My Heavenly Hockey Club Vol. #01

By Matthew Alexander     April 12, 2007
Release Date: May 29, 2007



Creative Talent
Writer/Artist:Ai Morinaga
Translated by:Athena & Alethea Nibley
Adapted by:Athena & Alethea Nibley

What They Say
Lazy Hana Suzuki lives for two things: eating and sleeping. But she owes a favor to Izumi, the captain of the boy's high school hockey team, and winds up becoming a player. Waking up early, hockey drills, playing well with others - none of this comes naturally to Hana, but at least all of the boys on the team are super-cute, so maybe it won't be too bad after all!

The Review
Five pretty boys with no coordination and one lazy girl try to keep their field hockey club alive so they can keep traveling around Japan, resulting in very little hockey but plenty of jokes.

Packaging:
The front cover depicts the whole gang, looking quite serious I might add. Even though the title is rather long, the placement successfully maintains the artwork without having to shrink it down to place the title along the top. The back cover has the same picture as the front and a story synopsis. Del Rey's print quality can be a little hit or miss at times, but this first volume is clean and solid from start to finish. Extras include a note from the author and a rather lengthy translation notes section. There is also a translated preview of volume two.

Artwork:
Morinaga does a great job with backgrounds and landscape detail and the characters are well proportioned. I appreciate the fact that only half the male characters are real pretty boys and the lead character, Hana, isn't even that cute since she's built like a skinny boy. This is actually why the boys field hockey team thinks they can get away with her playing on their team. Morinaga renders some beautifully detailed eyes and attractive hands, which are actually difficult to draw well (along with feet). I was also impressed with how well drawn the curly hair of a side character is done. Along with the eye detail, I was very impressed with the amazing range of facial expressions for Hana. Half the humor in this story is Hana's reaction to various circumstances.

Text/SFX:
There were no glaring grammar errors and for the most part the dialogue flowed pretty well. The original Japanese SFX remain with small English translations placed alongside.

Contents: (Oh yes, there may be spoilers)
Hana is a high school girl who epitomizes everything a teenage girl is not supposed to be. She is incredibly lazy (actually very upset when she only gets ten hours of sleep), she eats like a pig, she's always late to school, and she doesn't belong to any clubs or help out with her family's business. However, as strange as it may sound, when Hana is half asleep she has amazingly fast reflexes. In fact, the way she recovers from being hit by Izumi's car is why he wants her to join his field hockey club. Obviously, Hana isn't interested, but pretty rich boy Izumi black mails her into joining the hockey club, where much to my joy she becomes the goalie. She even kicks some serious butt in a practice when she dozes into her weird super-zone. Otherwise, if she's awake she sucks accordingly.

Now the problem for Hana is the club has morning practice, which just doesn't work for lazy girls. What does work is the hockey club gets to travel all over the country for games and then some R&R at a hot springs or ryokan afterwards. My problem with the story is the club only has half as many players as they need for a team and whenever they travel to a match something causes the game to be called off. Making up for my disappointment in the lack of hockey competition is Hana's disgust with Izumi. I enjoyed his stupidity towards females and Hana's interest in food and sleep over Izumi, even though her friends would kill to spend time with him.

Comments
From a guy's point of view, a few jokes I really enjoyed were the boys holding Hana down so they could put the used goalie equipment on her. Take my word for it, goalie gear worn by someone else can smell so bad it will make your eyes water. Hana kicking one of the boys in his nads is classic, and drawing on Hana's face when she falls asleep at practice was funny too. There are just too many jokes to go into but I'll leave you with the image of a wild bear wearing goalie equipment to mull over.

All joking aside, there seems to be something more to Izumi's personality and a history or family situation that we don't know about yet and there looks to be lots of room for his character to grow. There is also room for Hana's character to develop beyond a girl who doesn't care about letting the world pass her by and maybe she will even learn to appreciate Izumi's advances, however awkward. All this and I'm curious to see how many volumes it takes before the hockey club actually plays a match.