Afterschool Charisma is either the BEST or the WORST comic THAT I HAVE READ IN YEARS

Let's start with a sad fact I was tipped off to a few days back: did you know that Colony Drop's got a higher Alexa rank than Viz's Sigikki? Something's wrong with that, Internet. People should be more interested in reading good manga than they are in listening to angry ol' us!

And by and large, Ikki runs a great bunch of comics. The only outright misfire is probably Tokyo Flow Chart, and considering they run stuff like Kingyo Used Books, Dorohedoro, and Bokurano that's a small price to pay. On the other hand, one Ikki comic toes a line the other titles in the line do not. It might be really bad. It might be brilliant. It's been five chapters and I still don't know what the hell is going on with Afterschool Charisma.

The premise is Clone High, except while that cartoon fully realizes the inherent silliness of its premise, Afterschool Charisma takes itself dead seriously. The protagonist is the lone natural-born human in a school full of clones of great leaders: just for starters, his crew consists of Freud, Florence Nightingale, Napoleon, Queen Elizabeth, and Marie Curie. Most of the chapters open with some kind of school-days hi-jinx (oh my god I just saw Queen Elizabeth and Florence Nightingale topless) and end with a shocking, bizarre revelation.

They're trying to establish a mystery here: odd things begin to happen, and the incidents only exaggerate the teenage clones' deep insecurity over who they are, the expectations that are held for them, and their ultimate fates. This sounds good in theory, but the treatment is so heavy-handed I found it hard not to chuckle. If you're at all capable of reading between the lines, what's terribly wrong with this place is pretty much spelled out from the first chapter, but the kids are oblivious. From there, all the crazy starts to pile up on itself. You want to know how crazy? A small cult starts, one which apparently worships Dolly, the cloned sheep. It's that crazy, and it it always plays these moments as gravely as possible.

It's really hard to talk about this without spoiling major events, because major events are simply thrown out at the reader-- usually as abrupt cliffhangers- whether or not they make any sense. A certain major character, (whose identity is also an "are you fucking kidding me" moment) for example, is just tossed out there five chapters in. He's been the hero's roommate and best buddy all this time and we just haven't seen him, even though the lead has been hanging out with his friends this entire story!

I get the feeling that the story really has no idea how ridiculous it is, so it's probably going to continue to chug along like this. I can't imagine what the hell this thing is going to look like two or three books down the line. It's definitely not a good comic, but it's entertaining the hell out of me and that's all I care about.

Comments

[Brack]

Try blocking various parts of the world's access to your content and then you too can have an Alexa rank as low as SigIkki's.

They seem to have fixed it for the UK now, but for ages I could simply not see anything in their viewer due to my geographical location. It's possible there's other countries that are similarly blocked.

[Mecha]

I spluttered pretty hard on the roommate reveal as well.
..And Einstein seems to have a case of the wandering hands?

[Joe Iglesias]

I get the feeling that the story really has no idea how ridiculous it is, so it's probably going to continue to chug along like this. I can't imagine what the hell this thing is going to look like two or three books down the line. It's definitely not a good comic, but it's entertaining the hell out of me and that's all I care about.

God, this one thousand times over. I think this latest chapter officially tipped the whole thing over into greatness; whether intentionally or uninentionally no longer matters.