So after completing my third read though of Gantz, my favorite manga, I decided to familiarize myself with more of Hiroya Oku’s work. After all if Gantz is my favorite manga, surely I would at least be somewhat interested in his other material. So I started reading Hen and I was quite surprised how different this title is from Gantz. Gantz in case you aren’t familiar with it is a horror, sci-fi, action drama that is really ambicious in both its scale and scope. Hen on the other hand is almost as far from that as possible. In the case of Hen we see a slower paced slice of life drama with comedic elements. The the setting is almost entirely limited to a high school, and the size and scope of the story is decidedly narrower.That being said, I feel the story had a lot of strengths for a work of this kind.
Hen is a series that was first serialized in Weekly Young Jump. The original run lasted from 1988 – 1992. So this series actually pre dates my birth, a fun fact which makes copies of this work a bit of a hassle to track down in English. Explaining this serialization from here gets a bit more complicated as Hen actually has two serializations by Hiroya Oku with different stories. Both series share the same characters and settings so it gets a bit confusing because there is no subtitle of any kind to really denote the second series from the first. The second serialization ran from 1992-1997, this review will focus only on the second serialization as I couldn’t find the original in any format in English although the story does do a decent job of filling you in on the events of the first series. The original Hen series is about an attractive male high school student who finds himself falling in love with another man although he doesn’t feel he is gay. character in question Suzuki can have his choice of women in the school, but he ends up falling wildly in love with an average male student who looks and acts a bit feminine. The characters struggle to come to grips with this as he doesn’t want to think of himself as gay and finds the whole situation unnerving. The second Hen is the story of a very attractive high school girl who finds herself falling in love with an average looking girl. As she is very attractive she is used to having most things given to her, but it seems that her mostly unrequited love is something she can’t immediately gain from her appearance. Being a very self centered character Yoshida uses her beauty to manipulate the people around her into making her desires to be with this girl into reality
Presentation 3/10
Hen has a lot of strengths, the artwork is not one of them. Hiroya Oku has had some of the best looking manga in Gantz and Inuyashiki, but in this manga like many works around this time is extremely lacking in details. The art style is extremely simplistic, there are a lot of mostly blanc panels. Further the charter design is really simplistic. We see very simple lines used to sculpt these characters with a very wire frame type structure. It took me a few issues to even get used to the art style. On a positive note the style is distinctive, I can say with certainty that I haven’t read a work with art in a style like this. The art gets rated lower not just because its simple, but because at times it hampers the story telling . When you combine the lack of character details added to the fact that a lot of the characters look similar, you end up with a situation in whicn it is almost impossible to tell which character you’re looking at. Thankfully you can fit together some context clues to help out, but it was annoying enough that I felt I should mention it.
Pacing 8/10
I think the pacing of Hen is excellent. I feel like every time they start an arc it ends just as your getting tired of it. Your constantly being thrown into new conflicts and points of focus for the narrative. I do feel as though towards the end of the series we see the story slow the frequency of events more than I would like. All the main characters get separated and the story doesn’t seem too advance too much towards the end. With the exception of the lead in to the closing arc the pacing felt perfect.
Characters 10/10
My god does Hiroya do characters well. In every one of his series I can say that Hiroya makes some of the most realistic characters that I have ever scene. All the characters in the series are lush and complex. Hiroya is able to show contrast between multiple characters without sacrificing the individuality of the characters. The characters are both able to function in the larger messages of the story without the characters feeling like plot devices. Beyond this the characters are really unique. The main protagonist of the second series often does mean things to the people around her, she uses her beauty to manipulate people often. Its awesome to see a protagonist doing something that might alienate them from the audience. Too often do we see protagonists who are too binary. They are either too good or irrationally evil. Letting the character be who they are weather that’s who we would want them to be is a theme we can see throughout all of Hiroya’s works. We see the protagonist of the first series go though really intense person struggle as the character tries to come to an understanding of himself and his feelings. This display of excellently written characters doesn’t stop with the protagonist. The supporting characters are very important to the story as well. Even without getting a lot of panels to themselves the supporting cast really do get flushed out and fully realized. All of the characters have a role and they all perform it excellently.
Plot and Story 8/10
Being completely honest the plot of Gantz was terrible, and held the series back the series from being one of the best manga ever. Hen doesn’t have this problem. Hen’s plot works for what it was it is. What makes the plot not perfect is its simplicity. You’re just on the ride for the High School years of a few characters. The story follows suit. Once you get to the premise of the story, a popular attractive youth falls in love with a same sex youth, the story doesn’t span too far beyond that. Not that the series doesn’t deal with some greater themes, such as leaving your passion for stability. This doesn’t change the fact that, the story is incredibly simplistic.
Overall 8/10
So there are a few more positive aspects of the show that are worth mentioning, that I didn’t get to earlier in this write up. The humor in this show is quite excellent. There are a lot of strange and awkward situations between the characters as they face the realities of chasing their love. Nothing smooths that over like sexual humor and comic misunderstandings. The show also makes some interesting use of love triangles, which is par for the coarse for manga, but there is something to be said about a love triangle when one of the members of that triangle has undetermined gender. All of the confusion and conflict was navigated excellently. With the exception of chapter sixty-five and sixty-six which read a bit strange. From what I could gather there were a few dynamics in that didn’t translate well. Otherwise I have to say the manga is great and I would recommend this to anyone willing to read a manga without super detailed artwork.
I would love to hear what you thought of the series. Let me know in the comments, and I will do my best to get back to you.
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