Sunday, February 20, 2011

Ben Tou

Late in the evening, supermarkets across Japan reluctantly mark unsold bento down to half price. The moment that discount sticker goes on, an army of hungry, penniless students descends, battling fiercely for the glory of a cheap meal.
As the ludicrous premise suggests, Ben Tou is primarily a comedy, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it neatly avoided a lot of light novel comedy traps. The author's note suggested he'd never tried his hand at comedy writing before, so the more dramatic scenes have a nicely understated naturalism to them, a more effective yang to the comedy yin than the usual overwrought melodrama (see Kore wa Zombie desu ka, which shits itself to hell the moment they stop with the jokes.)
This is a book where the male lead is neither a sarcastic Kyon clone or a personality free stand in for the reader to project his fantasies on. He's certainly a wise ass, but always motivated by an excess of enthusiasm. He describes the onigiri he's eating as "A classic Yamato Nadesico, her black seaweed underwear peeping out from under her sexy cellophane clothing." He makes a reference another character misses, and comments, "Oh -- she'd never read Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. She was missing out on 30% of the joy in life." Every attempt at thinking hard results in lengthy tangents about his father's retro gaming hobby, horrible things he did to a classmate in junior high, or completely non sequitors like his impromptu desire to become a true jazzman.
The three other major characters are all girls, of course; and each of them initially seems like a standard light novel type. First impressions tend to be misleading here. I'm not sure the violent (possibly lesbian) student council president ever developed into anything believable, but the narrators inability to resist gleefully pushing her buttons was much more relatable than the standard "accidental" misunderstandings. The cover girl is introduced as a tsundere, but quickly sidesteps either half of the term and becomes an altogether more likable mentor figure. The third girl ended up being the most entertaining of the three; she initially seems like a standard doormat, shy, totally insecure, and stammering a lot. Then she approaches the bento battles by role playing as a macho cop. Then they find "Muscle Cop", the hard core yaoi rape novels she's writing based on each battle. And the reactions to that are just different enough from what I've come to expect that I wound up impressed despite myself.
Ben Tou stumbles a little in the final act -- in search of an ending, he winds up setting up a choice so obvious the main character's hesitation just makes him seem embarrassingly dense -- but I came away feeling like this is the next big thing. Hopefully it'll get an anime that understands the material.

7 comments:

  1. That cover art is spectacular, and this sounds great, definitely deserving of an anime adaption. After giving it some thought, the best studio choice for this seems like Brains Base. Whadda you think?

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  2. Since Brains Base are the only studio that has managed to make a light novel I like into an anime I like successfully, I can't exactly argue. I'd say Bones could also pull off the action, but they don't exactly have the subtle touch the dramatic moments and some of the comedy sort of need.

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  3. Considering the first time Bones adapts a light novel, we get the travesty that is the Gosick anime, I'm kinda hesitant to put their name out lol.

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  4. http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2011-02-22/ben-to-school-comedy-action-light-novels-gets-tv-anime

    Holy shit that was fast

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  5. Coming back to this post with some of that anime material available now, it looks like David Pro has done a pretty good job covering the charms of this little book.

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  6. Yeah, this reviewlet was pretty much the only reason I checked out the anime, and it's definitely a fun timewaster.

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  7. Your post really amazed me. I am huge fan of attacking toys figure and just collect my Jojo's Bizarre from at PIJ. Now I also want to collect PS3 DVD from there. Its really fabulous. Thank you very much for your great work.
    http://bit.ly/jojofigures

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