Hareluya II: Boy

Meet the “Invincible man” Hibino Hareluya, a narcissistic delinquent with a strong belief in friendship and loyalty. He enjoys referring himself as “Oresama” which is the most arrogant way of referring to yourself in Japanese. Along with his weighty ego comes his special talent, concealing metal bats and saucers in the back of his shirt for later use. It’s much more useful than it sounds. No ego would be complete without a grand goal, his being world domination. Of course the correct way to complete this objective is to beat up local gangs.

There are quite a few other support characters.

Okamoto: The short and weakest support character. Strong willed, though get’s his ass kicked pretty much every time.
Ichijou: The second strongest character. He has a very strong sense of morality and manliness.
Yamana: The love interest of Okamoto. Yeah, I never expected that.

The characters are a little flat at times, each with their own development happening on specific arks. This doesn't effect the manga much. The story is more about the fights, the sense of friendship and loyalty then the growth of it’s characters. Not that it’s a hindrance when it does happen.

The story isn’t special in itself. It’s pretty straight forward. Beat up one group of baddies, onto the next. The plot starts out fairly lighthearted, slowly getting more serious and includes some sensitive subjects. Especially near the end of the series.

In conclusion, this manga is fun. It forces you to cycle between emotions pretty quickly. It usually does it tastefully, you do end up stewing in one emotion before being led into another. If you like fighting manga with an emphasis on friendship this is a must read.

Story

Rating : 8/10

For those of you unfamiliar with Umezawa Haruto's work, Hareluya II boy is the rehash a of a oneshot he made earlier. The oneshot chronicles the adventures of Hibino Hareluya, our protagonist and son of God. Hibino is sent by his father God to earth, (who’s an even more powerful badass than him) because of his lazy playboyish ways. While the first Hareluya had a strong emphasis on Hibino being Jesus reincarnated, Hareluya II boy changes its focus. Instead of being the obvious son of God they prefer the less suspicious tale of Hibino Hareluya son of church minister. Except for a few subtle jokes and references here and there the stories of Hareluya and Hareluya II boy are not connected and therefore one does need to read the previous title in order to fully enjoy the story of Hareluya II boy. The story begins one day when we the readers are introduced to Okamoto. Okamoto is your typical stereotypical pathetic japanese manga guy, hardworking, weak (might I add that he also has a nice hard hat that strikes a megaman resemblance). Okamoto is working illegally at a construction site and on his walk home due to his extremely short and pathetically looking stature he is mugged by several gang members. Instead of doing the right thing and just giving the hoodlums the money (which I add he doesn’t he even have much of) he obstinately refuses. Hibino having encountered Okamato earlier jumps in impressively and proceeds to beat the shit out all of the delinquents. Unfortunately, the delinquents come back to try and out number him but it doesn’t matter Hibino is a legitimate badass asshole, a badhole (lame term coined by Daimyo) and beats them twice as bad as the first time. Notice I spent so much time just talking about the first chapter, chapter 0 (blame the japanese), well this is because all the proceeding arcs pretty much follow the same format. Hibino sees jackasses, jackasses see Hibino’s fist, jackasses retaliate either by increasing numbers or under a powerful boss, Hibino pummels jackasses once again. Ah don’t be disappointed, the story may seem quite typically shounen on the surface but it’s the delivery that really brings this one home.

Characters 8/10

What’s most interesting about Hareluya are its characters. Hibino hareluya is one narcissistic bastard that almost always begins his sentences referring to himself as Oresama (Great me, for those of us who aren’t weaboo minded…yet); which in my opinion is just damn awesome. Hibino is especially awesome because he magically pulls items from his back such as bats, pans and even hot pots (whatever a delinquent needs) usually to everyone’s surprise. As far as the other characters go there’s Okamoto who as I mentioned earlier is working at a construction site. This is because he’s saving his money to go paint in France. (wee wee wee) There’s his girlfriend Yamana who likes Okamoto for pretty much the same reason old ladies collect stray cats. And finally my personal favorite out of the Hibino support squad, Ichijou. Ichijou, is a musician part of a group called the Fire Guns. He has this really cool move that he uses ala henshin to transform into this really cool spikey haired guitarist. Out of all of Hibino’s support squad his is the only opinion worth considering, seeing as he actually fights and in middle school was revered as a delinquent. Everyone else’s opinion should be taken with a grain of salt and should be compared to the noise a bitch (pardon my language) makes when it barks. As far as the enemies and other supportive characters go there’s Momiya the former banchou of Hibino’s school(until he was beat down to the ground) and therefore the one who shall forever be named as the comic relief character. There’s also Bob-jiisan who used to be renowned as a famous painter in France, that is until he mysteriously disappeared and abandoned everything he owned after his wife’s death. He serves the purpose of developing Okamoto’s character. For our enemies we get characters such as Kanzaki, delinquent and stoner who is also an ex-friend of Ichijou. What’s interesting about his character is that, this is the first shounen series I have seen dealing with such a serious topic such as drugs. At numerous times Kanzaki injects several drugs into himself, he even goes so far as forcing Ichijou to sell his drugs during one of his rock concerts.

Enjoyment 9/10

This series was highly enjoyable. The fights, the adrenaline rush, even the sobby speeches by as Okamoto. The only way I would improve this would be by creating a love interest between Yamana and Hibino, if only to see Okamoto’s reaction and powerlessness. But then again this a man’s manga and real men don’t fall in love. love falls on them. While not all characters are as physically strong and dominating as Hibino each of them are strong in their own unique way. And therefore it is quite enjoyable to see them progress through the story as they teach you typical cliche shounen lessons as to what true friendship and loyalty is.

Overall 9/10

STORY - 7.0
The story mainly has this pattern: we are introduced to someone with a problem, the secondary characters try and intervene and get their asses kicked, then hibino gets in the middle of it and destroys all of the enemies with nothing but his fists and an arsenal of weapons that he pulls out from under his shirt (comically referenced as doraemon) and defeats all the bad guys singlehandedly and easily.

THE GOOD: Lots of back and forth in every story arc. Lots of story arcs with bad guys ranging from spoiled rich kids to biker gangs fighting over territory. One sided domination as soon as the main character Hibino gets involved in the fight. The back stories of each of the protagonists is explored with every arc as well, so the arcs aren't completely self contained.

THE BAD: The story doesn't really go anywhere, and if it does, it takes WAY too long to do it. Hibino announces his goal as world domination, but all he seems to do all day long is brawl with the local gangs trying to help his troubled friends. After about chapter 100 you start to see the problems. The villains stop getting stronger and the stories seem to repeat themselves. It bugged me when we went from fighting a massive citywide biker gang bent on conquering all of japan to a high school bully trying to steal a jacket. Also the formula for the show never changes.

I also really hate the character development. We hear stories about their friends in the past and some connection they had which is now coming back to haunt them, but these character developments are badly written. Let me explain it this way, In One Piece, we see Nami early extremely hesitant about joining the crew, and we wonder why. Her character development was thus made more entertaining because it was answering a question we wanted an answer too. In Hareluya II Boy however, a random character comes out of the woodworks, tells some random story about how he/she used to be friends with one of our protagonists and how they are in trouble now. The story basically asked and answered the questions. There was absolutely no mystery involved.

Characters 8.5:
It's fun watching the dominant hibino making fools out of 100 man biker gangs and he has a very entertaining personality in that manner. We also have a rocker who is pretty cool and seems like a good character and is very good at brawling.

The other characters are pretty much hit and miss filler characters. We have a midget art student who is always getting picked on. A hot chick who is dating the midget, the two of them together actually makes the story much more goody goody than it has to be. Always giving a goody goody speech about immorality...

Around chapter 100 they brought in a really old artist. He seems like a completely pointless addition to the cast which makes no sense at all.

Enjoyment 8:
The first 100 chapters or so are really entertaining even if some of the characters piss you off and the story arcs seem really shallow, its really fun watching hibino kick everyone's ass. After that it just gets stale and repetitive because it becomes obvious how shallow the story arcs are.

MY SUGGESTION:
Read it, its a good fun story, and will keep you entertained. The stories are shallow, but you don't really notice it until about 100 chapters in, so my suggestion is read until you get bored. It starts out pretty well and if it was just the first 100 chapters I would score it a 9.

What is this comedy manga about? It is about a High School boy named Hibino Hareluya who tries to conquer the world by beating up evil gangs and saving innocent people. When you first read it, however, you will think it is some manga like Bleach or Naruto, but this is quite different, with only a few little flaws. The bad part about this manga is that there's too many Arcs. One arc and new people after another, it'll take ages thinking up new arcs and new people. So I think I'll recommand this just to you fighting-comedy lovers, not only fighting lovers. I think the story will be a 7, since it's not so bad and not so good. As for the art, I think it's 7 too, because no drawings are blury. The characters .... I rate them a 6, because of too many of them. Of course, enjoyment will be a 10!!! I will not spoil enjoyment for you, you'll understand after u read this manga.