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Maison Ikkoku, Vol. 1

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There are generally romantic plots in Rumiko Takahashi's works, but never more so than in "Maison Ikkoku." More sedate than "Ranma 1/2," less fantastical than "Inu-Yasha," this is a straightforward romantic comedy with a hysterical cast.

Yusaku is a struggling young student in a shabby apartment, with possibly the worst neighbors in the world (a pervert, a hard-drinking gossip, and a sexy waittress). Nobody takes him seriously; his nickname is "flunk-out." He's about to storm out, claiming that nobody could study in Maison Ikkoku, when the beautiful Kyoko walks in the door, announcing that she's the new manager. Yusaku immediately is smitten with her.

Unfortunately their relationship gets off to a rough start, though Kyoko is kind and supportive of him. First his neighbor claims he's peeking into her room. Then Yusaku accidently gets into a few compromising situations with Kyoko -- and suspects that she has a boyfriend named Soichiro (which is also her dog's name). When the landlord comes to visit, Yusaku finds out who Kyoko's mystery man is, and why she still thinks about him.

Takahashi's artwork is a little rougher and smudgier here than in her later series, but closer to how people actually look. And, in keeping with that, they act very much like real people. Some of the supporting characters, in the first volume, border on caricature, but the primary people are 3-D. And while there's plenty of humor, Takahashi tugs at the heartstrings in all the right places (such as Yusaku wondering how he can ace his test without Kyoko encouraging him, or Kyoko thinking that Yusaku didn't mean it when he said he loved her).

Without Chinese curses or rampaging demons to deal with, the inhabitants of Maison Ikkoku can themselves be formidable problems. Misunderstandings, teen crushes, drunken proclaimations of love in the streets, domineering relatives and lost "perfect" spouses make it a lot harder to fall in love. You know what's got to happen, but somehow the Real World always intrudes.

Yusaku is a lovable naif. The poor guy wants desperately to tell Kyoko how he feels, but there's always something in his way -- especially his own financial shortcomings. Kyoko is a fantastic portrait of a woman who, while determined to stay faithful to her dead husband, is starting to appreciate her hapless tenant.

Those who enjoy a funny, sad, almost-squeaky-clean almost-romance (like most of Takahashi's other works) will definitely like "Maison Ikkoku." Move in and join the ruckus.

Yusaku is a college student who never seems to do good on his exams. Does he blame himself? No, he blames the apartment house he lives in, named Masion Ikkoku. More to the point, he thinks that his fellow residents are ruining his life! Akemi, the bar-maiden who likes to walk around in her see-through nightie, becomes infuriated when Mr. Yotsuya, the enigmatic man with no job, is obsessed with her and peeps on her through a hole in Yusaku's room. Mrs. Inchinose's main job seems to be getting drunk and she also likes to join in with her kid son Kentaro in running down Yusaku as a failure and calling him "Mr. Flunk-out"! He's fed up with all this and decides to move out, but just at that moment in walks the new manager, the beautiful Ms. Kyoko Otonashi, and Yusaku is a complete goner, losing his heart at first sight.

Maison Ikkoku is a brillant piece of comedy from the creator of Inuyasha, Rumiko Takahashi. The great thing about this series is that it appeals to an older audience. It's treatment of romantic entanglement, slapstick humor, and mature innuendo appeals to men and women readers. Takahashi's main strength here as elsewhere is the creation of appealing characters and stylish design. Never an inauthentic moment. Classic.

Maison Ikkoku is sweet. Honestly. It's not a typical romance story-- the characters are funny, the plot is flawless-- even the art is just perfect. Here is the story...
Godai Yusaku is a hopless flunk-out that lives at the run-down boarding house maison Ikkoku (hence the title of the series.)THe neighbors there are completely annoying and entirely hopeless- there's the annoying, gossipy Mrs.Ichinose and her equally annoying son, kentaro, there's the sassy, calm, and entirely sexy barhostess, Akemi, and there's also the annoying and mooching peeping tom, Mr.Yotsuya. The manager has just quit, leaving the goofy tenants to torture poor Godai over and over with their late night partying and endless gossiping. Jsut as Yusaku has decided that he's had enough, he meets the new manager, the lovely (and recently widowed) Ms.Kyoko Otonashi. Of course he falls head-over-heels in love with her, but erh love for her late husband, Sochiro, and their nosy and insane neighbors keep them from tying the knot.
Both charming and heartfelt, this series is absolutely flawless-- no Rumiko Takahashi fan should be without it in their collection.

Finally, Viz has released an updated tankoban of Maison ikkoku. This first volume is the important one, as it collects the four episodes previously skipped in the original American run and the first version of the collected volume. This is a great comic, written with a sexual humor that would likely embarrass the Farrally brothers, yet with ten times the heart and a hundred times the intelligence. While later on, in some of the middle episodes of the series entire, there are some unnecessary characters added (especially Nozomu, the new tenant who starts off as brazen and a troublemaker but quickly turns into some kind of male version of uber-innocent Kozue), and the love triangle *almost* wears out its welcome on a couple of occasions, the final two-to-three dozen chapters create one of the great endings of manga, resolving the major conflicts beautifully, after some very sad and cathartic scenes involving the leads, Kyoko and Godai. Truly Rumiko Takahashi's most perfect series.

Just after I posted my previous review (which I wrote before reading it in that format) I went through the book--and my god! they didn't change anything! While that may sound good, it isn't at all! The episodes that appeared in the original run still refer to Godai as a flunk-out instead of a ronin, which wouldn't be so bad if they had a least changed his situation--he still says that he's trying to pass mid-term exams, and not college entrance exams. To compound things, the four inserted episodes that appeared in Animerica Extra do say Ronin and entrance exams, and then it switches back again after them. I had to mark up my book to make the corrections that it would flow right. Horrible,lazy editing job, I must say. Shame on you Viz!

That said, the series is still very good, though there are certainly some quibbles with some other translation choices (the scene where young Kentaro should be saying "I know what it takes to make a woman happy. The most important thing a man can have is a big. . ." and gets stopped by Godai [only to find out that he was going to say "house"] isn't as funny or that sensical in its current form). Even in this form, Maison Ikkoku is a classic manga worth reading.

It is a bit unfortunate that outside Japan the name of manga creator Rumiko Takahashi is often associated with the long-running series "Inuyasha." Don't get me wrong. "Inuyasha" is good; it is just overlong. Rumiko Takahashi's best work is, and will be, "Maison Ikkoku," a romantic comedy with a lot of crazy and adorable characters.

[STORY of VOLUME 1] Yusaku Godai cannot take it anymore. He is a high school graduate preparing for the upcoming university entrance examination, but he is living in the worst apartment, where eccentric residents never stop annoying him. Yusaku decides to leave the place immediately when a new manager of this old, rundown apartment arrives. Her name is Kyoko Otonashi and she is a beautiful, mild-mannered young woman. Yusaku, naturally, changes his mind. But there is one secret that Yusaku doesn't know about her.

Through the following episodes we are introduced to the characters surrounding Yusaku and Kyoko, and most of them are quite unique and some very weird, for example, Mr. Yotsuya, strange "gentleman" who likes on his neighbors more than anything; incredibly officious middle-aged woman Ichinose-san; and ever-drunken bar hostess, scantily clad Akemi-san.

Originally serialized in weekly comic magazine "Big Comic Spirits" from 1980-87, "Maison Ikkoku" is Rumiko Takahashi at her best. The artwork may look old-fashioned for younger readers, but this is a comic some generation in Japan including me grew up with. As the story goes on, these characters, for all (and because of) their flaws, become more and more endearing, and the romantic relation between Yusaku and Kyoko becomes engrossing.

[TRANSLATION] Viz Media edition's translation itself is not bad, but as another reviewer has pointed out, some words are misleading. Yusaku Godai, a high school graduate, is not a college student yet when he first appears, but he is often called "Mr. Flunk-out" ("ronin san" in Japanese original") which may sound strange to some readers. (A "ronin" in fact means someone who graduated from high school, but failed to pass the entrance exam of college.)

Some jokes are changed or removed. The little boy Kentaro's line "You can go!" on p. 54 is a good example. Actually Kentaro says literally, "(Girls) like a big...." and later adds "house." The terribly embarrassed faces of other guests including Yusaku and Kyoko cannot be understood without this sexual nuance.

[TRIVIA] The comic's story is set in somewhere around Tokyo and it is said the station in the comic is based on Higashi-Kurume Station of Seibu Railway, in the city of Higashi-Kurume where Rumiko Takahashi once lived.

The comic series has 15 volumes in all. The characters will grow up as the story continues, until the finale that is moving. Don't miss it.

Maison Ikkoku. The name of the popular romantic comedy (rom-com) that started its serialization back in 1980. Its success caused there to be a flood of manga out there about a college loser falling in love with the girl of his dreams and, after many oh-so-comical hardships, getting his girl. By todays standards, if it were to be released it would be something that nearly everyone has seen already, but you have to go into the series understanding that Maison Ikkoku is the reason all those college romantic comedies were created in the first place.

The story is about a group of individuals who live at a boarding house, the boarding house being called Maison Ikkoku. Kyoko Otonashi, a 22 year old widow still trying to come to terms with the death of her husband, moves into Maison Ikkoku as the manager in an attempt to take her mind off her problems. One of her the tenants, Yusaku Godai, was just about to leave in order to find a more peaceful study environment when she walked into the building. He was quick to change his mind about escaping once he looked at her and fell in love at first sight. But, as Godai soon discovered, winning the heart of a woman still in love with her dead husband isn't an easy task...

How to a rate a series that's so heart-warming yet has many bothersome flaws. Reading the series filled me with a warmth I haven't felt since I read Love Hina, another rom-com that copied a lot from Maison and improved a lot. But, during the middle sections of the story in particular, nothing advanced at all in 80% of the chapters. In fact, because the main characters were so indecisive, it took six years for four people to sort out relationship issues that could, and should, have been sorted out in under half the time.

...But I'm not going to get into the negative right from the get-go. That would give readers the wrong impression about the series. I have a habit of going on forever about the negative when something irks me, even when I actually like what I'm talking about. And as you'll see as you read on, that's true in the case of Maison Ikkoku.

Even though Maison Ikkoku may appear to be more of the same to fairly experienced manga readers because many people have seen a rom-com involving college by now, before going into the series you have to understand that it started its serialization back in 1980 - we're now in 2009 and it has been copied to death. And even by todays standards, Maison Ikkoku is still a worthy rival for any other rom-com in existence, it being far more funny and touching than a lot of attempts that have been made at copying it.

Mainson Ikkoku, despite its age, has something many rom-com stories lack: charm and respectability. In this day and age, it's rare to see a comedy manga that doesn't involve much nudity/panty shots - it's almost a requirement these days. But, to its credit, Maison Ikkoku isn't like that, and that adds a mature feel to the relationships of the character that just isn't there in most of the perverse rubbish that's out there. That's why it felt so special when, after over 130 chapters, Godai and Kyoko finally did the deed, touching each other and being intimate for the first time. It's difficult to feel the same way in other rom-coms where the male lead has already felt up and seen the female lead naked in every other chapter.

The charm and general fun vibe the story has carries it when the chapters come across as fillerish. I was able to keep reading without needing breaks because of this. It can become a frustrating experience if you're the sort of person who doesn't like the idea of seeing the development of a relationship stretched to the limit for comedy purposes (I fall into this category myself), but it's undeniable that Maison Ikkoku is incredibly fun to read. I think, somewhere deep inside us, we all have a part of us that wants to see two people fall in love and be happy together, and if the two in question can manage that after providing lots of laughter then all the better.

As for the art, it looks a little old by todays standards, and Rumiko Takahashi (the author/artist) did become a little sloppy during the less important sections, like just about every manga artist tends to, but Takahashi was able to express the characters emotions so well that I didn't care about the minor issues. For example, when Kyoko went into a jealous rage, giving Godai the 'evil eye' and stomping around, I felt her emotions reach out from the page and have an impact on me. It isn't often that black and white manga panels make me feel that way. Takahashi's loved as much as she is for good reason.

Now, I'm going to cover the characters. All my negative points are connected to the characters because Maison Ikkoku is a character driven story with no real main plot thread - the characters push the plot forward rather than the plot forcing the characters onwards. That's not to say there are more negative points than positive ones - that's not true at all - but I'm going to focus on the negative since the flaws annoyed me.

Godai: Quite possibly the most spineless main character ever. I liked him for being a kind-hearted guy, just like I like other male rom-com leads, but he REALLY pissed me off. How on earth can a grown man take six years to get it on with a woman when he's lived with her all that time, well aware of her feelings for him? All he needed to do was stop being such a wimp. It took another character upsetting Kyoko to FINALLY drive him to confessing all to her. If not for him being such a wimp/the author wanting more money, what happened in the last 20 chapters would've occurred around 62 chapters earlier.

The worst thing about it all was that he did nothing even though he had a serious rival in the form of Mitaka. Instead of being a man, he let Mitaka drive around with and grope Kyoko, risking losing her because he couldn't bring himself to do anything. If not for Kyoko being unlucky and later not jumping at the chance to marry Mitaka, Godai would've lost Kyoko. How pathetic does a lead character have to be for him to win the battle for his love because his rival was forced to throw the towel in due to a misunderstanding!?

I ended up feeling happy for Godai because he was a good person who had a lot go wrong for him. It was hard to hate him when, despite his lack of backbone, he truly loved Kyoko and wanted to make her happy. But I would've liked him a hell of a lot more if there had been less chapters and he'd been more of a man.

Kyoko: I'm not sure which of the two leads frustrated me off more. Godai's hard to beat in the spineless rankings but Kyoko sure gave him a run for his money.

For six years she made two men fight over her. Of course, it was their choice to do so, but she never truly rejected either and was always quick to jump at the chance of going out when Mitaka called her. At first it was understandable because she was still in love with her deceased husband and didn't know either Godai or Mitaka very well, but as the years passed the logic behind her stringing both along became less and less respectable. The truth is, she was as spineless as Godai - they were made for each other.

What really got to me about her was how jealous she got over Godai seeing other girls. How could she act how she did when she let Mitaka take her out and feel her up constantly? She was a complete hypocrite. I know human relationships and women don't always follow logic but, nonetheless, she still got to me with her mood swings sometimes. At least, in the end, she started to reject the advances of Mitaka...even if she did still let him drive her around and didn't ever completely reject him.

I must confess to feeling fond of her, despite what I said above. She's one of the few female characters I've seen in manga/anime who didn't cheapen herself by wearing revealing clothes and throwing herself at men. She valued herself and wanted to remain faithful to her dead husband. I liked how Godai described her as a woman who burned with jealousy, yet was perfect in his eyes when she smiled. It's too bad times have changed and it's almost unnatural to see a woman worth chasing after in stories these days...

Mitaka: The stud. The tennis coach. The rich guy. The rival for Kyoko's affections.

Since the story was told from Godai's perspective and, from start to finish, he was the underdog, I naturally felt some level of hostility towards him. That's what the author intended; that's why he was made so perfect. But I didn't truly dislike him. At heart he was a good guy and, in the end, he was toyed with for six years by Kyoko before circumstances forced him out of the race for her. He put his love life on hold for her and suffered because Kyoko wasn't able to be honest about her feelings - I couldn't help but feel at least a little bit sorry for him.

If there's one good thing that Mitaka injected into Maison Ikkoku it was humour. His irrational fear of dogs got the most laughs out of me, sometimes even making me laugh out loud. The image of him, a well-built guy, looking around a corner in fear at a puppy, which he'd bought in an attempt to free himself of his fear, will stay with me for a long time. I never thought something so simple could make me laugh so much.

Putting aside my feelings for the three most important characters, my main criticism lies with the heart of the supporting cast, or rather how the author wasted those three characters. Yotsuya, the snake-like voyeur who sneaks into Godai's room via a hole in the wall, stealing food most of the time, was my favourite character until he began to fade as the series went on; Akemi, the bar hostess/prostitute who enjoys walking around Maison Ikkoku in a see-through top and no bra and the sluttish character every harem type needs and Ichinose, the nosey, fat older woman who gets drunk on a regular basis and dances. I don't have any problem with the characters actual personalities - I feel they all added to the comedy - but the author never fleshed out any of them, never giving any chapters that fully explained their history and took them above the level of humourous plot devices. I would've loved to discover more about Yotsuya and what he did for a living, but instead I was forced to read many chapters that added nothing to the series in any way, shape or form.

There were some other important characters - a school girl with a crush on Godai (Yagami), another girl blindly in love with Godai (Kozue), a girl who falls madly in love with Mitaka (Asuna), the son of the nosey woman mentioned above (Kentaro) and a simple minded late resident of Maison Ikkoku (Nikaido) - but very few of them did anything other than extend the story. While it was obvious she only existed to add to the chapter count, Yagami was a likeable enough character, and her student-teacher relationship put Kyoko's past with her deceased husband into the spotlight, but she was the only worthwhile character out of the bunch. The author had a horrible habit of bringing characters into the picture and then forgetting about them. For example, Kentaro's strained relationship with his parents was never looked into again after around the halfway point, and his character only appeared in a few panels after that. And something similar occurred with Nikaido, a character that appeared for half of a volume, taking center stage, and then only appeared again in a few panels - I can fully understand why he never appeared in the anime. Simply put, the author created too many filler characters and didn't develop a large portion of the cast.

What Maison Ikkoku did wrong in terms of character development and pacing has been corrected by others over the years. Love Hina is the most popular out of all the attempts at taking the rom-com crown away from Maison Ikkoku, and Love Hina fixed a lot of its problems. In Love Hina, all but one of the residents of Hinata House (Love Hina's Maison Ikkoku) had character development and a huge amount of the chapters were devoted to them and them alone - they weren't just there for comedy purposes. This meant that some of the supporting characters became as likeable as the main two. And Keitaro, the main character of Love Hina, actually changed as the story progressed - he didn't stay spineless like Godai. Also, instead of the exam side coming up at the start and then not being touched upon again like in Maison Ikkoku, in Love Hina exam preparation and exams were used to add purpose to the story, preventing it from becoming a completely random series of chapters.

Of course, Love Hina also had flaws that Maison Ikkoku didn't, and Maison Ikkoku had plus points that Love Hina doesn't. Both are great in there own ways. Now that I've read both, Maison Ikkoku will always be the original and Love Hina will be thought of by me as something of a remake. At the end of the day, all that mattered was my enjoyment, and I enjoyed both a lot.

So, to wrap this up, let me express how much enjoyment I got out of Maison Ikkoku. No, it wasn't perfect, and the flaws did bother me at times, but it moved me emotionally like very little else has. For a fictional story that's been copied to death to make me go on a 60+ chapter marathon and make me feel happy because of a love story that was able to warm even my cold heart, it did a lot right.

I was torn at first as to how to rate it because of its flaws and age...however, after the outstanding final 20 or so chapters (once the fillerish material stopped), how on earth can I rate something so heart-warming less than 8.5-9/10? I'm going to give it 8.5/10 and put it above others in my top five based on enjoyment alone.

Rating: 8.5/10

Just after I posted my previous review (which I wrote before reading it in that format) I went through the book--and my god! they didn't change anything! While that may sound good, it isn't at all! The episodes that appeared in the original run still refer to Godai as a flunk-out instead of a ronin, which wouldn't be so bad if they had a least changed his situation--he still says that he's trying to pass mid-term exams, and not college entrance exams. To compound things, the four inserted episodes that appeared in Animerica Extra do say Ronin and entrance exams, and then it switches back again after them. I had to mark up my book to make the corrections that it would flow right. Horrible,lazy editing job, I must say. Shame on you Viz!

That said, the series is still very good, though there are certainly some quibbles with some other translation choices (the scene where young Kentaro should be saying "I know what it takes to make a woman happy. The most important thing a man can have is a big. . ." and gets stopped by Godai [only to find out that he was going to say "house"] isn't as funny or that sensical in its current form). Even in this form, Maison Ikkoku is a classic manga worth reading.

This is quickly becoming my favorite series, the plot is excellent, the characters are wonderful (it seems like I know a few of them), and the artwork is wonderful too. This is an absolutly FLAWLESS manga. But one thing that I noticed, dosen't it seem like in all of Rumiko Takahashi's mangas that there is a character that is a dopy guy? ex: Ranma, Yusaku, Inuyasha, and that guy from Lum. I'm just saying...