Attack on Titan: Junior High Vol 1 Review

Title: Attack on Titan: Junior High Vol 1 (Shingeki! Kyojin Chuugakkou)
Genre: Parody, Comedy, Fantasy
Publisher: Kodansha (JP), Kodansha (US)
Artist: Saki Nakagawa
Serialized in: Bessatsu Shonen Magazine
Translation: William Flanagan
Original Release Date: March 11, 2014

I think we all know how big Attack on Titan has gotten, not only in Japan, but even in the US. So of course many of its spinoffs and side stories and etc would be coming in the near future. Out of all them, Junior High was the one I was most looking forward to. And it did not disappoint…

…For the first half. Unfortunately, it stops being as funny in its second half, and along with some translation quirks that actually stop being funny because they get overused, it’s hard to really want to shell out $18 bucks at a store, unless you’re a major fan of parodies and a diehard Attack on Titan fan.

……….

Junior High is a series that takes place at a school, with the Attack on Titan cast now high school students. We get to see them interact with each other on a not so threatening basis, where we get to see their outside (and made up) personalities, and also get to see them play dodgeball. With titans. (Spoiler: they lose). The entire volume essentially has different elements to parody, whether it is using the vertical maneuvering gear to…clean walls, to finding out that a Titan is like a human, the characters get involved in some weird stuff. There is one thing that hasn’t changed though, and that is Eren wanting all Titans dead.

In this parody manga, that means he’s racist.

Needless to say, I have a general weakness when it comes to characters breaking the 4th wall and spin-offs of a show that have them out of their element. Having these characters in this setting counts as that. And I of course find it amusing. I mean, you know it’s funny when they make a Shia Lebeouf joke. Wait, why is it funny you ask? Because how in the world would they know he exists in this setting? So that helped add onto the fact that Eren couldn’t even apologize properly for his misdeed. There are also other little jokes in here, which makes fun of the main series, the shounen genre, and the characters, each in their own way. And for some, more of the jokes may hit the mark than for others. It’ll obviously depend on how far you’re into the main series (I think you’ll need to be about 5 or 6 volumes in, or at least the anime length) to get most of the jokes.

Titan bloomers!!!

But despite everything it has going for it to satisfy me, it remained only an amusement. In other words, it stopped being funny. This is actually a really sizable book, 323 pages. This was a combination of Vol 1 and 2 in Japan. I think Kodansha USA would have benefited from releasing just one volume at a time. It makes finishing it in one session possible, instead of having to constantly stop and rest, then pick it back up again. The flow, for the most part, is over.

Then the jokes in second half, or what I guess was Vol 2, didn’t make me laugh quite as much in Vol 1, or not laugh at all. After I didn’t mind the Hange gender jokes at first, it got really tiresome as it continued to abuse it at almost every opportunity. I have to admit, reading Vol 2 was surprising. There were jokes that should have worked, but didn’t. I don’t know if it was because it was text heavy or if the situations were poor, but while I was amused at what’s going on, I should be laughing too.

Sadly, I think the joke’s on me for expecting as much as I did for this volume.