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めだかボックス / Medaka Box #1
めだかボックス １
Excellent Book
200 pages, Comic
First published January 1, 2009
2 people are currently reading
134 people want to read
About the author
NisiOisiN
289 books974 followersNisio Isin (西尾維新 Nishio Ishin), frequently written as NisiOisiN to emphasize that his pen name is a palindrome, is a Japanese novelist and manga writer. He attended and left Ritsumeikan University without graduating. In 2002, he debuted with the novel Kubikiri Cycle, which earned him the 23rd Mephisto Award at twenty years of age.
He currently works with Kodansha on Pandora, the Kodansha Box magazine, and Faust, a literary magazine containing the works of other young authors who similarly take influence from light novels and otaku culture. He was also publishing a twelve volume series over twelve months for the Kodansha Box line; Ryusui Seiryoin was matching this output, and the Kodansha Box website stated that this is the first time in the world two authors have done twelve volume monthly novel series simultaneously from the same publisher.
In February, 2008, his novel Death Note Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases was released in English by Viz Media. Del Rey Manga has already released the first volume in his Zaregoto series. His Bakemonogatari, Nisemonogatari and Katanagatari novels have been adapted into anime series. Nekomonogatari (Kuro) has been adapted into an anime TV movie, and Kizumonogatari will be release in theaters this year. Monogatari Series: Second Season, adapted from 6 books in Monogatari Series will air in July 2013. Another of his works, Medaka Box (manga), has been adapted into a two-season anime series.
He currently works with Kodansha on Pandora, the Kodansha Box magazine, and Faust, a literary magazine containing the works of other young authors who similarly take influence from light novels and otaku culture. He was also publishing a twelve volume series over twelve months for the Kodansha Box line; Ryusui Seiryoin was matching this output, and the Kodansha Box website stated that this is the first time in the world two authors have done twelve volume monthly novel series simultaneously from the same publisher.
In February, 2008, his novel Death Note Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases was released in English by Viz Media. Del Rey Manga has already released the first volume in his Zaregoto series. His Bakemonogatari, Nisemonogatari and Katanagatari novels have been adapted into anime series. Nekomonogatari (Kuro) has been adapted into an anime TV movie, and Kizumonogatari will be release in theaters this year. Monogatari Series: Second Season, adapted from 6 books in Monogatari Series will air in July 2013. Another of his works, Medaka Box (manga), has been adapted into a two-season anime series.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
August 18, 2018
I would hazard a guess that many people started reading Medaka Box solely because NisiOisiN wrote the story. The mind behind Zaregoto, the Monogatari Series and Katanagatari, as well as numerous other claims to fame that only those literate in Japanese will be able to appreciate. In light of these previous works, Medaka Box's first volume is not impressive for a few reasons.
The art is detailed enough, and there's a nice variety in character designs. Colour me impressed for Zenkichi's design in particular. I'm going to have to say that I prefer Zaregoto's more involved illustrations, Monogatari's more emphatic and creative illustrations, and Katanagatari's greatly stylized illustrations. As the youngest sister, Medaka has a lot to live up to. And it doesn't. It's above average, though.
More meaty than art styles, even if that is the primary medium through which this story is being told, the characters are...astoundingly alright. Zenkichi is not some blank slate of a protagonist with only justice in mind. His characterisation is helped greatly earlier on when he says that he is a "defeated person". And his initial desire to put aside Medaka's crusade for justice for a less frantic school life is nothing if not understandable. When he is subsequently goaded into becoming a student council member and into currying the hammer of justice in Medaka's name, it's for a good reason. He loves Medaka. He comes right out and says it. Always has. Probably always will.
Zenkichi is a strongly-defined character with some great dialogue. He manages, amusingly, to be just as much the protagonist as a less important main character. Sometimes he gets shelved when the spotlight needs to be on Medaka and Medaka's justice. This is, after all, a manga about Medaka. But even when he leaves the stage for a number of pages, it's not as if he's simply reduced to a vehicle for the story to unfold. He disappears on his own volition, for his own reasons, and reappears in the end with his own answer to Medaka's justice. He's a living, breathing, moving character.
What I'm trying to get across here, and what I think NisiOisiN is trying to get across here, is that the world does not revolve around Zenkichi. It revolves around Medaka. Zenkichi is just here. He's just another guy with a credit on the script. Only when it involves him currying Medaka's justice, or him espousing Medaka's justice, or him disagreeing with Medaka's justice, does the story ever lend any true meaning to his existence.
Zenkichi doesn't matter. Medaka does.
This is the most interesting and best-portrayed theme in this story. It's the strongest theme Medaka Box has to offer as of yet. In the same way that one of the strongest themes in Monogatari is in the way that the story is told solely from Araragi's perspective and all the concessions that come with it, Medaka Box's protagonist is unstable. This is terribly interesting, and I'm holding out some hope that it will be addressed more deeply in some way.
And speaking of Medaka, she's amazingly average as a character. If you'd allow me an allegory, a large number of popular sports anime/manga focuses around a hyper-competent protagonist who knows the ins and outs of the sport. It's so that the author can constantly up the levels and explore every little nook and cranny the sport has to offer that this character exists. If we followed an average player, we'd only get to see average games. No one would be pushing the sport to its limits. You might as well just watch actual tennis, as the thinking goes. Medaka is that character to every character in this story. She is better than all of them. She is great at everything. She also loves everyone, and believes that everyone has some good in them. Medaka is the talent in NisiOisiN's constant thematic battle between the talented and untalented, which features in all of his works to one extent or another.
Medaka's personality is not particularly interesting, especially as NisiOisiN characters go, but I do appreciate how bits of her motivation and character are revealed chapter-by-chapter, instead of in one big long inauguration speech in the first chapter. And as much as I've prattled on about "justice" in this review so far, Medaka is not especially obnoxious about it herself. She talks about helping people a lot, and doing the right thing, and being a good person, but her dialogue thankfully does not read as dryly as you might expect. Her interactions with Zenkichi are an enjoyable read, if occasionally a bit uncomfortably over-sexual, as with any NisiOisiN story. The only thing that stands out about her personality is how much it doesn't really stand out. Her reputation mostly proceeds her. At least, that's the case in this first volume. There's really not a lot to say about Medaka except that she's really smart, really talented, and doesn't have an especially terrible personality. As far as Mary Sues go, she's not that bad.
Then, there's Akune. A truly wonderful foil for Zenkichi. He's pretty enjoyable, if excessively arrogant and a tad too obsessed with Medaka. He's another genius, too, if his AB blood type wasn't any indication of that. Yeah, there's a reason Medaka Box almost religiously mentions blood types. That's because it's believed that an AB blood type means you're a genius. But anyway, Akune and Zenkichi play off each other well, and their shared conflict makes for some amusing comedy. Akune is once again alright as a character on his own. Otherwise, I'm afraid there isn't much else to say.
Oh, and before I forget, the last necessary character to mention in Medaka Box: Hansode Shiranui. Yeah, I had to google her, because I forgot her name. I don't think her first name, "Hansode" is ever mentioned in this volume, but if it's any consolation, all it means is "short-sleeves". She's the standard comic relief character for this manga, and she never really takes any direct part in the narrative. She's the "girl who knows everything" that NisiOisiN always manages to find a place for in his stories. She's perceptive, knows more than she lets on, and occasionally manipulates things to a resolution, typically by letting Zenkichi in on some juicy gossip. At the moment, Shiranui is just heavy foreshadowing for the later beats of the story, but she does share some interesting thoughts once in a while. She rounds out the cast by being a character that is not directly involved with Medaka but not completely disconnected, either.
It's not a bad cast, and the dialogue is pretty damn okay. But because not that much really happens in this first volume, it's hard to say much at all about them aside from initial descriptors. The strongest two points of any NisiOisiN story are always the characters and the themes, often intertwined with each other as they are here. Zenkichi being Medaka's constant sidekick is equally important as him being a less important person than her. It's this lack of self-confidence that initially draws Zenkichi away from Medaka in the first few chapters, but also what draws him back to her. The characters are not nearly as strong as those in Monogatari or Katanagatari, and the themes aren't handled nearly as well as in Zaregoto.
Medaka's box is the true vehicle for the narrative. That is, her suggestion box, where she insists that students who are troubled lean on her for help, while simultaneously advocating that students should shape their dreams with their own hands. And so, each chapter, a new student asks for help, and so, each chapter, the student council helps them out. This is an opportunity for NisiOisiN to tackle a new theme every chapter (or every few chapters if there's a small arc), and he does.
The problem is that the themes aren't especially interesting and they're usually dismissed or glossed over with a few lines from Zenkichi or Medaka. None of them are delved deep enough into to be interesting, and the stakes are so low that it's lacklustre to read about. All the elements for a good NisiOisiN story are here, but he just fails to make proper use of them.
Characters who are more than they seem. Themes that are underplayed now but will come into play later. Copious amounts of misdirection and mysteries to solve. A million opportunities for great dialogue. Room for characters to develop and grow and fight and resolve their problems.
But none of it is capitalised on fully; none of it is interesting. It's enjoyable enough to read about, just by virtue of overdone story beats and some refreshing dialogue, but by the end of it, I'm left wondering why I bothered reading it in the first place. It's like gathering Araragi, Ii-chan, Hitoshiki Zerozaki, Shichika and Senjougahara in the same place and asking them to play musical chairs.
Why?! What is the point? To be poignantly anti-climactic? To lead audience expectations astray for no other reason than "it's fun?"
The beauty to a well-written NisiOisiN work is that all these elements come together to form one big overall narrative; a towering mish-mash of themes and perspectives and personalities where everything has meaning and no one is forgotten. Medaka Box is not well-written. It just has all those elements, diluted as much as possible, and not properly tied together in the end.
Medaka Box Volume 1 feels like a complete throwaway work. One of those NisiOisiN works that was written purely for fun and never meant to be published, but through some great oversight, ended up being sent to the printers. It's disappointing and unfulfilling, in all the worst ways. I'm sure I'll never read it again if I can help it.
But I'm going to read Medaka Box to the end, if only because having access to so much of NisiOisiN's work is reason enough to read it. Frankly, though, I'm regretting not having ordered Shoujo Fujuubun first.
The art is detailed enough, and there's a nice variety in character designs. Colour me impressed for Zenkichi's design in particular. I'm going to have to say that I prefer Zaregoto's more involved illustrations, Monogatari's more emphatic and creative illustrations, and Katanagatari's greatly stylized illustrations. As the youngest sister, Medaka has a lot to live up to. And it doesn't. It's above average, though.
More meaty than art styles, even if that is the primary medium through which this story is being told, the characters are...astoundingly alright. Zenkichi is not some blank slate of a protagonist with only justice in mind. His characterisation is helped greatly earlier on when he says that he is a "defeated person". And his initial desire to put aside Medaka's crusade for justice for a less frantic school life is nothing if not understandable. When he is subsequently goaded into becoming a student council member and into currying the hammer of justice in Medaka's name, it's for a good reason. He loves Medaka. He comes right out and says it. Always has. Probably always will.
Zenkichi is a strongly-defined character with some great dialogue. He manages, amusingly, to be just as much the protagonist as a less important main character. Sometimes he gets shelved when the spotlight needs to be on Medaka and Medaka's justice. This is, after all, a manga about Medaka. But even when he leaves the stage for a number of pages, it's not as if he's simply reduced to a vehicle for the story to unfold. He disappears on his own volition, for his own reasons, and reappears in the end with his own answer to Medaka's justice. He's a living, breathing, moving character.
What I'm trying to get across here, and what I think NisiOisiN is trying to get across here, is that the world does not revolve around Zenkichi. It revolves around Medaka. Zenkichi is just here. He's just another guy with a credit on the script. Only when it involves him currying Medaka's justice, or him espousing Medaka's justice, or him disagreeing with Medaka's justice, does the story ever lend any true meaning to his existence.
Zenkichi doesn't matter. Medaka does.
This is the most interesting and best-portrayed theme in this story. It's the strongest theme Medaka Box has to offer as of yet. In the same way that one of the strongest themes in Monogatari is in the way that the story is told solely from Araragi's perspective and all the concessions that come with it, Medaka Box's protagonist is unstable. This is terribly interesting, and I'm holding out some hope that it will be addressed more deeply in some way.
And speaking of Medaka, she's amazingly average as a character. If you'd allow me an allegory, a large number of popular sports anime/manga focuses around a hyper-competent protagonist who knows the ins and outs of the sport. It's so that the author can constantly up the levels and explore every little nook and cranny the sport has to offer that this character exists. If we followed an average player, we'd only get to see average games. No one would be pushing the sport to its limits. You might as well just watch actual tennis, as the thinking goes. Medaka is that character to every character in this story. She is better than all of them. She is great at everything. She also loves everyone, and believes that everyone has some good in them. Medaka is the talent in NisiOisiN's constant thematic battle between the talented and untalented, which features in all of his works to one extent or another.
Medaka's personality is not particularly interesting, especially as NisiOisiN characters go, but I do appreciate how bits of her motivation and character are revealed chapter-by-chapter, instead of in one big long inauguration speech in the first chapter. And as much as I've prattled on about "justice" in this review so far, Medaka is not especially obnoxious about it herself. She talks about helping people a lot, and doing the right thing, and being a good person, but her dialogue thankfully does not read as dryly as you might expect. Her interactions with Zenkichi are an enjoyable read, if occasionally a bit uncomfortably over-sexual, as with any NisiOisiN story. The only thing that stands out about her personality is how much it doesn't really stand out. Her reputation mostly proceeds her. At least, that's the case in this first volume. There's really not a lot to say about Medaka except that she's really smart, really talented, and doesn't have an especially terrible personality. As far as Mary Sues go, she's not that bad.
Then, there's Akune. A truly wonderful foil for Zenkichi. He's pretty enjoyable, if excessively arrogant and a tad too obsessed with Medaka. He's another genius, too, if his AB blood type wasn't any indication of that. Yeah, there's a reason Medaka Box almost religiously mentions blood types. That's because it's believed that an AB blood type means you're a genius. But anyway, Akune and Zenkichi play off each other well, and their shared conflict makes for some amusing comedy. Akune is once again alright as a character on his own. Otherwise, I'm afraid there isn't much else to say.
Oh, and before I forget, the last necessary character to mention in Medaka Box: Hansode Shiranui. Yeah, I had to google her, because I forgot her name. I don't think her first name, "Hansode" is ever mentioned in this volume, but if it's any consolation, all it means is "short-sleeves". She's the standard comic relief character for this manga, and she never really takes any direct part in the narrative. She's the "girl who knows everything" that NisiOisiN always manages to find a place for in his stories. She's perceptive, knows more than she lets on, and occasionally manipulates things to a resolution, typically by letting Zenkichi in on some juicy gossip. At the moment, Shiranui is just heavy foreshadowing for the later beats of the story, but she does share some interesting thoughts once in a while. She rounds out the cast by being a character that is not directly involved with Medaka but not completely disconnected, either.
It's not a bad cast, and the dialogue is pretty damn okay. But because not that much really happens in this first volume, it's hard to say much at all about them aside from initial descriptors. The strongest two points of any NisiOisiN story are always the characters and the themes, often intertwined with each other as they are here. Zenkichi being Medaka's constant sidekick is equally important as him being a less important person than her. It's this lack of self-confidence that initially draws Zenkichi away from Medaka in the first few chapters, but also what draws him back to her. The characters are not nearly as strong as those in Monogatari or Katanagatari, and the themes aren't handled nearly as well as in Zaregoto.
Medaka's box is the true vehicle for the narrative. That is, her suggestion box, where she insists that students who are troubled lean on her for help, while simultaneously advocating that students should shape their dreams with their own hands. And so, each chapter, a new student asks for help, and so, each chapter, the student council helps them out. This is an opportunity for NisiOisiN to tackle a new theme every chapter (or every few chapters if there's a small arc), and he does.
The problem is that the themes aren't especially interesting and they're usually dismissed or glossed over with a few lines from Zenkichi or Medaka. None of them are delved deep enough into to be interesting, and the stakes are so low that it's lacklustre to read about. All the elements for a good NisiOisiN story are here, but he just fails to make proper use of them.
Characters who are more than they seem. Themes that are underplayed now but will come into play later. Copious amounts of misdirection and mysteries to solve. A million opportunities for great dialogue. Room for characters to develop and grow and fight and resolve their problems.
But none of it is capitalised on fully; none of it is interesting. It's enjoyable enough to read about, just by virtue of overdone story beats and some refreshing dialogue, but by the end of it, I'm left wondering why I bothered reading it in the first place. It's like gathering Araragi, Ii-chan, Hitoshiki Zerozaki, Shichika and Senjougahara in the same place and asking them to play musical chairs.
Why?! What is the point? To be poignantly anti-climactic? To lead audience expectations astray for no other reason than "it's fun?"
The beauty to a well-written NisiOisiN work is that all these elements come together to form one big overall narrative; a towering mish-mash of themes and perspectives and personalities where everything has meaning and no one is forgotten. Medaka Box is not well-written. It just has all those elements, diluted as much as possible, and not properly tied together in the end.
Medaka Box Volume 1 feels like a complete throwaway work. One of those NisiOisiN works that was written purely for fun and never meant to be published, but through some great oversight, ended up being sent to the printers. It's disappointing and unfulfilling, in all the worst ways. I'm sure I'll never read it again if I can help it.
But I'm going to read Medaka Box to the end, if only because having access to so much of NisiOisiN's work is reason enough to read it. Frankly, though, I'm regretting not having ordered Shoujo Fujuubun first.
June 18, 2017
Medaka Box is a deconstruction of school comedies, so get ready to be triggered because of it. It starts as a goofy school council president helping out students and then changes to a fighting shonen about ridiculously overpowered teenagers. Said school council president is able to defeat everyone with a single punch from the very beginning, making this One Punch Man all over again, but with a girl. You might as well call it One Punch Woman, or since she loves running around in her panties, One Pantsu Woman.
Despite that, Medaka Box is not super famous or highly praised for being a deconstruction, because that word has lost its meaning and is now used only when someone wants to convince himself he is not reading garbage. This includes everything made by Nisio Isin, the guy who can only write softporn and has every pretentious overthinker making him sound like a genius for being meta as fuck.
And by meta, I mean having the entire manga taking place in a school, where the only things you never see are parents, teachers, adults, or any form of education. Meaning there is nothing school-like happening inside a school, because the setting has absolutely nothing to do with the plot. It’s just there as a cheap and lazy way to have teenagers being in one place so any shit you want to see happen, will happen. Which is why buildings are constantly blown up, psychotic teenagers are constantly sexually molesting each other, people are constantly being severely injured, and not a single police officer ever comes to check out what the hell is going on.
So basically, it’s another one of those chuuni stories where the entire planet is a generic high school full of oversexualized teenagers who are constantly fighting each other with cool superpowers they gained simply because they really wanted them. There is absolutely no realism whatsoever, and thus becomes pretentious when it tries to have a serious theme going on somewhere in there. The heroine for example is the definition of a Mary Sue. Perfect at everything, always on a higher moral ground, and always trying to help out everyone.
She is obnoxious for her constant smug and boring for never struggling to defeat someone. How do you expect any semblance of theme exploration to be taken seriously when your protagonist is always trying to reform the bad guys into good guys with the power of friendship, and a way of thinking that never goes beyond treating everything as either black or white?
Ah, but wait, there is a catch, she is intentionally written to be unsympathetic, as part of making the point more clear. It goes for a Mob Psycho 100 approach, poking fun at overpowered characters, who despite being perfect at everything, they are pressured psychologically because they don’t feel they are human next to everybody else. This is why Medaka constantly needs weaker people around her. Not because she needs assistance in defeating the bad guys, since that is something she can easily do by breezing through the school’s problems in her underwear, but because she doesn’t want to lose her touch with humanity.
The way I describe it makes it sound like excellent material for pretentious overthinkers. So why isn’t it super popular or analyzed to death like One Punch Man and Mob Psycho 100, when it’s essentially the exact same thing? It’s definitely not because it didn’t have an anime adaptation to promote it. It was adapted, by Gainax of all studios, where it bombed horribly despite the bouncing boob physics. It’s also not because it wasn’t made by the super famous author who made the masterpiece of harem deconstructions that is the Monogatari franchise. It should have worked by mentioning his name alone.
Despite these credentials, nobody cares about it because down to it, no matter how subversive they try to make it seem, most people dropped it right away because of the unsympathetic Mary Sue. Most of the rest lost interest soon afterwards, because there is not much going on in terms of theme exploration. You get everything the story has to offer in twenty chapters, with the rest just regurgitating the exact same story structure for every new character that is introduced. He is psychotically evil, he has some strange power, Medaka and her friends kick the crap out of him, he becomes good, then another character appears and the cycle starts anew.
If you compare it to something like Neon Genesis, a show made by the same studio, which also had an unsympathetic protagonist, you see how you were always kept engaged there because something new was happening on every episode, which was far more than learning about the special power and backdrop story of someone who will not matter after a couple of pages. Neon Genesis also had fan service but even that was kept to a reasonable amount, wasn’t ever present, and was way more creative than the done to death way it’s done in Medaka Box.
There is nothing of interest in it once you have read enough titles to stop giving a damn about the premise or how meta the jokes are. It’s a case of not hitting any of the right buttons, despite having good ideas.
In summary:
- Unsympathetic Mary Sue
- No tension because she is undefeatable
- Runs out of juice very fast
- Ruined theme exploration because of done to death sex jokes you can find on every ecchi comedy
Despite that, Medaka Box is not super famous or highly praised for being a deconstruction, because that word has lost its meaning and is now used only when someone wants to convince himself he is not reading garbage. This includes everything made by Nisio Isin, the guy who can only write softporn and has every pretentious overthinker making him sound like a genius for being meta as fuck.
And by meta, I mean having the entire manga taking place in a school, where the only things you never see are parents, teachers, adults, or any form of education. Meaning there is nothing school-like happening inside a school, because the setting has absolutely nothing to do with the plot. It’s just there as a cheap and lazy way to have teenagers being in one place so any shit you want to see happen, will happen. Which is why buildings are constantly blown up, psychotic teenagers are constantly sexually molesting each other, people are constantly being severely injured, and not a single police officer ever comes to check out what the hell is going on.
So basically, it’s another one of those chuuni stories where the entire planet is a generic high school full of oversexualized teenagers who are constantly fighting each other with cool superpowers they gained simply because they really wanted them. There is absolutely no realism whatsoever, and thus becomes pretentious when it tries to have a serious theme going on somewhere in there. The heroine for example is the definition of a Mary Sue. Perfect at everything, always on a higher moral ground, and always trying to help out everyone.
She is obnoxious for her constant smug and boring for never struggling to defeat someone. How do you expect any semblance of theme exploration to be taken seriously when your protagonist is always trying to reform the bad guys into good guys with the power of friendship, and a way of thinking that never goes beyond treating everything as either black or white?
Ah, but wait, there is a catch, she is intentionally written to be unsympathetic, as part of making the point more clear. It goes for a Mob Psycho 100 approach, poking fun at overpowered characters, who despite being perfect at everything, they are pressured psychologically because they don’t feel they are human next to everybody else. This is why Medaka constantly needs weaker people around her. Not because she needs assistance in defeating the bad guys, since that is something she can easily do by breezing through the school’s problems in her underwear, but because she doesn’t want to lose her touch with humanity.
The way I describe it makes it sound like excellent material for pretentious overthinkers. So why isn’t it super popular or analyzed to death like One Punch Man and Mob Psycho 100, when it’s essentially the exact same thing? It’s definitely not because it didn’t have an anime adaptation to promote it. It was adapted, by Gainax of all studios, where it bombed horribly despite the bouncing boob physics. It’s also not because it wasn’t made by the super famous author who made the masterpiece of harem deconstructions that is the Monogatari franchise. It should have worked by mentioning his name alone.
Despite these credentials, nobody cares about it because down to it, no matter how subversive they try to make it seem, most people dropped it right away because of the unsympathetic Mary Sue. Most of the rest lost interest soon afterwards, because there is not much going on in terms of theme exploration. You get everything the story has to offer in twenty chapters, with the rest just regurgitating the exact same story structure for every new character that is introduced. He is psychotically evil, he has some strange power, Medaka and her friends kick the crap out of him, he becomes good, then another character appears and the cycle starts anew.
If you compare it to something like Neon Genesis, a show made by the same studio, which also had an unsympathetic protagonist, you see how you were always kept engaged there because something new was happening on every episode, which was far more than learning about the special power and backdrop story of someone who will not matter after a couple of pages. Neon Genesis also had fan service but even that was kept to a reasonable amount, wasn’t ever present, and was way more creative than the done to death way it’s done in Medaka Box.
There is nothing of interest in it once you have read enough titles to stop giving a damn about the premise or how meta the jokes are. It’s a case of not hitting any of the right buttons, despite having good ideas.
In summary:
- Unsympathetic Mary Sue
- No tension because she is undefeatable
- Runs out of juice very fast
- Ruined theme exploration because of done to death sex jokes you can find on every ecchi comedy
December 13, 2017
Approfitto dell'uscita della nuova edizione per rileggerlo per la terza volta. suggerisco a chi si avvicina a quest'opera di non fermarsi alle semplici apparenze, Medaka Box può sembrare un manga banale ma nasconde molti piani di lettura che rendono l'opera uno dei migliori Shonen degli ultimi 20 anni.
Read
December 10, 2020This was a fun little story, but the translator of this very unofficial English version botched the grammar and spelling at times, massively. And the story started going at the start of chapter 5, so a decent chunk of the way through the volume.
I think I'll continue in this series next year and see what happens. I've heard this series is a genre mash and I'm am here to see how that is going to take place, especially if the plot remains as fun as near the end and the character dynamics get better in de following volumes.
I think I'll continue in this series next year and see what happens. I've heard this series is a genre mash and I'm am here to see how that is going to take place, especially if the plot remains as fun as near the end and the character dynamics get better in de following volumes.
January 28, 2024
Nisioisin is a very good writer.
Medaka doesn't stack up to his other series like, say, Monogatari or Cipher Academy quite as well, but it's still a superb series. He does some very interesting things with the theming, and it's really cool to see Nisio's take on a typical battle shonen-- overall great series.
Medaka doesn't stack up to his other series like, say, Monogatari or Cipher Academy quite as well, but it's still a superb series. He does some very interesting things with the theming, and it's really cool to see Nisio's take on a typical battle shonen-- overall great series.
December 25, 2020
Well, i already watch the anime, its quite entertaining, but to read the manga, its a different things. Hope the manga could live up to the same as the anime.
January 7, 2022
Całkiem ok, nawet miłe do poczytania ;)
March 8, 2025
Started with a few fun characters and some really creative action scenes. The creativity kept up, but the author just added more and more and more and more characters until the plot stopped making sense and I stopped caring about any of it. I hope I'm around in 100 years or so when this enters public domain and someone remixes the beginning into a more compelling story (assuming any of us make it that long).
July 25, 2012
Medaka, la presidenta del comité estudiantil y con otros 4 cargos más en su persona, instala un buzón de peticiones y promete resolver los problemas de cualquiera de los alumnos de la escuela.
Para ser un primer tomo es muy flojillo, no avanza nada la historia. Sé que más adelante el argumento toma un cariz muy distinto y más trascendental, pero este tomo no tiene lo que hace falta para que te enganche. Me gusta la premisa pero dudo si seguiré leyéndolo.
Lo que si me ha gustado mucho y me gustaría comentar es la personalidad de Medaka, que es casi exclusivamente lo que se trata en este volumen. Medaka posee cualidades extraordinarias y no parece tener puntos débiles, lo que le sitúa a un nivel muy superior al resto de sus compañeros. ¿Por qué entonces decidiría hacerse cargo de todos?
Medaka sufre una fuerte preocupación por los demás y quiere ocuparse de todos a la vez, por eso, pese a que pase de las tareas administrativas del comité, piensa que ese es su sitio. Tiene también un alto sentido de la justicia pero no pone énfasis en los castigos. Confía mucho en la gente y a veces peca de inocente. Es un personaje tremendamente bien construido, aunque peque de ser demasiado perfecta, como demuestra siendo tan exhibicionista "porque no debería esconder un cuerpo tan bien tonificado". Medaka es un personaje manga que hace tiempo que no veía, casi debería ser un estilo de vida.
Para ser un primer tomo es muy flojillo, no avanza nada la historia. Sé que más adelante el argumento toma un cariz muy distinto y más trascendental, pero este tomo no tiene lo que hace falta para que te enganche. Me gusta la premisa pero dudo si seguiré leyéndolo.
Lo que si me ha gustado mucho y me gustaría comentar es la personalidad de Medaka, que es casi exclusivamente lo que se trata en este volumen. Medaka posee cualidades extraordinarias y no parece tener puntos débiles, lo que le sitúa a un nivel muy superior al resto de sus compañeros. ¿Por qué entonces decidiría hacerse cargo de todos?
Medaka sufre una fuerte preocupación por los demás y quiere ocuparse de todos a la vez, por eso, pese a que pase de las tareas administrativas del comité, piensa que ese es su sitio. Tiene también un alto sentido de la justicia pero no pone énfasis en los castigos. Confía mucho en la gente y a veces peca de inocente. Es un personaje tremendamente bien construido, aunque peque de ser demasiado perfecta, como demuestra siendo tan exhibicionista "porque no debería esconder un cuerpo tan bien tonificado". Medaka es un personaje manga que hace tiempo que no veía, casi debería ser un estilo de vida.
June 9, 2013
Guys, this manga was made by the person behind Bakemonogatari! So color me surprised when I found this first volume to be extremely weak. It's pretty much a compilation of stories about Medaka solving people's problems. But I will keep going since I have heard that when this magical thing called An Intriguing Plot kicks in, it gets really good!
And also...
1. Why do Medaka's boobs look like they are going to fall out of her shirt 70% of the time in this?
2. Why in the world does Medaka randomly undress in front of a guy AWHILE IN SCHOOL for no apparent reason? Wait, don't answer. I already know why: Us readers need fanservice!
I do think that it is quite funny how the manga pokes fun at a certain aspect a lot of shounen manga have...
And also...
1. Why do Medaka's boobs look like they are going to fall out of her shirt 70% of the time in this?
2. Why in the world does Medaka randomly undress in front of a guy AWHILE IN SCHOOL for no apparent reason? Wait, don't answer. I already know why: Us readers need fanservice!
I do think that it is quite funny how the manga pokes fun at a certain aspect a lot of shounen manga have...
September 23, 2016
None of the promising pieces of this series go anywhere. It seems like it might have some kind of plan with its cliche-undercutting, breaking of the fourth wall, or character choices, but it's all artlessly thrown together. The execution isn't awful, but it's executing a pretty dull and stereotypical story in the end, just with occasional gestures toward more interesting concepts. Only worth reading if the basic humor/action combo does much for you.
November 3, 2012
I got bored.
After five or six chapters I got bored.
The plot was nothing special, the characters were mediocre, and what I've seen so far was so-so.
So I got bored.
And there are better manga and books to read and waste my time on.
After five or six chapters I got bored.
The plot was nothing special, the characters were mediocre, and what I've seen so far was so-so.
So I got bored.
And there are better manga and books to read and waste my time on.
July 10, 2014
Hasta ahora me pareció un shonen de secundaria más o menos cómico (como cualquier otro) con un dibujo bastante bonito (como tantos otros) y punto. Pero supuestamente, en el tomo que viene la serie pega un volantazo tal que hasta de género cambia (para bien), así que un par de tomos más se aseguró.
May 12, 2012
Manga scolastico infarcito di sporadici combattimenti.
Niente di che, ma è divertente.
Niente di che, ma è divertente.
August 4, 2012
Divertidísimo. Tengo muchas ganas de que saquen el segundo tomo ^^
December 29, 2012
A quite generic and weak start for this series. Instead of Medaka Box, this would better be called Mary Sue Box.
September 25, 2013
Es muy divertido. Medaka es la protagonista del tipo perfecta, que tiene a un tipo en la friendzone y con unos ideales demasiado romanticos. Buenisima
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