Girl Got Game!! by Shizuru Seino

Uhg, ugh, shopping crowds make my blood pressure spike. I'm not a people person on the best of days, let alone when no one else is trying to be courteous. Why do I always have to be the one move aside or look before I come out of an aisle with my cart? Looking at you lady with kids crowding my personal space who thinks going to the other end of the rack and looking at stuff before me will make me move faster.



Girl Got Game!! by Shizuru Seino

Art and story (c) Shizuru Seino (Sorry for the poor quality)

Genre: Shojo, Sports, Gender Bender
Length: 10 Volumes – 36 Chapters (plus 2 extra chapters and 3 one-shots)



           The art only has a few hiccups at the beginning but the large majority of it is professional and consistent. The eyes are large and clear and display a lot of emotion,

the faces change shape a little after the first volume but it seems like a natural progression. The hair is varied, mostly drawn with thick lines and angles, but the background people tend to all look the same. The clothes are a bit baggy, but since they are mostly school uniforms and tracksuits that really doesn't make a difference. The hands are a bit oversized, and most of the characters look really tall, as they are basketball players, but there's not really a lot I can complain about. It's a little generic of its time (early 2000's) but there's plenty of personality in it, too.
           Kyo Aizawa is thrilled to be going to a school renowned for it's cute girl's uniform, but unbeknownst to her, her father had much different reasons to be happy she is going to the school. He's a basketball fanatic, and high school was supposed to be Kyo's final release from the sport, but her dad has a lot of explaining to do when her clothes arrive and they are a boy's uniform. Foisting his b-ball dreams on her, and forging her school paperwork, Kyo's father sends her to school as a boy to join the renowned men's basketball team. Can Kyo keep her secret, even though she'll be living in a dorm full of boys?
           Girl Got Game, which is the English release name as apposed to the original title of Power!!, is one of the first manga I read all the way through. I borrowed it from a friend

and laughed my ass off through out the whole thing. Inexplicable name changes aside, it's an excellent manga to start on but its good to read at any point in a manga obsession cycle and even though its been over ten years since my first reading (showing my age much?) I still laugh when I read it, too. There's not a lot of stories that make me laugh out loud, but this mangaka has that ability. Also, interestingly, several of her other manga are related, as well, for extra interest. Two of the related ones I plan to review after this one, unfortunately the one directly related to this manga isn't available in scans and the English release was dropped so it's only half published, but the others are good, also, and all share the same humor. Now, comedy manga aren't always known for their strong plot lines, so I'm not going to try and bluff it just because I like this manga so much. Although, considering all the weird and wacky stuff that happens, the plot is actually pretty good. The progression of the main character and the love interest continues as you go and even though things get real dramatic real fast around volume seven, it hardly loses his humor and once the dramatics are solved it makes up for the drop in zany with extra zany hi-jinks. The ending is so over the top, it almost seems like a different manga all of a sudden, though the extra chapter at the end helps with the sudden separation. Kyo is an interesting character, its easy to see, through the art and the story, how she gets away with pretending she's a boy and annoys the hell out of her roommate. Her love interest is so grouchy and you can't help feeling sorry for the boy for falling for Kyo, but you can also see how well they get along, too. There aren't any points that drag, either, once you get through the very beginning. I'm probably all over the place in this review simply because I'm so familiar with this particular manga, but I can't help myself its a complete package.


5/5 Its got its problems but it deserves top marks because its so amusing read after re-read.