After the worldwide, whirlwind success of Yuri on Ice, Kodansha USA editor Ben Applegate has finally had an opportunity to publish one of co-creator Mitsurou Kubo’s earlier works, Again!!. Again!! begins with a premise that is slightly reminiscent of another of Kodansha’s titles, Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches (or Yen Press’s title Erased), where third-year “delinquent” Kinichiro Imamura is about to graduate high school and frankly he’s rather glad to be done. His introverted personality, appearance, and status as the “new kid” led to people labeling him as rebellious as soon as he started high school and he was never able to shake the label.
But on his very last day Imamura finds himself reminiscing about a club he saw on his very first day of school, the ouendan cheering club, and when he and another student startle each other outside of the old clubroom they panic, trip, fall down the stairs, and now both of them seem to be doing high school all over again.
It’s a bit of a worrisome start for the story. Imamura and the other student (fellow third-year Akira Fujieda) are last seen in the “present” lying prone on the floor in a pool of blood, but the rest of the story so far doesn’t seem to dwell on that grim imagery. So far it’s a fairly light-hearted story despite some more serious subplots boiling beneath. Imamura and Fujieda are having very different high school “do-overs” but essentially for the same reason: neither of them are the same person they were when they started high school three years earlier. Fujieda is in a rush to get things back to the “status quo,” such as convincing her soon-to-be-boyfriend to break-up with his current/”ex” girlfriend sooner, and Fujieda doesn’t realize how rude she comes off. Imamura, on the other hand, is now more sure of himself and the other people around him since he’s done this all before. He now knows what to say to the teachers to keep them from hassling him, doesn’t care as much if his new classmates find him odd, and ironically enough he comes off as more mellow and easier to approach and Imamura is netting himself far more friends than he had before.
But the most pressing question remains: what is going on with the ouendan? Imamura remembers that they were disbanded by his second year and discovers that the year before (before Imamura moved to the area) the ouendan had a much more robust membership and not all of those club members graduated. Did the unrelenting personality of the captain, Yoshiko Usami, drive them out? Did the cheerleading club, a club that competes with the ouendan for the same spotlight, have something to do with it? Considering that Usami seems to piss off everyone and the cheerleading captain sends a honeypot after Imamura to try and keep him from joining ouendan both of these theories seem pretty likely! But as the volume ends it seems like there were even more factors at play, although what they were we’ll have to wait to find out.
Volume 1 of Again!! is a strong, smart start to a new series with believable high school drama and likable, nuanced characters throughout. I was particularly surprised at how fleshed out the “honeypot” cheerleader, Reo Shibata, was. She and all of the other major side characters already have clear personalities, motives, and the readers have a real sense of how any two characters would interact with each other, even if they haven’t met yet. Honestly, Kubo just makes it look too easy, like anyone can effortlessly set-up multiple dramas and flesh out almost half a dozen characters in a single volume! I’m not entirely sure how this drama will continue to sustain itself for eleven more volumes, but I’m along for the ride and ready to find out!