Why is it that I find Sgt. Frog so interesting when almost all other manga comedies do nothing for me?  I think the tail end of Chapter 151 offers a pretty good answer: in the chapter's last few pages, Yoshizaki spends a few frames lingering on a single shot as part of a comedic build-up before the inevitable punch line.  Precious few comedy manga series have a sense of timing that's anywhere near this good.

 

Of course, it helps that this bit of smart timing comes at the end of a spot-on Aliens parody, easily one of the more entertaining episodes of Sgt. Frog out of the six or seven volumes that I've sampled so far.  Surprisingly, the two origin story chapters at the book's respective ends are also among the volume's highlights: beyond the obvious (if gimmicky) appeal of finding out how the incompetent Keroro and Tamama became part of the Pokopen invasion plan, Yoshizaki obviously had a lot of fun with the quick action sequences he worked into each chapter.  Plus, I got a kick out of seeing the Keron forces butting heads with other invading alien races; for some reason I just like the thought of a bunch of alien races compelled to invade everything in sight without any apparent motive.

 

But as can be expected of almost any series hitting its 18th volume, Sgt. Frog also has its moments that smack of Yoshizaki running out of ideas.  The chief offender is "Summer Gone Wild", the inevitable beach storyline -- which, yes, transparently exists mostly to show off some of the female cast in swimsuits.  Even overlooking the creep factor, there isn't enough in terms of actual plot or humor to support the story's length.  A couple of other chapters reach for a more off-the-wall approach that doesn't work out in the end; while I can appreciate Yoshizaki wanting to try different things to liven up the series, the premises of having Keroro transform into a mosquito or test-market a lunar hotel feel like a forced, calculated sort of wackiness that ended up annoying me more than entertaining me.  (To the Yoshizaki's credit, he makes a more successful crack at this sort of thing elsewhere in the volume with "Kero-Tel Paint", a story that's both short enough and genuinely weird enough to be interesting where the other two aren't.)

 

 

It's hard to argue that Sgt. Frog doesn't suffer from diminishing returns -- but then again, that was just as true a good fifteen volumes ago.  I suspect that anyone who's invested in all 17 prior volumes up to this point isn't going to be bothered by the formula continuing to wear a little thin, particularly since there are still quite a few entertaining stories among the volume's misses.