In a regional context where the advent of online manga apps has given place to the over-proliferation of ‘killing time’ comics, whose supposed mode of fruition is during commuting time or before sleep in the day of busy salarymen and office ladies, You Chiba‘s “Kindergarten Wars” perfectly seems to fall in the above category, as a work devoid of personality and storyline, despite its appreciable exploitation drive for violence.
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Kindergarten Noir is no ordinary nursery, as it nurtures the offspring of the world elite, from politicians to movie stars. Needless to say, its staff are no ordinary teachers either: Doug, Hana, and Rita all are top-grade sicarios who have been convicted for their heinous crimes and required to put their life on the line to protect the Noir as part of their sentence. Fending off hordes of ruthless kidnappers and mobs day after day, they try to make sense of their new existence as caged animals, with Rita set on her quest to finding a cool boyfriend before she gets killed.
In the last two decades, the shonen manga scene has seen several authors succeeding in their rise to stardom by a combination of childish motifs and sheer bloodbath, captivating young readers with a setting (such as school or home) they could easily relate to, and where the display of violence served a solely comedic purpose. “Reborn!” by Akira Amano, serialized on Weekly Shonen Jump from 2004 to 2012, is arguably an illustrious precursor of this subgenre, which has been recently revitalized by Tatsuya Endo‘s “Spy x Family”, whose horizontal plot appears less articulate but with the added value of the charisma exhibited by the main characters, as their catchphrases alone have allowed the manga to get ahead of the competition since its first installment back in 2019.
Most likely, “Spy x Family” is what You Chiba also had in mind when she set to work on “Kindergarten Wars,” opting for a cute demeanor that is reminiscent of Endo’s character design, transitioning from a purely cartoonish, stylized line for sight gags and then back to normal once it is time for action. However, it feels like Chiba has put too much faith on the power of repetition, as the first quarter of the first volume relies on the replication of the same joke (Rita is conflicted about whether executing an attacker or asking him out first) for three times, with substantially no variation and an abuse of speech bubbles. It would have been a different story if she had gone for a yonkoma structure, but the idea of serializing a narrative manga on these premises sounds hardly sustainable.
Yet, truth is that numbers speak for themselves and that on Shonen Jump +, the online platform operated by Shueisha that saw the dawn of “Spy x Family” as well, “Kindergarten Wars” still holds the top spots in the national rankings, and that the paperback serialization has reached volume 14 as of this month. Indeed, this title remains a valid option as an easy-to-read, easy-to-forget comic, with its graphic style feeling pleasantly familiar and a few instances that are genuinely funny. Yet, it would be hard to say whether it has anything to offer, except for some minutes of relief at the end of one’s working day.
