I found the tale fun and easy-to-follow; the story line cute, romantic and witty. Further, the characters were strong, interesting and remarkably well differentiated as to both personalities and appearance. They were all quite lovable, even big brother Souichi in his own difficult way - perhaps I intuit some of the same things deep inside of him that his puppy-eyed lab assistant sees! (I check Amazon EVERY week to learn if the related series featuring Souichi and his assistant, THE TYRANT FALLS IN LOVE, has been published yet in English. Alas, no.)

I'm probably not the greatest judge of Manga-style art but Hinako Takanaga's talent and style seem outstanding to me. The books are full of both hilarity and gay romance - but not so much "sex". Writers (mostly women - but a few men as well) of modern American M/M "romance" novels could learn a lot from Hinako Takanaga, if they actually cared to learn anything at all about how their craft needs wit, believable dialogue AND true romance (as opposed to their all too prevalent Craigslistian skankiness). With a few notable exceptions (for whom I give thanks), these M/M penny-a-liners surely DID NOT learn anything from their iconic predecessors, Mary Renault and Patricia Nell Warren.

I'm convinced that this series of books (Volumes 1 through 4) - perhaps incorporating the "tyrant" big brother's story as well - would make a fabulous live action movie. As I re-read the books today for the fourth time, I could almost see this delightful story evolving upon a screen.

Hopefully, THE TYRANT FALLS IN LOVE will be available to us someday in an easier to deal with format than YouTube clips. But the fact that the complete CHALLENGERS series can be found is something to be thankful for.

This was an enjoyable manga! The art is clean and crisp, and the characters are hilarious. Tomoe is completely clueless, much to a point where it was getting annoying; his older brother is an overprotective man who is just as naive, but the truly awesome character of all was Isogai... I wish he had a series of his own. For anyone into humor and a bit of romance, this is a recommended read.

You'll laugh out loud as you read this love story between an office worker and a college student majoring in robotics.