I find myself in a very fortunate place. Authors that serialized works before I decided to do these write-up/reviews are returning to the magazine one after another! Even better that they're authors I've enjoyed reading in the magazine. This time we have Yuuhei Kusakabe-sensei, who wrote the odd couple romcom Shiroyama to Mita-san. Like other works I discuss and discover on the twitter, the seri had a silent fandom that was overjoyed when Kusakabe-sensei returned to the magazine --and I count myself as one of them. Kusakabe's works to me are as Sunday-esque as one can get, and I relish the opportunity to explore him in depth.
The Author
Yuuhei Kusakabe
It doesn't happen often, but once in a while even after doing a ton of research, I can't find anything about an author, just their body of work. Which is to say I have to work my way through interviews with the author (or, well, a single interview in this case) and what I can piece together through their social media presence. Which is to say I don't have much on Kusakabe-sensei's background, but from what I was able to dig up in an interview, he grew up on the shonen classics such as Naruto, and like many up-and-coming rookies, he emulated the style when he decided to take up the pen. Unfortunately, none of his battle hardy attempts at manga swayed editors, which lead him to insert a little humor into his work, which is where he found his stride. As an aside, I found this out through an interview he did for the Manga Koshien reality TV show run by Shogakukan that aired last year. Kusakabe-sensei was asked to judge for the program despite only having a single serialization (and many oneshots) under his belt --a surprising position to be in so early on in one's career.
Now to his work. The earliest one-shot I can find from Kusakabe-sensei is from 2020 entiled Boku no ichiban nagai hi or "The Longest Day in my life." which got a honorable mention in Shogakukan's 82nd newbie rookie awards.
The artwork for the oneshot itself is nothing incredible --though it is very different from what Kusakabe's artwork looks like for his serials. I think this is intentional, and I'll get more into that later. Rather, what stands out about this is the comedy. Kusakabe-sensei's sense of humor comes from the Rumiko Takahashi school of thought, which is deadpan reactions to both the absurd and utterly commonplace, with a little bit of subverted expectations on the side. Take the title for this one -- "The Longest Day of My Life." what this means in the context of the story is the main character (pictured above) is stuck in class due to his teacher accusing the students of stealing a female student's PE uniform. The teacher won't let anyone leave until the culprit fesses up, which on any other day would be merely an annoyance at best. But today? Protagonist-kun desperately needs to use the bathroom.
Truly, this is what suffering looks like.
It's such a simple premise, but the deadpan reactions and escalating humor sells it. This I think is Kusakabe-sensei's genius. From the protagonist grilling the teacher, to the ultimate conclusion where he finally makes it to the bathroom just for him to find there isn't anymore toilet paper --it's comedy running on all fronts being both unassuming and madly funny.
I could spend all day talking about his oneshots --another is Hit Gal, about a trendy gyaru who also moonlights as a hitman. She seems woefully inept at her job until the very end, where she uses a selfie stick with a gun attached to silence her target as seen above. It's silly, but unique. I'm so glad that Kusakabe decided to go for comedy over battle manga! He would go on publishing one-shots for a little while until he struck gold with a certain odd couple...
The Shiroyama to Mita-san prototype Radio boy and M16 Girl.
So far, Kusakabe-sensei's artwork has been fairly standard as far as manga art goes, and the heavy lifting has been done by the absurdity of the premises for his one-shots. So what if he were to go in the opposite direction, and accentuate how plain the protagonists and their setting appear despite their quirks in a still absurdist, but more down to earth comedy? That's this, and by extension his first serial's concept. Although I admit I like the oneshot's title more, not much changed between it and the eventual series. Essentially, Shiroyama is a boy who lives out in the sticks, and hates it. As soon as he's college bound, he wants to go to Tokyo, and leave the country behind. One thing leads to another, and he ends up saving a rich dude who shows his appreciation by hooking him up with his granddaughter, Mita. She appears to be the textbook definition of a plain Jane, except she's a gun owning, Golgo obsessed oddity who's actually very supportive of his goals and is happy to be his girlfriend. In turn, Shiroyama finds that maybe living out in the country at least for a little while isn't so bad. The title comes from his hobby being listening to comediennes on the radio, and hers is well...
Top is the Oneshot where Golgo 13's face was censored, but his identity is hidden no more in the serial below.
What results is an oddly charming, heartfelt, and absurd romcom. Not to belabor the point, but there really isn't much different between the prototype and the series as chapter one essentially retells the one-shot changing just a few things around to allow for a longer series. In the oneshot the goal was to move to the city in 300 days, while in the series that becomes 700. Something I didn't realize at the time I read chapter one was that Kusakabe-sensei illustrated the odd couple as they'd look in the final chapter on the last page of the debut. So he already had a very clear idea of how the series would end, even 99 chapters before it did. He did remark during the interview (which took place slightly after the series ended) that he drew everything he wanted and had no regrets, a rarity in the fast-paced world of shonen manga. Due to how well the sense of plainness works for these characters, I almost thought this was Kusakabe-sensei's natural art style, but it's all purposely done to make the odd couple stand out even more.
The first five chapters chronicle Misaki and Kamata's high school "arc" where their friendship deepens and their love for creating stories blossoms. In another series, I could see where this arc would have been an entire volume or more, but the series "hook" is that the two go to a manga college. I think it was a wise decision for Kusakabe not to leap too far into that part of their lives and set the character interactions up this way --though the series does begin with what looks like a flash forward from Misaki's point of view, somewhat similarly to how Shiroyama and Mita-san opened. In fact, it's not until chapter 9 that the chapters take on a normal length for a Shonen Sunday series. Which, is a strength of the magazine to allow for the artists to tell stories using page lengths they need rather than doggedly requiring a certain count to go into the magazine. In this way Kusakabe-sensei is able to set up the premise, the characters and the setting quickly and get into what he does best, absurdist comedy with a oddly heartwarming center. Though, at least as of current writing, Kakukamata approaches its humor differently --in that reactions to the absurd are turned up to 10 compared to his previous works where subtlety is the name of the game.
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