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Title: Maison Ikkoku
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents, you may want to preview this series before you let children and pre-teens read this series. While this series is safe for all ages for a good portion of the series, there are moments of bad language, nudity, sexual situations, and a fair amount of situations that involve drinking that earns this title its OT rating. Fans of romantic comedies are sure to love this series! Fans of Rumiko Takahashi are going to love this series, and they will love the treatment Viz decided to give this series. Action/adventure fans will want to look elsewhere for excitement. |
In my humble opinion, "Maison Ikkoku" is a classic example of how much fun comics can be. In "Maison Ikkoku" there are no villains, no monster battles, no giant robots, and no super powered girls running around in small skirts that they shouldn't be able to move in in the first place. No, "Maison Ikkoku" is a pure romantic comedy, one that is both very funny and very touching. The story for "Maison Ikkoku" never gets incredibly deep, nor do the characters (as fun as they all are) ever really change, and the series may even have such an episodic feel to it that you may be able to read a good portion of the books completely out of order and not have a problem with following the story. Hearing me describe "Maison Ikkoku" like this you may wonder what makes this series so great. After all, if the story isn't deep enough to warrent reading the books in order then why such a strong recomendation? Well the answer to that is simple: I can strongly recomend this series because it has heart. The story of "Maison Ikkoku" (as I mentioned above) is not very deep in any real way. It's about a bunch of people who all live in an apartment complex known as Maison Ikkoku. The protagonist of the story is a young man named Yusaku, who, like most protagonists of romantic comedies, is a poor college student who gets barely passable grades, has a love/hate relationship with his parents, and longs to be in a serious relationship with a woman he loves.
He is often annoyed (and teased) by his apartment buddies who include Mrs. Ichinose (who is a drunken gossip), Kentaro (Mrs. Ichinose's somewhat bratty son), Mr. Yotsuya (a guy who mooches off Yusaku on a daily basis), and Akemi, who as far as I can tell always has a hangover. Anyway, all these people are all going about their daily lives when a woman by the name of Kyoko shows up one day and claims to be the new manager of Maison Ikkoku. Well no one objects to the fact that there is a new manager who will be running the show (much less complain about the fact that Kyoko is a GEORGOUS manager), but Yusaku in particular shows a great deal of interest in the newcomer. Before you know it he's head over heals in love with Kyoko, but there is a small problem he needs to get around first. You see, it turns out that Kyoko is a widow. Not only that, but Kyoko has made up her mind that she will never remarry ever again. In fact the only reason she's even the manager of Maison Ikkoku is because her late husbends family owns the building!
Another problem comes in later on in the book when Kyoko starts to take tennis leasons as a hobby, and finds herself attracted to her tennis coach Mr. Mitaka. As if that weren't bad enough, the people who live in Maison Ikkoku like to gossip all the time, and they tend to hear most of the stories while they are drunk, which means that a bunch of false information pops up on a daily basis that always leads to one misunderstanding or another for Yusaku and Kyoko. If there is one thing in this series that tends to be a major problem for some people it's the fact that "Maison Ikkoku" tends to be a one trick pony sometimes when it comes to the story comflicts, and this accusation is not completely without merrit. Pretty much every story that takes place in this series is about a rumor or gossip that makes either Yusaku and/or Kyoko jealous/angry at each other/the other, and they will usually spend a good portion of the time treating each other strangly until they finally figure out what's really going on. In fact, it probably wouldn't even be a real strech of the imagination if I told you that this is basically all that happens in the series. So yes, this series definetly has a formula, and it follows this sitcom rutein to a t, only straying off the set path every now and then. But gosh darn it I just can't help but love the series to death anyway! This series may not have the deepest story in the world, but the characters, the art, the way it's told, everything about this series just jumps out at you and makes you smile in such a way you can't help but want more when the book is done.
This is a series that will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will make the girls go "awww," and every now and then it will make you roll your eye's (but rarely will that happen). Some people may have a real problem with the artwork in this series (as the artwork definetly has an 80's feel to it), but I thought that the simple (but effective) artwork just added to the charm of the series. Even if you find the way the story is told repetetive, I think everyone will agree that the charm of this series is hard to resist. I must also make a special mention of Viz's treament of the "Maison Ikkoku" books themselves. I must admitt that I have not been particularly happy with the way Viz has decided to publish Mrs. Takahashi's other popular series like "Ranma ½" and "Inu-Yasha" with flipped artwork (thus screwing up several importent pages in both series), but Viz is treating "Maison Ikkoku" with a lot of respect that makes me happy (which includes NOT FLIPPING THE ARTWORK SO THAT IT READS LEFT-TO-RIGHT)!!!! I've got my suspisions on why Viz chose to flip the artwork for Takahasi's other series (which I discuss in my reviews for those series), but flipping the artwork still annoys me to no end, which makes me even more happy that Viz left the artwork unflipped for this series. Viz still adds their own English sound effects in place of the Japanese sound effects, but that's a change that I can live with (unlike some people out there).
Despite the sitcom nature of "Maison Ikkoku," I fully do believe that this is Rumiko Takahasi's best work she's ever done. This series has enough charm, wit, humor, and romance to cast it's additive spell over anyone of any age and any gender! The series is a winner, the preasentation is solid, so my question is what is everyone waiting for? If you haven't picked up this series yet then hop to it, as your missing out on one of the best romantic comedies your likely to EVER see in comic book form!
- -Review By Kevin T. Rodriguez- -