There’s only one reason why you wouldn’t want to read this sixth volume of Arakawa Under the Bridge: you’d have to do a book report on it. Because if you did have to write a report, it’d be something like this:
“There was a rocket ship to Venus. A naked prince on a whale lives there. Then a middle aged male secretary ends up in a love triangle with his young boss and his girlfriend. The main character loses his mind, Santa isn’t allowed on the river, the group takes yelling lessons, and the male mayor gets kapregnant. Oh, and it’s the season for love — for birds or boys, I’m not sure which. Maybe both.”
Yeah, I could see you getting an F and a note saying, “Read the book. Don’t just make stuff up.” But it’s all completely true — and completely hilarious.
So once again, author Nakamura messes with readers’ heads. The characters have been building a rocket, a difficult task for even the most talented of scientists. Although the first page shows the rocket blasting off, it must be just the river residents’ imaginations, right? And yet, based on what happens, it can’t be completely made up. Yes, the travelers come back with some not-so-exotic souvenirs, but yet their nonsensical tales appear to be confirmed. So is this all a mass delusion? An exaggerated recount of what happened? A joke that everyone goes along with? Curiouser and curiouser!
The (real or fake) space adventure takes up about the first quarter of this omnibus release, and then the story gets back its usual pace. Characters flip out, get weird ideas, celebrate holidays in nontraditional ways, and all that jazz. As you may be able to tell from earlier in this review, it’s hard to even touch base on the insanity. There’s just so much to make you laugh, from new gags to old classics, and all the cast gets a turn. BL week could be for birds’ love or boys’ love, kapregnant = kappa + pregnant, and I haven’t even touched on Vegetable Gigolo P-newt or the return of the maidenly men.
I did feel like the second half of the volume went through a bit of a dry spell, but it could be because the first half was so hilarious. The more emotional and serious parts of the story, on the other hand, definitely went through a dry spell. While the previous volume hinted at drama, volume 6 was heavily skewed to comedic. That wasn’t a big deal since the manga was full of gut-busting moments.
Now, the extras on the other hand…There are several pages of side stories that are unrelated to the main story, and I didn’t care for them at all. Ones that do connect to the manga (Kou’s dad side story and the dating sim parody) were fine. But I don’t want my precious Arakawa Under the Bridge pages to be stolen by surreal comedy about random people or a father-daughter story.
Otherwise, these complaints are minor bumps in the road. And even though you may not want to write a book report on this manga, you can still get some educational value. After all, do you know how to avoid being eaten by Venusian space bunnies? It’s very important if you plan on visiting Venus someday, so hurry and pick up Arakawa Under the Bridge already!