Another piece of the Hikaru Yuzuki TSF legacy!

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TSF Showcase 2024-38
Waratte Yurushite [Laugh it Off] by Hikaru Yuzuki

Even after going through so many works as part of TSF Showcases, I still think the most important work I’ve covered was Boku no Shotaiken [My First Time] by Hikaru Yuzuki. Published in 1975, it was not the first TSF manga, but it was the first one that I had seen to really take the concept and just run with it. It told a comedic and fun body swap story, featured many tropes that would go on to become common amongst the genre, and took things in some truly wild directions. It also proved to be a highly influential series too. 

It received a TV play adaptation that millions of Japanese people probably watched, exposing them to the story and possibly body swapping as a storytelling concept. Ranma ½ creator Rumiko Takahashi explicitly cited the manga as an inspiration in a 2019 interview by Weekly Shonen Sunday. And as highlighted in my showcase of Futaba-kun Change!, series creator Hiroshi Aro also says he was inspired by Boku no Shotaiken. 

So, if you are interested in TSF and its history, I would strongly urge you to read Boku no Shotaiken. Admittedly, it is a product of its time and there are questionable elements. Such as a character who is the spitting image of Hitler and a mammy caricature who helps a character during their pregnancy. But nothing about it is truly mean or hateful, and overall I think the work holds up about as well as anything from the 70s can. The later chapters of the work were exclusive link I included Natalie.TF… and it still is! For reasons beyond my understanding, the full thing is not up on MangaDex. So you’ll just need to settle for this MEGA download.

However, Boku no Shotaiken was not Hikaru Yuzuki’s first attempt at writing a TSF story. In 1972, they wrote Doron, which I previously described as more of a ‘disguise’ story, as it does not feature TSF until its latter half and the transformation is largely used as just that. A disguise. I actually thought it fit the role of a predecessor nicely, as Doron almost ends where Boku no Shotaiken begins. With a young man trying to find love, getting abused by his female childhood friend, and then falling to his death.

That might have been an intention, but Chari found that there was actually a missing link between these two. A 60 page manga from 1973 called Waratte Yurushite, or Laugh and Forgive, or Laugh It Off. Chari claims that this work was “confirmed by the author himself to be an early pilot to Boku no Shotaiken” and reading the comic, you can definitely tell. However, it is also remarkably different from Boku no Shotaiken, allowing it to stand up as a story in its own right.

Before I dig in though, I would like to disclose that I did some proofreading work on Chari’s translation of this story, making phrasing suggestions, correcting grammatical, and pointing out style inconsistencies. Because I care about TSF history and want the English version to be as good as possible, darn it!

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Waratte Yurushite begins with the introduction of Taku Ariyoshi, a celebrated boxing prodigy of his local high school, entering the ring to a barrage of fanfare. He’s a good-looking, cocky athlete who begins by mocking his opponent before their bout, and proves his merit by knocking him out in the first fifteen seconds of the first round. For this frightening display, he is bombarded with women after this devastating beatdown, namely Ryoko Shimohara, a traditional Japanese beauty and clique leader. All the girls seem to be infatuated with him with the exception of Kaori Matsuda, a studious girl who is a little full of herself and dismisses Taku as a mere “musclebrain”, much to the irritation of her peers.

The following morning, Taku and Kaori happen to be in the same park where the two get into a teasing altercation that leaves Kaori running into the street without looking. This, naturally, puts her on a collision course with a speeding truck sports car. Taku tries to save her, only to get hit himself, putting them both in critical condition. At the hospital, a doctor informs Taku and Kaori’s parents that they don’t have much longer to live, before they both pass away. The author, Hikaru Yuzuki, then tries to end the story then and there, only for his wife to bash him in the head with a “Fritzmeire” ski.

Taku and Kaori’s bodies are sent to the morgue, but before they are burned or buried, their parents are greeted by… Adolf Hitler! Actually, his name is Kyouji Hitora, a character who was recycled for Boku no Shotaiken and plays the role of a mad brain swapping scientist in both. This is a… questionable creative choice, but I lack the cultural understanding of 1970s Japan and how the nation viewed Hitler to understand this character’s inclusion.

Hitora claims to have developed the technology to keep Taku and Kaori’s brains alive while their bodies heal. He has no evidence for this beyond claims that it worked when he tested it on animals, but Taku and Kaori’s parents already lost their kids, so what’s the worst thing that could happen? He messes up their corpses? As he says, “they can’t die any harder.”

One mad scientist operation later, Taku and Kaori wake up… and find themselves in each other’s bodies. Hitora, the scatterbrain, managed to bring them back to life, but he didn’t label whatever vat he threw their brains in. Typical genius. Taku demands he switch them back, but Hitora says that they need to wait two months for their bodies to stabilize… before highlighting a quirky side effect of this brain swap. The pain felt by their original bodies is telepathically transmitted to their brains. 

So if Kaori in Taku’s body gets punched, Taku in Kaori’s body will feel like he has been punched. It’s a weird cartoonish idea played for comedy above all else, makes no sense if you think about it for four seconds, and is only relevant for the final act of the story. In fact, I’d theorize that this entire concept was shoehorned in later. Just look at the original pages 134 and 135 and what it looks like with this explanation removed.

Anyway, Hitora wants to monitor the two, so they need to stay in his mansion for the next two months while continuing attending school. Meaning that they need to deal with each other on a daily basis, pretend to be each other, try to maintain each other’s reputation, all that good stuff. Immediately, they run into one of the inevitable conflicts as Taku tries to take advantage of this situation and check out his new female body. Kaori, being the traditional sort, refuses to let Taku see her form naked, and winds up giving him a blindfolded bath, forcing him through the whole process. And even after that, she begins tutoring him on how to act like a girl. How to sit, how to speak, how he should never respond to his own name, even in private, and so forth.

This scene could make Kaori look nagging and uncaring, but it’s clearly meant to be played for laughs and she’s coming from a good place. Kaori wants to maintain her reputation, avoid future conflict, and get Taku to take this situation seriously, as she still thinks of him as just a musclebrain.

Returning to school, all the girls are elated to see Taku, or at least his body, return and begin forming a crowd around Kaori. Taku snickers at this, glad that his popularity is secure, only to be told off by the girls, saying they wish he, meaning Kaori, stayed dead and were happy with his name missing from the grade board. It’s a brutal reality check that really shows Taku the social difference between himself and Kaori, but before he can dwell on this, he’s too busy ogling girls in the obligatory locker room scene. It’s only remarkable for the sheer relentless perversion Taku has as he gawks at the girls, staring at Ryoko with the intensity of a classically trained fat ugly bastard. But before he can do anything, Ryoko reminds him that he has the same sizes as her, leading him to look down at Kaori’s curvaceous form and faint from elation. 

Right after this, it’s time for the first test after school, and it goes about how one would expect. Kaori, the regular brainiac, gets the highest score, while Taku flunks it and gets the lowest score in class. Again, this is a very sobering moment, showing that Kaori in Taku’s body has his popularity and strength, along with her own academic smarts. While Taku in Kaori is a social outcast, not athletic, dumbest kid in class, and probably seen as a pervert to boot. It would be a great opportunity for some heavier drama and despair, but this is a comedy. Instead, Taku decides he cannot stand being an outcast and demands that Kaori be his ‘boyfriend’.

Kaori resists, but caves in after Taku threatens to go out into the city and find a cute guy to make his boyfriend. Kaori wants to keep her body ‘pure’ though, so she caves and agrees to pretend to be a couple. Naturally, this news pisses off the girls at school, with Ryoko taking this as an opportunity to mock ‘Kaori’ for their performance on the last test and loss of intelligence. Only for ‘Taku’ to defend them, blowing up at Ryoko and making her think that ‘Kaori’ is responsible for ‘Taku’s’ sudden shift in personality.

After school, Royoko’s counterattack plays out, with her hiring a gang of 70s style sukebans to beat up Taku in Kaori’s body. Typically, this would be an instance where Taku would come to terms with his lack of strength as he is unable to hit with enough force or maintain his stamina. Instead he uses his tell-honed fighting skills to beat the half a dozen sukebans without breaking a sweat. Ryoko, who was watching from behind some bushes, then calls forth her B plan, a handsome gay guy named Ayato she hired to seduce Taku. …Again, this is a 70s manga. Stuff like that just sort of happens.

Ayato tries to pull his moves on Taku… but gets promptly smacked in the face and this brash display causes Ayato to realize that Taku, despite his female body, is actually a boy. In light of this… questionable revelation, Ayato tries to make out with Taku, asking him to be his lover, only for Taku to give him an uppercut. Reporting back to Ryoko, Ayato tells her that ‘Kaori’ is actually a boy. She doesn’t believe him, but this does plant a seed of doubt in her mind. A seed that takes root after she stalks Taku and photographs him as he’s about to pee in some bushes t.

The following day, Ryoko posts the photo for all the school to see, branding ‘Kaori’ as even more of a social outcast, and leading Kaori in Taku to take revenge on him. She tries choking him only to strangle herself, having forgotten that they feel each other’s pain. I can’t blame her. That happened 30 pages ago. She then chokes herself, suffocating Taku, who promises to change his ways. …Which he never really does.

Ryoko then continues her meddling by sneaking outside the Hitora mansion by posing as a window washer— don’t ask, it’s just a gag. There, she overhears Taku and Kaori talk about the fact that they swapped bodies, and how they are switching back in a week. In light of this revelation, Ryoko begins plotting her final scheme to humiliate these two.

She, somehow, registers ‘Taku’ for another boxing match, meaning Kaori is going to need to engage in the “barbaric sport” of boxing. She’s vehemently against this idea, if not terrified, but Taku convinces her to fight, promising her that, with his body, she’s going to win. I’d ask how, considering Taku’s body hasn’t been training for two months, but that’s a pedantic detail.

The ensuing boxing match is pretty straightforward. Kaori is too timid and skittish to actually fight, so she gets hit, feels nothing, and Taku takes every hit for her, causing his face to become coated in welts and bruises. Upon seeing this during the post-round break, Kaori is filled with determination and knocks out her opponent with a single hit. It’s more played for comedy and slapstick than anything else and well worth a sensible chuckle.

With Taku’s reputation secured and the two having gained some mutual respect for each other, they walk back to the mansion and agree to keep going out together. While not a lot of it was shown— you can only fit so much in 60 pages with all these gags— it’s clear that they have grown close over the past two months. So close that Taku leans in to kiss Kaori, but she doesn’t feel that it is right. If she is going to have her first kiss, she wants to do it in her body, so  they promise to do so right after they go back to normal. 

…Then Hitora botches the operation, killing both Taku and Kaori, explaining to his assistant that he has only ever worked on dead bodies and ‘overdid it’ during the surgery. As punishment, Taku and Kaori then attack Hitora as ghosts before going after Hikaru Yuzuki, who ends this story by telling the reader to just laugh it off. Das Ende.

Going through Waratte Yurushite… it sure reads like a prototype of Boku no Shotaiken. And that’s okay. Artists need to play around with ideas, clear their vision, and make mistakes so they can develop their skills, and I think what Yuzuki did here holds up pretty well. The protagonists are egotistical and flawed people with their contrasting weaknesses that make for good tension and conflict. The story has no shortage of ideas born from this body swap, and bounces between them regularly, resulting in a lot of strong scenes. And I think it is ultimately a funny and endearing comic that succeeds in delivering a wacky gag-filled adventure. It is a good story, one I would heartily encourage you to read for yourself, but when viewing it more closely, there are a lot of cracks in its foundation.

My biggest criticisms stems from the balance of humor and gags versus the character and thematic development. There are some instances where the gags do further the story and character, but other times they don’t quite hit the mark. For example, there is almost an elegance to the telepathic pain concept. When in someone else’s body, you feel their pain, and they feel your pain. But despite centering the climax around this concept, it just feels like a cartoonish idea that was shoehorned in because the writer thought it was funny. And in his defense, it is. A lot of scenes are just there for short little gags, and while I would criticize this from a storytelling perspective, its humor does hold up… assuming you approach it with the right mindset.

There’s also a fair bit of missed potential here that I feel is inhibited because the work is committed to being a comedy, or perhaps simply did not have the room to accommodate it. The best example of which way Taku and Kaori view their new bodies and lives. Typically, a story like this would have the two learn that their initial impressions of each other were wrong. The smart girl would learn that the athletic boy actually does put a lot of work and skill into the act of training, playing his sport, and that the sport itself is a test of reflexes and planning under pressure. She needs to get over her inhibitions and learn to be more flexible. Meanwhile, the athletic boy would learn that he took his strength for granted and needs to expand his field of interest, rather than relying on his strength. He needs to train his brain as well as his body and learn to be more rigid. 

Here though… they just don’t do that. Taku still has all his skills when it comes to fighting and while he bombs his first test in Kaori’s body, the conflict never shows up again and is not resolved. Kaori similarly is very hesitant to use her newfound strength and only gets violent when her original body is harmed. Neither of them really learn anything. And while the impression of them getting closer is there and can be seen in how they act, they are still getting on each other’s nerves up to the window washer scene. 

I would say that a lot of Waratte Yurushite is better when viewed in segments, rather than as a whole. There are too many ideas to have it hold up to significant narrative scrutiny, and it’s clear that Yuzuki was more interested in using this idea for comedic situations, rather than storytelling. …Before deciding to do both two years later.