About the Mangaka

Kusunoki Kei is the pen name of Ohashi Mayumi, who has garnered a reputation for her horror comedy series. She has a twin sister, Mayumi Kaoru, who also is a  mangaka and has a similar art style to her sister. Check out Kusunoki’s website HERE (Japanese).

About the Manga

Before you get your knickers in a twist, yes I know that Girls Saurus has only three volumes.

It’s actually two separate series, the first being Girls Saurus and the second being Girl’s Saurus DX. I consider them the same series though, since there’s no time between them, there’s no content difference either. The only reason (I’m guessing here) for the different title was because of the time between publications. Girls Saurus finished in 2002 and DX started the following year.

Girls Saurus was run from 18th April 2002 through to 18th December 2002, then, following a long break, Girls Saurus DX ran from 8th August 2003 and is still on going at the moment.

Now, onto the manga. I’ve not read anything else by Kusunoki, so I can’t say how it compares with her other works. However looking at other manga of similar genre, I find this one lacking in the art department.

It’s not bad all the time, I just got the impression that for the first series she wasn’t really trying with it. Rather it was a project she was doing just to pass the time.

However her art improves at an insane rate as she progresses through the volumes and into DX.

Yet despite the improvements, I find she still doesn’t give a lot of attention to the support characters, and at times even the main characters  seem out of shape.

The story itself would be nothing new either, and certainly nothing to make it as popular as it is. So why is this series so popular? Pretty much because every other panel has some sort of fanservice going on, and what’s even more rare is that the fanservice actually makes sense.

This series doesn’t take itself seriously, hell it doesn’t take anything serious, we get everything from rampaging ghosts, token loli characters, the clumsy girl who is forever falling over showing off her err….assets, and she just happens to be big boobed and wears glasses. We have the masochist school goddess, the original girl who was insanely overweight, yet a mere month or so later is a babe. And the school nurse who’s soul goal in life is to torment the main lead.

It takes ecchi and fanservice to the max without going over the line, though it does try and push the line on a few occasions. Some of the scenarios played out probably won’t appeal to everyone, especially the Subaru elements, since she’s his sister, and the Nozomi elements, since she’s the token loli character (though she’s the same age as Shingo).

The basic story is about Chiryu Shingo, he goes to meet a girl one day who wants to confess. However it turns out the girl in question weighs about 10,000lbs and confesses her love for him naked >.<

He rejects, in a very forceful way, and she beats him up (lol talk about tough love hehe). As a result he’s hospitalised for six weeks, and when he returns to school he’s suffering from a fear of women.

The new school nurse finds out about his fear, and begins exploiting him. He joins a boxing club, but it turns out it’s full of girls, and more importantly it has Nishiharu Haruka, the girl who confessed then beat him up. Only now, because of his rejection, she’s lost weight and is a babe.

It’s funny as hell watching Shingo try and hide the fact he’s terrified of women, while trying to overcome that fear, and deal with Haruka, who drifts between loving him and hating him.

The best way of describing this series is ‘brainless fun’, because that’s all it is. There’s no deep plot, not awesome art to draw you in, it’s noting more than easy going fun. Which at times is just the style of manga you need to chill out with.

This is definitely a series I can see getting licensed, or at least the original three volume Girls Saurus as a test run. The problem would be with marketing it properly. From the UK perspective it would have a hard time because of the nudity that’s frequent and varied. Although it’s a shonen series, it would most likely end up with an ‘M 18+’ rating, putting it more in line with a seinen series.

This isn’t one I’d add on my Essential Read List, because as I said the art and story are pretty lame. However it’s one I would buy to have for when I want something not requiring a lot of brain power to read, a chill pill manga hehe