 | | ▪ | RELEASED BY: | | DEL REY | | | ▪ | AUTHOR / ART: | | AI MORINAGA | | | ▪ | FORMAT: | | JAPANESE / B&W | | | ▪ | PAGES: | | 192 | | | ▪ | RATING: | | T | | | ▪ | RELEASE DATE: | | 09/30/2008 | | | ▪ | REVIEW DATE: | | 11/23/2008 | | | ▪ | REVIEWED BY: | | SCOTT CAMPBELL |
Hana Suzuki has it good: She’s the only girl in the Grand Hockey Club, and all the other members are super-hot guys. My Heavenly Hockey Club is the humorous story of Hana coming to terms with her new club and the antics they get into as a group. If you didn’t already know, it’s important to note that this story revolves around field hockey – not ice hockey. Although, despite the club being sports oriented, little time is spent on the sport in comparison to the laughs and the traveling to various resorts, and the possibility of new relationships forming while they are there. In a way the club is nothing but a front for a group of students who want to hang out, enjoy the good life, and spend their time doing something – they seem like the “bored and rich” type, and in fact, they are! This is all very good for Hana as she gets to enjoy it too – but every now and then they do decide to get down to it and play some field hockey the best way they know how! In volume six, things get a bit Francais (pardon my French). The Grand Hockey Club is already the most fabulous club in the school, and that’s because the players are all super-hot guys (plus their sidekick Hana). But now the club is even more glam. Enter Yukio Francois de Saint-Martin, the club’s new faculty advisor. This tall, blond Frenchman is sexy, passionate . . . and totally out of his mind. Can the hockey club survive his crazy plans? My Heavenly Hockey Club has always teetered towards the “ridiculous” side of things, but with this volume it falls right off the fence, and into crazy land. It’s no secret that the Japanese generally find the French, and French culture to be quite interesting (as we find Japanese culture to be quite unique, and often interesting), so it figures they would throw a crazy French guy in to stir the pot even more than it had been stirred in previous volumes. Yukio Francois de Saint-Martain (say that five times fast) is quite a character, and perhaps a very welcome bit of zaniness to the series. In a manga like this, you can barely go wrong when introducing some new good to attempt to bring things to the breaking point of “no control.” If it hasn’t been said before, it must be said now that My Heavenly Hockey Club is almost assured to be a big hit with fans of Ouran High School Host Club – volume six pretty much proves that fact in a number of ways. If zany humour and lots of pretty-boy antics is your thing, come and get it! This is the pinnacle of it right under Host Club, so please don’t look any further. The art still flows with the same shoujo flow that it has gone with throughout the series, and it all works quite nicely for this kind of comedy. There’s a fair bit more “crazy” going on in the volume, and the art captures it without skipping a beat. The art really shines when it comes to the characters themselves, all being well designed, and their facial expressions can get the point across every time. Hana’s expressions are especially funny – she spends plently of time expressing how much sleep she is losing when she lays her head on her desk, drooling, wishing she was home in bed! All the text is highly readable, and it’s nice to have the sound effects all translated right there on the page always a plus in my books. The end of the book includes an in-depth collection of translation notes and a preview of the next volume. It’s always an added bonus to have some revealing answers at the end of the book – especially explanations of some of the Japanese cultural jokes that may fly over most of our heads, as they tend to do. The preview of the next volume is of course still in Japanese, but it’s always nice to get a sneak peek into what we’ll be reading next.
IN SUMMARY:
My Heavenly Hockey Club is a comedy at heart, and volume six throws it into territories that it has yet to breach until now. The addition of a new character takes this series to new heights of oddity, and you’ll more than likely be glad it does! |
