Maison Ikkoku

STORY

Centering on a wooden apartment named ‘Ikkokukan,’ this is a love comedy comic focusing on the relationship between Yusaku Godai, an inhabitant of the apartment, and Kyoko Otonashi, a widow and the building manager there, along with other inhabitants.
Godai, a student who failed to enter a university, falls in love at his first look when Kyoko comes to the apartment.
Despite the funny inhabitants’ disturbance, he successfully passes the university next year.
Thereafter, Godai heightens feeling for Kyoko and tries to make a better relationship with her, but Kyoko never faces the reality with thinking of her lost husband all the time.
On the other hand, Kyoko joins to a tennis gym to wile away. But also there, she gets aggressively approached by the coach.
In the meantime, another female character Kozue who likes Godai appears.
With those different thoughts, several dramas arise.
This comic is renowned as a masterpiece of 80’s love comedy comics in Japan.

(Rumiko Takahashi/1980-1987/15 books/Shogakukan)

COMMENT by Shun

Regarded as ‘Rumic World’ (Rumiko’s original sense), the story begins slowly.
Expansion of story is slow and flat, so honestly saying the story is not exciting. Nevertheless, I couldn’t stop reading the comics that drug me into the humorous world made by the inhabitants; I would say it is very comfortable.
Reading through the story, you would notice Godai is actually masculine, and how Otonashi changes from talking to her dog Soichiro, whose name is from her lost husband.
As solved the triangle? square? relationships, the cartoon makes me stick in the story.
Well, I guess the last scene was not like juvenile magazine though, it could be understandable when I recall their ever relationships.
In spite of that Kyoko Otonashi is a widow, she is counted as one of the most beautiful heroines in 80’s Japanese cartoons… go check her out once.
Let me explain her by referring Godai’s phrase in the book, ‘Easy to get jealous, jumping into conclusion, crying, cranky, but… I feel so pleased if she smiles.

Shun's Score 8