Ichigoki's Under Control!!: Unedited Audio and Recording Notes

Manga Details

• Author: Hayashi, Seiji
• Other works:
  • Chikyuu Ningen Terra-chan (2017, 7 chapters, Shonen Jump Plus)
    • Originally a two-part feature in Weekly Shonen Jump, expanded to a miniseries on Jump Plus. A delinquent must be kind to a young girl who is the avatar of the earth, as what happens to her affects the whole world. Features Hide (recurring character of the creator’s) in a side role.
  • I’m From Japan (2018-2020, 6 vols, 45 chapters, Weekly Shonen Jump (2018-2019), Saikyo Jump (2019-2020))
    • Japan Hinomoto is obsessed with Japan, to the point of having a nonsensical fighting style built around the trademarks of each prefecture of good old Nihon. A stupid gag manga that provided a platform for advertisers to promote their prefectural delights. No, seriously, it ran adverts each chapter. It even had an anime! Not a… not a good one, but an anime all the same! Viz did three chapters of it, Manga Plus did most of the rest, but there’s a gap in between no-one cares enough to fill, so the whole thing isn’t available in English.
• Run dates: Nov 28, 2022 to Apr 17, 2023
  • Series it replaced:
    • Nothing, maybe? I think it counts as replacing Ruri Dragon due to it going on hiatus.
  • Series that replaced it:
    • Nue’s Exorcist by Kota Kawae
  • Series in same round:
    • The Ichinose Family’s Deadly Sins by Taizan 5
    • Cipher Academy by Nisio Isin (Shounen Shoujo) & Yuji Iwasaki
    • Fabricant 100 by Daisuke Enoshima
• Chapters/Volumes: 19/2

About the Manga

• Plot
  • One day Misao showed up to see her childhood friend Ichigaki, who was shocked to see that she had shrunk herself down to the size of a mouse. Misao is a mad scientist who needs animal testicles to grow back to normal size. They go to the zoo to get said testicles and Ichigaki is murdered by a gorilla. He wakes up the next morning to discover that he’s now a cyborg and Misao must help pilot him. But also the first day of high school is today! Ichigaki rushes to high school using a butthole rocket and together the two decide to try and live out his youth without anyone finding out he’s a cyborg. Ichigaki meets a weird but nice delinquent kid named Flower who ends up being too close of a friend.I dunno it’s a gag manga and blah blah blah ughhh he’s too strong in the physical fitness test and scares a robber as well as the Yakuza whatever. Also there’s a girl that Ichigaki has a crush on but she’s cuhraaaaazy about animals and thinks Misao is a hamster because everyone is half blind in this series.
  • 
    
  • The school president who commands a legion of followers wants to capture Ichigaki because he’s not human. Misao creates a version of the antidote but she swapped testicles for eggs, resulting in her growing way way bigger until she gets shot by drones with a shrink serum. Then another childhood friend of theirs named Seasons appears to challenge them to different games every season, facilitating a sudden time skip to graduation. The school president comes back and she has a crush on Ichigaki but he’s too paranoid from last time to listen to her. There’s a battle of the bands where Ichigaki transforms into musical instruments in a very unsettling way. Everyone starts reminiscing about events that we didn’t see happen and Ichigaki can’t remember either until Misao goes on a quest to fix his memory, at which point he cries. The pair decide to go find 3 mystical animal testicles in order to restore their original bodies so it turns into a dragon ball z parody for a bit. The two go to America to find the first ball and are arrested for illegal entry where they become cell mates with the owner of the ball.
  • 
    
  • They help make a mean prisoner nice and he gives them his nut. 4 years later Ichigaki and Misao are released from prison and ready to find the other balls when their future selves appear to tell them that they’re in a future trunks parody now and help them find the next ball. Next it’s time for the high school reunion but Ichigaki is busy training in the demon world to fight the demon king who has the last ball around his neck. But this is a wacky manga so his class decided to have the reunion in the demon realm with him. Misao gets trashed and offers the demon king some sake at which point he becomes a nice guy and gives them his testicle. Another time skip happens and we’re at Misao and Ichigaki’s wedding when all the bad guys attack. Misao takes control of Ichigaki again and fires his head as an attack. Everyone laughs as ichigaki’s head arrives in the hands of an evil organization. I totally forgot to mention the kid who wanted to compete in battlebots whatever.
• Characters
  • Kai Ichigoki (Ee-chee-go-kee, Kai)
    • Robot man
    • Straight man
    • Complains a lot
    • Probably wered by monster
    • 
      
  • Misao Chiisaki
    • Science lady
    • Has anxiety
    • Acts like baby
  • Flower
    • Tough but nice guy
    • He is legit funny

Why it failed

• This is some ugly art
• He’s made of metal how did that happen? Yohoho he got turned into a robot for a shitty manga
• This plot makes no sense even by gag manga standards
• This series really has no confidence in itself like it explains the jokes "so wacky the student was fine being written on but it's gotta be symmetrical"
• This pacing is horrible
• These weird little pun comments are so annoying and sometimes don't even make sense, an energy drink talk about taking the bitter with the sweet
• This series just has no confidence in its own humor so anything remotely funny is explained to you
• It doesn't even pretend it's going anywhere with it's excuese plot
• Zero effort to having characters, like the dudes complaining the mc has a gf show up out of nowhere
• Why are none of the hidden features reused?
• I really wanted to enjoy the flashback to events that didn't happen joke but mitama did it so much better

What it did well

• Why do the cover arts go so hard
• I like the goofy faces he draws
• Actually funny jokes
  • 2: shitty drawn face robber
  • 3: diamond modes face
  • 5: forget the energy drink we have monsters coming after me!
  • 6: cow rustler dreams
  • 9: the hole in the classroom continues to be used
  • 15: the bishoden guys robot, I have questions so many questions
  • 16: lost memory premise
  • 17: dragon ball parody
• What a based teacher
• That competition timeskip was kinda clever
• This is amazing the author truly did not give a shit midway through

Where it could have gone

• Make people actually down with the robot I swear any hiding X from public plot always suck
• The author is decent at visual gags so he should have leaned more into it
• Actually would have been hilarious if flower did figure out he's a robot chapter 5 and completely shifted the series
• What if we keep Ichigoki the straight man but everyone in school is even fucking weirder than he is
• Maybe play into the social anxiety element perhaps the cyborgness is how some people don't feel human and really don't understand people like a robot
• Ok I lied the lost memory chapter was

Misc Thoughts

• The rare weed joke in WSJ
• It kinda annoys me misaos size keeps changing
• How could the current student council president still be in that role after 2 years
• I appreciate the attention to detail with the instrument's made out of him all being connected
• Maxy Bee thoughts:
  • Volume extras are paltry. Each chapter gets a bonus little gag on the extra pages in between, and then you get a sketchy bonus comic at the back of each volume. No assistant credits, no insights, no polish.
  • In chapter 14 Misao dresses up as coach Anzai from Slam Dunk, the greatest manga of all time.
  • Hayashi’s mascot character, Hide, does not appear in this manga (I think), but in the bonus at the end of the series we see that a button on Misao and Ichigoki’s child makes their face turn into Hide’s.

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary
  • Community
    • Tucker: Awful outset, middling middle, fucked finale
    • Maxybee: Vore robot, shrunken girl, fetish displayed
    • A SpookySkelly: Oh great. Another high school series
    • ChemyChems: Cerulean clad cyborg causing consistent consternation.
    • Chickenwarlord: Deus ex machinas itself through everything
    • Diego (The phantom seer): Ichigoki's cancelation is not under control
    • Digizi, the evil, sleepy A.I.: Manga so skippable it skipped itself
    • duderocks the earthchild stan: Great dragon ball parody otherwise meh
    • Final Text
    • GenericMan: Dead on arrival, no regrets dropping
    • LordAnubis, #1RedHoodFan/Mourner: One Piece's Franky writes a manga
    • Luffy0321: Ichigoki is constantly jumping the shark
    • Meru (Charly): Going under no direction after months  My life as a teenage robot
    • Portal man: how I turned into a gundam?
    • Riel: Give me the flower spinoff manga
    • Riley: Lazy references don't make good manga
    • Scott: Life improves greatly after completing high-school.
    • Spike: Did it timeskip the humor, too?
    • SuperDave: Obvious glitches in the creative process
    • 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕸𝕱 𝖄𝖊𝖙𝖎: Million Dollar Man'd MC mitigates mayhem
    • The Wolf The Wood The Trafalgar: Brilliant genius couldn't invent good jokes
  • David:  author stop caring Speedrun any% | Ichigoki's under control, the plot isn't | neither fetishes or humor is subtle
  • Jordan: Obama chuckled: you mean chaos testicles?
  • Guest:
• Flop or not
  • If flop, what they could read instead
    • Read Dr. Slump slam dunk rec no cap or cromartie highschool or actually mitama security
  • If not, how it compares to Chainsaw Man
• Is this the best/worst series we’ve talked about