Chagecha: Unedited Audio and Recording Notes

Manga Details

• Yoshio Sawai

  • Notable people they had as assistants

    • Atsushi Namikiri (Switch, Red Blue)

      • on Chagecha

    • Yusei Matsui (Assassination Classroom)

      • on BoBoBo-Bo Bo-BoBo

    • Naoya Matsumoto (Kaiju no.8, Nekowappa!)

      • on Shinsetsu BoBoBo-Bo Bo-BoBo

  • Other works

    • BoBoBo-Bo Bo-BoBo (2001-2005, 21 volumes, Weekly Shonen Jump)

      • The hajike (go wild) mega-hit, as a Fist of the North Star parody with a dude with a big yellow afro fighting with his nose hair quickly devolves into madcap reference humour, absurd non-sequiturs, and more scat than you can poke a stick at. The manga wrapped in late 2005, took a month off and returned as…

    • Shinsetsu BoBoBo-Bo Bo-BoBo (2006-2007, 7 volumes, Weekly Shonen Jump)

      • It’s more BoBoBo, but now they have a koala assassin. The shine had come off of the series by now, partially due to its controversy, and it wrapped a bit after a year of publication.

    • Kirarincho no Obake Festa (2009, 1 volume)

      • After Chagecha’s failure, Sawai pivoted into making this children’s book under Shueisha’s wakuwaku kids’ book line. Not an unheard of move

    • Fuwari! Don Patch (2012-2014, 3 volumes, Saikyo Jump)

      • Characters from the BoBoBo universe are rebooted into a cute Yotsuba&!-esque slice of life, but instead of a curious green-haired girl you have Don Patch, a small orange ball covered in very squishy looking spikes. I own this in print. You didn’t need to know that.

    • Honnori! Don Patch (2014-2015, 1 volume, Shonen Jump Plus)

      • Given the chance to be on the hot new thing, Sawai restarted his Yotsuba&! clone in Shonen Jump Plus, where it muddled around for a year and quietly wrapped up.

About the Manga

• Plot

  • Gure-Tokyo is a city with the toughest high school delinquents, or Yankees, in Japan. Schools engage in combat for dominance. One day, Chagecha of Gekiatsu high school returns to the city after 2 years and starts fucking shit up. He meets Masoto, his underclassman and tells him about how the Dragon Ninjas at Guerilla High are literally sending weak students up the river with watermelons. They defeat them using Chagecha’s “Yan-Ki” powers as he is known as the human bike for some reason. 

  • Word makes it to Kabu Kintamarou, the 3rd year president of Nanrei Saiunkan High school, the highest ranked school, that someone from Gekiatsu, a high school so low it fell off the chart, defeated Guerilla High. When Chagecha learns just how low Gekiatsu is ranked he decides to change this, so he goes to an arcade and recruits Kawai Himawari, a girl who goes to his school and is very strong. 

  • Chagecha then goes to school and joins a team that fights for the school in order to rise in the ranks. There are some other guys on the team but the only one who really matters is Doraji who’s a young kid that had such powerful Yan-ki he skipped several grades. Then they have a very confusing fight against another high school, win, and rise to a B-Rank. Thats pretty much all that happens. Am I forgetting anything?

• Characters

  • Chagecha

    • Has a giant poop thing?

    • Super strong

    • Has a giant poop from his old friend

    • Super yankee

  • Masoto

    • First year

    • I don’t think he actually does anything but he’s always around

  • Himawari

    • I somehow didn’t get her name

      • It’s literally Kawai 

        • Lmao I fixed this but I guess my phone notes didn’t sync

    • Hot headed

    • Very strong

    • Doesn’t take no BS

  • Doraji

    • I think matters

    • DBZ parody

    • Krillin energy

    • Lots of hidden power but has difficulty using it

Why it Failed

• This art is just bad

• I cant follow what the fuck is going on

• This needed to establish a plot, like just take 5 pages and explain things

• Nothing actually happens

• Establish some characters like they all are just walking gags

What it Did Well

• Sometimes the art actually works like the table scene with the badasses of guerilla high

• Sometimes there are glimpses of quality jokes CHA-GE-CHA

• Some of these character designs are really fun and silly

• The heart fighting the kid scene is just so stupid I love it

• Chapter like 5 it just fixes the weird graytone issue and now it’s way easier to read

Where it Could Have Gone

• Let the jokes actually breathe jesus 

• I like the idea of this being this weird punk student world, like it just living in absurdity is really fun it just needed to actually establish things

• What if every chapter it just keeps introducing new badass characters each more ridiculous than the last and it knew it was never going to finish resolving anything. I think if it made it clear this was like the Seinfeld of action gag manga I could appreciate it more

Misc Thoughts

• Is this the same universe as SWOT

• I can’t remember a lot of series with men that are ok beating up female characters

• Bless the translator for translating this but idk how he possibly thinks this is good

• This kinda reminds me of nekowapa which makes sense since he literally worked with the author

• If this came out now it def would have made fun of the Shibuya arc in JJK

• Maxy Bee thoughts:

• This is the fastest cancellation in Weekly Shonen Jump history. Whether the author or editorial called it quits first, its reception was so poor that the other side agreed to wrap it up and move on

• Sawai says in the volume edition that he tried to approach gag manga from a different direction in this work, admits he didn’t make it happen, and thanks the Jump staff for letting him try.

• Sawai had the image of classic delinquent video game series Kunio-kun/River City Ransom in mind when creating Chagecha.

• Volume extras include:

  • Kuro Fukuro (Black Owl), a one-shot about a delinquent elderly man.

  • Staff illustrations

  • Text pages related to the work or Sawai’s life.

• Do you remember back on Cyborg Grandpa G, when I was like “I used to know the guy who translated this, they do muscle fetish art now”. Well, this was also fan-translated by StrangerAtaru. Perhaps now that you’ve read Saint Muscle, you too can understand the beauty of muscles. 

• Chagecha started the same year as Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro’s Toriko and Sawai, being a big Shimabukuro fan (he credits Seikimatsu Leader den Takeshi! with inspiring his work as a mangaka), he ALSO has his own muscular lead character introduced while smoking a tree. It’s… cooler in Toriko.

• BoBoBo references:

  • Dengaku Man and Don Patch are on the first color page for this series

  • In chapter 2, Chagecha smashes the delinquent statue into one resembling Don Patch from BoBoBo.

  • In chapter 2 one of the schools on the hierarchy map is “nose-hair technique high”

  • Mysterious Tiger Mask is also just Don Patch, having lost his spikes and gained a disguise. That’s why he insists he doesn’t have a leek (Don Patch’s weapon) and explains why he freaks out seeing that one delinquent covered in traffic cone ‘spikes’.