Manga Review: Attack on Titan: Junior High, Volume 1, by Saki Nakagawa and Hajime Isayama

Rating (Out of 5): ~3.5

Publisher: Kodansha Comics

Release Date: March 2014

Volumes: 7+

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells. RightStuf.

Volume: 2.

Wishlist Thursday.

Goodreads Synopsis:

A spin-off series to the number one bestseller in Japan. Eren and Mikasa enter a new school-- Titan Junior High! However, Eren's hated Titans for years-- can he get along with his new (harmless?) classmates? Featuring all of the characters from the main series as you've never seen them before, this series is sure to delight fans of Attack on Titan with a human vs. Titan volleyball match, a Titan rock band, and much more!

Review:

This book, for those who don’t know, is a parody of Attack on Titan, set when the characters are all in junior high. It is an Americanized version, too. And that, um, is pretty much all you need to know, to know whether you’ll like it or not.

While I did not love this book, I did find it quite enjoyable. But it did take me a long time to read.

The first part features the main group in Eren’s age. Eren is a racist, Mikasa is tough and extremely protective of Eren, and Armin hides in his blanket at all times. Sasha gets picked on a lot for her food problem. Krista is pretty.

It’s when Hange and Levi show up that I really started enjoying it. Levi is very strict, and is a clean fanatic, and I love it. Hange is a freak about the titans, and I love how they show their odd kink for them. And no one knows Hange’s gender, and the humor in that is very nice as well, and had me smiling every time.

The titans are also friends here, even though they bully the humans, for instance by stealing their lunch. The humans are even forced to dance with them. 

This was a funny volume, and I rather enjoyed it. It was a slower read for me, and it’s not on the top of my list, but it was enjoyable and it had me laughing a couple times. There are a lot of references to American famous people and other American things, and some of them just seemed odd to me, weirdly chosen. Maybe that’s just me, though.