This post contains spoilers and blood.
Choku! is the most ridiculous manga I have ever read. It’s not the strangest in terms of content, but it is in terms of context. This is the sort of series that’s so weird it doesn’t even seem to realise how bizarre it is. It doesn’t even seem to even have a target audience in mind- it just is. For the most part, this is wonderful. A lack of self-awareness often improves a work of fiction, and the unique premise combined with an inability to fit comfortably into any one genre makes Choku! unpredictable and a lot more fun to read. It’s one of the few series that can run solely on its premise, though that’s probably also because of its brevity. Ever since watching Harold and Maude, I’ve become fond of romantic comedies with a dark sense of humour, and Choku! is (mostly) good at mixing sweet slice-of-life humour with profuse bleeding. Unfortunately, there are also many times when the series doesn’t achieve its desired effect. Near to the end, the premise begins wearing itself a little too thin, and some of the humour is uncomfortably pervy. As for the actual romance, it’s handled nicely in the earlier chapters, but becomes less satisfying later on. I’ll return to that in a while.
I’m envious of people who speak in a monotone. I like the way it sounds, and it comes across as stoic, too. Monotones also seem kind of funny to me, too. One of the reasons why Lilith from Cheers was such a good character was because she seemed to enjoy her robotic way of speaking, and at times treated it like a private little joke. It’s true that everybody else made fun of her for both that and her paleness, but she liked those things about herself. Even though the rigidity of her tone is meant to be callous and clinical, there’s something nice about it, too. Maybe that’s partly why the Emotionless Girl archetype is so popular. (Aside from the fact that Emotionless Girls are just really, really cool anyway.) Serika isn’t emotionless, but the way she expresses her feelings comes across as rather disjointed. She makes no effort to repress her feelings (because she’s completely oblivious to the fact that such a thing is even possible), but her tone of voice and facial expressions rarely change. (If the latter does, it’s only subtly.) This serves to make almost everything she says even more nonsensical than it already is. Out of context, her dialogue resembles little more than a stream of non sequiturs. In context, it’s not much better.
Serika also suffers from gushing nosebleeds that happen so regularly she needs to wear a special mask to contain the flow. These nosebleeds are particularly powerful whenever she’s around the object of her affections, Nao, a shy boy who spends all of his lunchtime hiding in the toilets. (I wish I’d had somewhere to hide during lunch when I was at school.) This is where Serika introduces herself (rather abruptly) to him, and toilets in general become the closest thing this manga has to a theme. Serika attaches herself to Nao, and brings him on a number of plotless adventures. Often, everything gets covered in blood, to the point where it all looks like a scene from a horror film. And Nao ends up having to crossdress a number of times, which is fun. (The spoilers are in the next paragraph, by the way.)
By the end, Nao does end up falling in love with Serika, but the problem is that it happens in an extremely forced and awkward way. Nao realises that his life is boring without Serika, but he’s never given enough time to make the transition from being exasperated at her behaviour to enjoying it and then to loving her. And there are some extremely uncomfortable aspects to their relationship, too. Serika means well, but she rarely gives Nao any privacy and often makes him do stuff he’d rather not. As for Nao, he never does explain this to Serika, so he’s basically just staying with her for superficial reasons. It’s true that this would be difficult, but how is their relationship going to be in any way meaningful if he doesn’t? To me, it feels like he’s taking advantage of her. Neither of them understand how the other feels, and neither go through enough character development for their love to work. It’s a shame, because it could have been handled a lot better, and gives an otherwise brilliant story a weak and slightly tasteless ending.
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