Many important children reside in what is supposed to be the safest kindergarten in the world, Kindergarten Noir. Well, ok in general every child in any kindergarten is important, but the kids in this particular school have been sent by prominent families who have high level careers that could affect not only Japan but the world, so no ordinary school can protect them. That’s not going to stop the many assassins that are after the children’s lives though. So how in the world can they have a joyful experience when people want to kill them?
Well, you hire some pretty incredible teachers. Just make sure they have some sort of bizarre oddity alongside their killing skills.
I guess first of all, at least for these first 10 chapters (and it’s possible this won’t be a thing for a while), when you hear the title Kindergarten WARS, possible dueling Kindergartens would actually be something you’d think of as a plot point. Instead, we follow various teachers (one in a bear costume???) and a principal in a maid outfit as they enrich the daily lives of these pure children while fending off numerous threats to the school. Our main character is Rita, a former assassin who aims to complete a year’s service at the school in order to end her prison sentence, and we follow her as she attempts to care for the kids while also finding a boyfriend. She reads her horoscopes, runs into hot assassin guys, and the slightest difference in taste — though the ramen answer is highly questionable — only ends in death for said hot assassin boy.
You talk about a departure from a series: while the humor has translated into this manga, you wouldn’t have counted on going from drift racing to assassin and kids playing with criminals at a kindergarten. That might pose a problem if the humor isn’t on point and the level of seriousness this series wants to get into. But as mentioned earlier, DRICAM!! was a pretty entertaining series that had its serious moments but snuck some good humor sometimes; this manga might have to reconcile that it can only remain at its level of ridiculousness without going overboard since killing and children don’t really go hand in hand. I can’t imagine anyone would want to actually see these any kids dead in this series!
Whether it goes in that direction in the future, we’ll see, but it feels like Chiba understands that. Indicating the humor with numerous facial expressions in a panel or page or setting our characters up to accidentally fall in a one-sided love, it is hilarious and fun to read. The timing for each moment, whether it’s Rita asking all the personal and mundane questions to her doing something ridiculous with a bunch of bombs, is great. It’s fair to say there’s much to like so far in these first 10 chapters.
There’s also a lot to really dig into: aside from these teachers essentially on contract in the world’s safest kindergarten, we have groups that want these kids gone, but depending on the teacher, we could have someone after them too. The two characters aside from Rita who have gotten some focus are Doug, a former swindler, and Hana, a bomb specialist, and already for one of them their past already has embroiled the school, so it’s unlikely going to be the first and last time this will happen. It’ll come down to when we learn how the rest of the teachers operate and when they’ll have their own story incorporated in this series.
Then from there it’s just endless speculation (will we get to meet the parents of any of these kids? Since they mentioned teachers don’t last long how many characters will we get in this manga?). But it’s of the good kind, since there’s many directions Kindergarten WARS can go. However, its current tone is great, and the slice of life (with assassins rueing ever getting assigned to attack the school) aspects have been funny. If you’re in need of a new manga that blends comedy with action, you’ll want to look into this one.