Four-and-a-half stars. This is Hanazawa’s magnum opus.

When I read Hanazawa’s I Am a Hero quite a few years ago, I assumed it was his debut work. The first few chapters of that story were that kind of somewhat-inept awkward, as if coming from an author who hasn’t quite realized how to properly present his ideas. That changed as the very long series (about 260 chapters) progressed, so you forgive that kind of shit. Unless you didn’t get through those initial chapters, that is. But I’ve read so much manga that it seems I have run out of “serious” manga (no more Oyasumi Punpun out there), and I returned to Hanazawa to figure out if anything else of his was good. I read his actual debut, about an ugly bastard who falls in love with an AI in a virtual world (here’s the review for Ressentiment). I liked it a lot. The drawings were the most amateurish part, but the plot was tight and well-woven. The single other work between Ressentiment and I Am a Hero is a long-running series named Boys on the Run, produced in the second half of the 2000s. I loved it. To my surprise, Hanazawa most famous I Am a Hero is a significant step down from his best work.

This series I’m reviewing follows a young man in his twenties named Tanishi. He’s kind of a loser: his looks are average, he is a virgin, he lives with his parents, he works as a salesman for one of those companies that produce toys for vending machines (even though he’s a terrible salesman), and the girl he likes, who is a coworker of his, considers him a stalker (or at least badmouths him as one). This is mainly a character study, a bildungsroman of sorts: we are to witness how a boy who has been dealt bad cards in life tries to become a respectable man.

Most of Hanazawa’s main characters are fuck-ups, including Tanishi. While they share that with most of Minoru Furuya’s protagonists (Furuya being my overall favorite mangaka), ultimately Furuya’s are good guys who are screwed up. I can’t say the same thing for Hanazawa’s. This story’s protagonist considers other people’s luck or accomplishments something of a personal affront, he’s morally weak, and has very little self-control, leading him to break promises and/or fuck himself over in a way that made it hard for me to sympathize with him at times. There were several points in which I wanted to yell, “What the fuck are you doing? Stop, and get out of there!” He’s the “act first and think of the consequences later” type.

Do you know what a mid-way turning point is? Many books on writing consider it the most important piece of a story. That mid-way turning point is something like the main mast in a circus tent, ensuring the structure doesn’t collapse. It makes everything that happened before it a prequel to the true meat of the story, which will come afterwards. It sets a clear before-and-after deal, to the extent that the majority of the characters we grew familiar with in the first half no longer appear in the second. Such turning points tend to be spoilers. Some books on writing suggest that when trying to come up with a story, you shouldn’t start plotting properly until you have nailed down that turned point. I mention it because Boys on the Run has a perfect mid-way turning point that closes the curtain on most everything that came before. Without giving away spoilers, I’d say the first half of Boys on the Run is about winning over a girl (in truth, a sort of Japanese version of Taxi Driver), and the second is about boxing.

Anyway, let’s give a few concrete details about what one can expect from this tale. Tanishi is, as mentioned, working as a salesman for a struggling toy company. They are competing with a large toy company who is taking over most of the available spaces in restaurants and specialized stores for vending machines. So Tanishi is a loser working for losers. Tanishi is attracted to their toy designer, a cute girl and also the sole female worker. She’s nice to everyone. Most of the male coworkers, generally unused to interacting with women, treat her as their local princess.

Tanishi tries to get closer to her, but keeps fucking up. At one point he lent her his favorite porn video, of all things (I don’t recall the circumstances that made it seem okay), only to end up giving her a DVD of bestiality instead, one that belonged to the guy to whom he had lent the porn DVD. In retrospect, this whole porn video thing is likely a reference to Taxi Driver; there are far more overt references to that movie later.

In any case, Tanishi also becomes friendly with a rival salesman, an attractive young man who opened up to Tanishi about his troubles keeping up with the demands of his job. Tanishi and his love interest, along with this salesman and his girlfriend, hang out like friends, and things look like Tanishi is finally going to experience some normalcy.

Tanishi’s love interest, this toy designer, is, unfortunately, a two-faced bitch. One of the most infuriating characters I’ve come across in manga recently. I wanted to grab Tanishi and tell him that she’s bad news and that he should stay the fuck away from her, but a boy’s gotta learn from experience. Once you’re deep into the second half of the story, that whole deal with the first girl, whom Tanishi was very serious about, becomes like one of those regrets in the back of your mind, that you wish you could scrub out of your brain. I’m not sure to what extent this is a spoiler, as I knew she was rotten from very early on.

A character that comes out of nowhere in the first half of this story ended up becoming my favorite. She’s a pretty girl with bleached-blonde hair, always wearing a red Puma tracksuit, and who appeared twice to punch someone: first the protagonist, and later the Yakuza goon that was beating up the protagonist. She’s clearly a trained boxer. If I recall correctly, she didn’t even have speaking parts in that first half; she came out of nowhere like an angel of violence, exerted precise punishment, then left quietly. Great introduction to make her mysterious. In the second half of this story, centered around boxing, she becomes a main character.

Throughout this tale, our main man Tanishi gets beaten up over and over, literally or not. He tries hard to achieve things, only to get reminded by life that he’s not meant to win. Sure, sometimes it’s due to his own stupidity, although one could argue that nature made him that way. Tanishi lacks a good sense of what he’s capable of, so he keeps overreaching, and no matter how hard he tries, it’s very, very rarely enough.

This story features lots of great moments. Tanishi’s fight against a certain douchebag who happens to be a capoeira master is a memorable one, but Boys on the Run also features one of the wildest, most satisfying rescue sequences I’ve ever come across. Everything I could say about it is a spoiler, but if I had to give just one hint, it would be this: it prominently features explosive diarrhea.

My sole issue with Boys on the Run, which removed half a star from a perfect rating, is that at various points, Tanishi should be dead, or at least brain-dead. Not only he survives beatings that should have definitely killed him, but he survives them without major disfigurement and other permanent injuries, which is bullshit. At one point he had most of his scalp burned and a bulging hematoma that covered half of his forehead, with no lasting repercussions. Don’t set up severe stakes without paying them off properly; it diminishes the seriousness of the whole deal.

In short, fucking read Boys on the Run, will ya? If you enjoy manga, you’ll probably love this.