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Title: B.Ichi Vol 2 & 3

Author: Atsushi Ohkubo

Publisher: Yen Press

ISBN: 9780759529786 & 9780759529793

May Contain Spoilers

After a promising start, B.Ichi sank down to the typical shounen fighting manga arena – endless battling of evil doers by the plucky cast of not quite heroes.  This one also resorts to some pretty low toilet humor, which did not tickle my funny bone. Ick.

After helping out an ogre boy and the old man he was terrorizing, the gang ends up in I.C. Prefecture.  Yohei was just giving Shotaro and Mana a lift, and he is eager to get rid of his new friends and get on with his search for NoFix.  He has a serious gripe with the King of Spin, one that only killing him will solve.  NoFix is one of the those bad to the bone villains who exists only to commit murder and cause mayhem.  This one-dimensional enemy was boring, and since he didn’t have any other major motivation for his cruel actions, NoFix was just not an interesting character.  I didn’t care whether or not Yohei found him, killed him, or got killed by him.  Even the fact that Yohei’s friends were slaughtered by NoFix failed to generate much interest in their conflict.

Instead of parting ways with Mana and Shotaro, Yohei gets lassoed into building a robot for Mana, so she can enter the big Robot Fight Tournament and win herself some commendations.  While she is out shopping for parts, she is accosted by two of the evil Fear Factory’s henchmen.  Zuno sports absurdly long nose hairs that act sort of like radio receivers, allowing him to spy on people.  He also has a terrible sense of humor and can’t tell a joke to save his life, but he just blames his lack of finesse on his assistant, Assi.  Assi takes a lot of abuse from his boss, but he is as loyal as the day is long and he’s always there to back him up.  They were a little more interesting than NoFix, but maybe that was just because they looked so ridiculous.

The Robot Fight Tournament turns out to be a cover for the Fear Factory to take control of I.C. Prefecture and gives them a good excuse to terrorize people with their giant, destructive robot.  The balance of the books chronicles the introduction of the fearsome robot upon the helpless populace, and Shotaro, Yohei, and Mana’s efforts to put a stop to both the mechanical threat and the Fear Factory.

Once again, the art kind of saves things here.  While the story just meanders all over the place, the art stays solid throughout.  Though the action sequences are occasionally cluttered,  I enjoyed Atsushi Ohkubo’s illustrative style.  Shotaro looks like he’s wearing an umbrella on his head, but Yohei and Mana both sport attractive character designs.  The weaker villains have extremely exaggerated and silly appearances, and because the real tough guys look sort of cool, you know right off the bat who is going to give the gang a run for their money. 

I was disappointed with the middle two volumes of B.Ichi.  The action and pacing is all over the place, making the plot seem jumbled and random.  There was so much going on, all the time, that more dramatic events weren’t given any special emphasis, and after two volumes of explosions,  fisticuffs, and running to and fro, everything just blended all together.  To matters worse, there wasn’t even a compelling reason for all of the mayhem.  I was never swept up into the plot on an emotional level, which left me detached and disinterested in all of the commotion.

Grade: C+