Manga Review: Arakawa Under The Bridge

Title: Arakawa Under The Bridge
Author: Nakamura Hikaru
Release: Monthly
Status: Ongoing
Genre: Comedy, Seinen
Art: C
Originality: A
Story: B
Characters: A
Humor: A
Action: B

Impression: This is the source material for Shaft's latest anime and it is about a young straitlaced young man who meets this girl who claims she's an alien from Venus while he was in predicament of having to retrieve his pants from the girder of a bridge. Predictably he slips off only to be saved by the girl. Due to his upbringing he must repay the deed otherwise he will suffer asthma anxiety attacks and as such he agrees to fall in love with the girl to repay the favor which leads to him having to live under the bridge from then on. While that doesn't sound too out there considering that I've heard of similar events in real life(Seriously. I have.) this series draws upon the absurdity of its characters and their interactions. The manga for better or worse is much less dependent on the abstract stylings featured in the anime and this makes it much more straightforward and easier to follow. I also found that some scenes from the manga are left out in the series and I find that to be waste as I find that these scenes add more depth to the characters and adds to their charm points. It's a good read and while I was having trouble deciding on whether or not to give the humor a B rating, I felt that it'd deserve an A for future chapters as it only gets better with more and more characters. That and the fact it has to get better for it to run for as long as it has.