[13CBS]

I've read quite a bit of manga thanks to excellent online manga sites like onemanga and, of course, our very own mangafox. I've started plenty, and finished a good number, and interestingly enough every single one of them went something like this:

1) "Uh, this looks dumb. No thanks." *throws away*

2) "Hey, this looks interesting...wait, nope." *Throws away*
2a) Or, similarly, "Hey, this looks interesting--OH HOLY GOD MY EYES" *throws away violently*

3) "Hey, this looks interesting..." *reads all available chapters* "Well, that was okay."

4) "Hey, this looks interesting..." *reads all available chapters* "Hey, that was pretty excellent!"

Medaka Box, however, has so far been the only manga series, out of thousands that I've read, to have...disappointed me. I highly enjoyed the original one shot, and then the first handful of chapters. But once other characters started popping up in the student council, things...started to go downhill. I stopped enjoying Medaka Box, and even felt disappointed in it, and as I've said, this has never happened to me before. So I wondered, why?

The "stopped enjoying it" part is easy: I feel that it just got too silly. I knew that it was going to be pretty light-hearted from the get-go, but once I started running into things like a money-obsessed swim team, a super powerful tyke, a girl who only speaks in numerical code (and people figuring out said code by the next few panels), and the appearance of a Band of Evildoers that belong in a shounen fighting manga than a high-school comedy, I felt that thing were getting out of hand, like too much cream in a cake or too much sugar in a cup of coffee.

But why am I disappointed?

I think it was because I finished the first couple of chapters expecting Medaka Box to be a Deconstruction of Mary Sues, a study of and experimentation on a character who appears to be perfect in every way. I thought Medaka Box was going to take Medaka--a character who superficially conforms to what most people would consider to be a Mary Sue (ultra popular, incredibly beautiful, does everything well, if not abnormally so)--and examine how a person with such attributes would behave in real life, and how such a person would have come about in the first place. There appear to be elements of this in the manga, intentional or not, Medaka's incapability for understanding "common" people due to her abnormal abilities being the most major example. The manga could have taken just this very, very far. Why is Medaka so good at everything? What affect has being, in essence, completely and utterly alone had on Medaka? What drives her to continue to help as many people as she can despite the fact that no one really wants her help? Is she driven in the first place, or is it all just a delusion? If so, why is she so deluded?

Zenkichi was another thing the manga could have elaborated on. He gives us an opportunity to look at a "Mary Sue" from the outside; if the Mary Sue is what the whole universe revolves around, then how does the universe see the Mary Sue? Medaka is supposed to be isolated in many ways due to her superhuman attributes, and Zenkichi appears to be the only person in the world who has even the slightest chance of understanding her and preventing her from feeling truly alone, if only due to having been around Medaka for so long. So how does he see her, aside from being the childhood friend he's been in love with? How does the supposed Mary Sue's companion see the Mary Sue?

Yet...the manga embellishes on none of these things. Medaka is set up as being good at everything, and in terms of doing and being she's practically the pinnacle of humankind...but it's treated more as a source of comedy (look at the incredibly silly yet amazing thing Medaka's doing now!) and, as far as I can tell, not really explored upon. Zenkichi loves Medaka, and provides us an outsider's point of view on the superhuman girl...but aside from the judo incident, that's hasn't been explored upon, either.

Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if the series were actually funny, but the mangaka seems to mistake randomness and silliness for humor itself. Random and silly things can be funny, to be sure, but throwing a clown in front me hitting itself on the head with a squeaky hammer, while random and silly, won't make me laugh. (In fact, you're more likely to scare me or provoke me to extreme violence.) Loli girl appearing out of nowhere speaking in only numerical code is the same: random, silly, and...not all that funny.

(As a side note, I feel that Medaka Box could do better if it focused on one "thing" at a time. It started off as being a high school romantic comedy, but then moved off to action-packed school competitions before heading into Shounen Fighting, with the appearance of the 13 and all that stuff. Not to say that genre change is necessarily a bad thing, but to do so in the space of so few chapters? Eh...but then, I might have a personal bias against shounen fighting.)


Perhaps I expected too much of Medaka Box: to call a literary work as being "bad" or "disappointing" is unfair if one sets the bar way too high. But at the same time, and to risk being called "pretentious"...I feel as though Medaka Box could have done so much more with its characters. The entire series could have been driven by Zenkichi and Medaka alone, with Shiranui in the background doing stuff to keep things moving along. And how often do you see a work studying and examining and Deconstructing a Mary Sue? To place a character who is 90% a Mary Sue, place them in a realistic environment, winding her up, and letting her go, to see what happens? To observe how such a character would interact and live in a setting with even a semblance of realism? To watch that character through the eyes of a close companion who gets the gist of her but will never really understand her?

That is why I feel as though Medaka Box had so much potential, and why Medaka Box seemed to throw that away for what I think is, in the end, fairly typical random shounen comedy/action.

At least the art is still excellent.

[elwan150]

well.. i pretty much have the same opinion to u.. tho i prefer to throw this junk away sooner than u did..:P

and btw.. like i said before..who the heck's mary sue??

[13CBS]

The definition of a "Mary Sue" seems to depend on the individual, but most would agree that Mary Sues are portrayed as being good at everything, is absolutely perfect in every way, etc. Others would further argue that Mary Sues are characters that are all of that, plus also have the entire universe revolve around them; everything happens for the sake of the Mary Sue, and anyone who dares to get in her way is either evil or stupid, or both. The Mary Sue (Gary Stu if the character is male) is thus criticized for being extremely boring at best.

I'm arguing that the author of Medaka Box could have made something extremely interesting by portraying Medaka as superficially one of such characters, and then dissecting and examining every aspect of such a character. (Plus some other stuff.)

[KLGChaos]

Originally Posted by 13CBS

The definition of a "Mary Sue" seems to depend on the individual, but most would agree that Mary Sues are portrayed as being good at everything, is absolutely perfect in every way, etc. Others would further argue that Mary Sues are characters that are all of that, plus also have the entire universe revolve around them; everything happens for the sake of the Mary Sue, and anyone who dares to get in her way is either evil or stupid, or both. The Mary Sue (Gary Stu if the character is male) is thus criticized for being extremely boring at best.

I'm arguing that the author of Medaka Box could have made something extremely interesting by portraying Medaka as superficially one of such characters, and then dissecting and examining every aspect of such a character. (Plus some other stuff.)

Medaka isn't a Mary Sue, in my mind, as she definitely isn't "perfect", but she's definitely a God Mode Sue, which is a twist on that trope. God Mode Sues have flaws, but they make up for those flaws by being extremely powerful, to the point of altering the universe around them just to conform to their view of what's "right". Haruhi is a perfect example of this and so is Medaka.

I agree with much of what you have said and many others will, too. True, the manga only has 25 chapters out, but the author is taking forever just to do anything significant. You've got rapid fire genre shifts, a slew of characters thrown at us to see if they stick and then disappearing a few chapters later, not giving us time to even learn to care about them, humor that really isn't funny (some is, but most of it has been very drab or repetitive), and most of all, no depth to the main cast. Look at Zenkichi. One of the biggest complaints I've seen is the way the character has been portrayed since around chapter 6, as he faded more and more into the background and lost his place in the manga. There's been so much focus on Medaka and her powers that it's overshadowed the few nice plot points that have been presented.

I'll stick by my assessment that the author, as a light novel author, has no idea how to write for a manga. It's a learning process, I know, and I hope he gets better at it as Medaka Box looks like it may be around for at least another couple of months. The potential is there, the author just needs to actually do something with it and treat the manga like a manga and not like a light novel. It just doesn't work that way.

Of course, this is probably our fault for setting our expectations so high. If we were expecting just another mediocre manga offering, it may have been much easier to swallow.

[Jetstorm-G]

The first to disappoint you? You must not have read Naruto, Bleach, or Fairy Tail then. (Probably not since you said you hate fighting shounen)

If it got serialized in a more forgiving magazine we probably wouldn't have seen the genre shift so fast. Though I do believe it would have eventually shifted anyway.

[Darknemo2000]

Originally Posted by KLGChaos

Medaka isn't a Mary Sue, in my mind, as she definitely isn't "perfect", but she's definitely a God Mode Sue, which is a twist on that trope. God Mode Sues have flaws, but they make up for those flaws by being extremely powerful, to the point of altering the universe around them just to conform to their view of what's "right". Haruhi is a perfect example of this and so is Medaka.

Haruhi is 1000X times more likable than Medaka. Maybe because she is not always the focus (Kyon is) and that she does have feelings for Kyon. Plus she is funny, while Medaka is just annoyingly retarded.

[BrotherRoy]

Aaaannnnndddd you couldn't just post this in one of the many other Medaka Box bashing threads?

[13CBS]

Originally Posted by Jetstorm-G

The first to disappoint you? You must not have read Naruto, Bleach, or Fairy Tail then. (Probably not since you said you hate fighting shounen)

I don't really hate fighting shounen manga, and I don't recall explicitly saying that I do (maybe I did, who knows with me nowadays)--it's more that the sudden genre shift to a fighting manga is something that doesn't seem to mesh well with the original premise.

Granted, most fighting shounen manga, or at least manga heavily focused on portraying fight scenes, tend to bore me for the most part. I've read Naruto, Bleach, Fairy Tail, and One Piece, and I still keep up with The Big Three (though why I still follow Bleach I don't know), and they don't interest me all that much. Maybe I prefer my action to be animated or live. But there are, of course, exceptions: Fullmetal Alchemist is one of my absolute favorites of all time, and it certainly has a lot of emphasis on action.

And despite how "meh" I find manga like Naruto and Bleach to be, I wasn't disappointed by them. I started those years ago, back when I had different (simpler?) tastes, and I think I continue to read them mostly out of habit, and a vague interest as to what's going to happen next. By the time I developed different tastes, I came to have fairly low expectations of Naruto and Bleach, and so I wasn't really disappointed.

Originally Posted by Darknemo2000

Haruhi is 1000X times more likable than Medaka. Maybe because she is not always the focus (Kyon is) and that she does have feelings for Kyon. Plus she is funny, while Medaka is just annoyingly retarded.

It's been a while since I've read the Haruhi novels (I haven't watched the anime, nor do I intend to), but as I recall, the appeal of Suzumiya Haruhi (har har har) was her fun, bombastic, and outrageous nature combined with the aura of mystery she has--what exactly is she? Where did her..."unique abilities" come from? Medaka imitates that to a degree, but somehow she doesn't have the same charm. Maybe Medaka ought to try rocking out with Zenkichi on the drums. :P

Originally Posted by KLGChaos

Medaka isn't a Mary Sue, in my mind, as she definitely isn't "perfect", but she's definitely a God Mode Sue, which is a twist on that trope. God Mode Sues have flaws, but they make up for those flaws by being extremely powerful, to the point of altering the universe around them just to conform to their view of what's "right". Haruhi is a perfect example of this and so is Medaka.

Hmm...I might disagree with your interpretation of God Mode Sue. According to Tvtropes, a God Mode Sue is a character who appears pretty much to render the abilities of all the other characters obsolete, like a walking Deus Ex Machina. Their near or actually superhuman abilities tend to detract from the work that they're in, not by, as you argue, "being powerful to the point of altering the universe around them" necessarily, but more by "being powerful to the point that a lot of the conflict is killed off, probably by the God Mode Sue's Super Ultimate Flaming Fire Sword of Ultimate Superness". By this definition, Haruhi would be a God Mode Sue if, for example,

she defeated the Computer Club in the game simply by being the most god-like gamer of all time, and did it all by herself while the rest of the SOS sat by watching, and then went on to win that baseball game again pretty much all by herself.

Haruhi does none of those things, as I recall. She's supposed to be ultra-powerful, true...but she doesn't resolve all of the conflicts because of it--instead, her power often causes a lot of the conflicts that makes the Haruhi series so interesting.

If we continue to use this definition of God Mode Sue, then Medaka is an interesting case. A lot of the conflicts are caused because Medaka's super awesome, but they're also resolved because Medaka's super awesome. Because of that, I don't think I would say that both Medaka and Haruhi are excellent examples of God Mode Sues. Of course, all of this assumes a specific definition of God Mode Sue, which may differ from person to person.

[BrotherRoy]

I still hold to my original reply that you could've posted this in one of the many anti-Medaka Box threads, but I'll give you a serious reply since your posts are well thought out.

You are entitled to your opinion, but at the same time this is the only revelation as to why you are disappointed. You assumed the story was about deconstruction of a perfect character in a way that would have appeased you. The problem here is I could throw several arguments at you about how Medaka has been shown to be a perfect character with flaws, absurdities, etc.

The other problem is just like so many others who are impatient and seem to desire a "perfect" story in the first five chapters...the mangaka had no time to get to the point if you will. You site your somewhat disappointment with other shounen manga like Naruto, Bleach, etc yet you're surprised that Medaka Box didn't meet your criteria since you say you also like Full Metal Alchemist, which I didn't really get into beyond a few episodes and a few chapter due to personal views myself.

I will agree about the need for character development, I myself don't comprehend the author's method for this and why it's taken so long, but I don't feel I'm being as impatient as the majority here. I've agreed with the naysayers about the lack of focus on Zen, but again I'm not at the point where I'm going to crucify the manga and the author on the basis that he's not meeting my standards alone.

So in short, I do think you're being a bit pretentious. Usually when I come across a manga I don't really care much for, or a comic, or a movie, or a book or whatever...I don't go out of my way to make my grievances known to those who do. Don't get me wrong...I'm not saying you don't have a right to post...I'm just jaded cause of the magnitude of anti-MB posts here.

While you are disappointed I see growing potential in Zen, Medaka, Akune and the many other characters. I'm pleased that the author opened up with a light-hearted highschool manga and switched to a fighting manga. It was apparent someone of Medaka's caliber would appear eventually and cause a ruckus. She could not have been the only person running around in this MB universe with those types of qualities. I'm not really seeing how it's wrong to go from no fighting to fighting...this does happen in schools in reality minus the powers. So technically the author is not far fetched in his decision to turn the manga into a fighting manga. As Jetstorm-G pointed out in the thread complaining about it being a battle manga...there were battles/fights early in the story.

The original premise was short and sweet but not deep and detailed to the point of explaining all the intricate twists and turns the author planned to take the manga through. At this point:

We don't know if he's going to revisit the members of the Council throughout the 13 issue?
We don't know how much development he plans to give Zen?
We don't know much about Medaka, etc?

You mentioned the original premise, but the original focus was filling the positions in the student council from chapter 1 and fulfilling the requests of the box. When the author stuck to his guns and had the characters fulfill requests and fill the council...everyone got mad and impatient.

So when he decided to shake things up and throw in a few wild things...everyone got mad and impatient.

Now when he's deciding to turn the focus back to Zen and allow him to grow...everyone gets mad and impatient.

To be fair, we should substitute "everyone" with "most" so I don't offend anyone. My point? I haven't read the Haruhi novels, but saw the anime, however I suspect you didn't get all of the detailed issues revolving around Haruhi in the first few chapters?

[Darknemo2000]

Originally Posted by BrotherRoy

Aaaannnnndddd you couldn't just post this in one of the many other Medaka Box bashing threads?

Thats because there was comparison to Haruhi and I responded to it, duh.