|
Rolling
Manga Review
It's been awhile since I've accidentally missed my stop on a train. Usually, it means that I've fallen asleep and I'm in the middle of a very good dream. Rolling is the complete polar opposite of that. I was so awake and barely contained myself from busting out laughing out loud in public by myself like a crazy bag lady. I didn't have my Bluetooth headset to blame it on; yeah, people would've thought "crazy bag lady".
Buy a blender (or if you have once in your kitchen cupboard somewhere, bring it out), throw in your Azumanga Daioh manga and your Wallflower manga, give it a dash of Lucky Star craziness, maybe two dashes of that for good measure, sprinkle some complexity in there, pour in a healthy dose of brain juice, and hit the puree button for as long as you can. Viola! You have Rolling: a playful, intelligent, cheeky, not quite PG but not quite R rated, funny as the hot place downstairs from Heaven, high school based romp you've never seen yet and probably will not see again after this for awhile.
 Have I lost you yet? No? Great! Here's a story, not about any lovely ladies, but about five guys, their resident adviser, and four beds. If you are thinking what I think you are thinking, you are going to join me at the hot place downstairs from Heaven one day. If not, you won't be safe for long if you read this manga. Bright Free High School is where our poor young heroes are currently stuck at. They go to school there, dorm there, and, the scariest thing, it's an all male campus with only one little old cafeteria lady in the vicinity. Mio Noh, rich spoiled brat that he is, was sent by his mother with all his designer duds and brand name gear to finish his schooling there but just to piss Mom off he decides to diddle dally his way there and arrives 15 days late. In those 15 days, the resident adviser, who's so mysterious we don't even get to know his name, checked in four guys for the four beds that are available in room 303.
 First, you got the sophomores, the upperclassmen of the room: Il Yong Jung and Ji Myung Jo. Il Yong is a little small for his age and was raised by his grandmother. He was probably so cocooned his entire life that he now has a speech impediment and is socially underdeveloped. I mean what normal sophomore would refer to hot dogs as hot diggydy dogs and like his napkins polka dotty? Better still, what normal sophomore would run to another sophomore because the freshmen were picking on him? Ji Myung is a breed in and of himself. High and almighty Ji Myung, defender of Il Yong and laborers, lover of books and intelligence but has no idea on the practical use of the two in reality.
 Then, you have the other freshmen other than Mio Noh: Chi Young Min. He is calm, he is cool, he is so cool he's practically frigid, and he is scary, definitely scary. He walks around like a smoking volcano; no one knows when, where, or why but everyone knows it's only a matter of time before his fuming and smoldering will change into explosions and lava flows that will wipe out anything that exists in his path. Lastly, you have Jay Moon. Suspected gay lover of Chi Young and moocher of all the guys in room 303, Jay moved in when the resident adviser accidentally thought he was Mio Noh those first 15 days. He walked in with Chi Young and that was it. By the time Mio showed up, Jay had made himself indispensable to everyone and had taken over Mio's bed. If he were thrown out, who would make Ji Myung's coffee in the morning, sew Il Yong's buttons back on his shirt, play Go-Stop with the resident adviser, and kiss Chi Young good morning? Of course, Jay is the only one who will not get wipe off the face of this planet if Chi Young explodes.
In the meantime, before Chi Young annihilates everything, will Mio be driven crazy by this new school, its inhabitants, or its lack of anything designer? Or will Ji Myung be driven crazy first by the mediocrity of the school or Jay's laziness? Maybe Jay will get killed by Ji Myung's overzealousness about the greatness of labor. The first time Jay only ended up naked, jumping up and down on a blanket soaked through with water and soap, and then in a body cast. If Jay dies, Chi Young will definitely explode, take out Ji Myung first, then be annoyed by Il Yong's whimpering, kill him next, and then take out Mio and the resident adviser just for the fun of it. I wonder if this comedy is going to turn into a bloody gore fest.
Reviewed by Carolyn Whu, June 2009
Below: A double page spread from Rolling, click to see at full size.
Below: Panels from Rolling.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
