Suehiro Maruo - Gichi Gichi Kun

This is perhaps the most peculiar book that Maruo ever published. It was released in 1996 a little bit after he published his graphs. Gichi Gichi is very different from anything else he really did before and after.

Gichi Gichi Kun is an episodic story about a boy named Gichi Gichi. He's in elementary school and apart from his weird looks and out of place apparel he also has super powers. He calls them "secret techniques" for some reason. Probably alluding to that he's from China. Surprisingly for a Maruo work he actually tries to do good with those superpowers. So what you really get here is some kind of twisted parody of school manga cliches.

There's not much gore or similar usual Maruo material. So it's basically not in the ero-guro genre (apart from maybe last two or three chapters).

I think one day mister Maruo said to himself (after smoking serious amounts of opium): I'm going to make a commercial mainstream school-life manga.


Absorb.