GDGD-Dogs

Title: GDGD-Dogs
Author: Ema Tooyama
Genre: Comedy, shoujo
Magazine: Aria issue #10
Bonus Factors: Manga artists in-training, reverse-harem, shy girl!

THE GIST: Kanna Tezuka is a super-serious girl who is enrolled in a special “manga artist” course at school. But she has a secret–she’s actually already a manga artist! Her first series is currently running in a manga magazine.
When Kanna comes to her first day of class, she finds that there are three other students enrolled in the manga artist course, and they’re all good-looking guys!!

Unfortunately, Kanna hates interacting with people, and hot guys make her sick. But the three boys know her secret (viva Wikipedia)! Since they all have high goals for becoming manga artists, they ask Kanna to train them. She agrees, if only to get them to keep their mouths shut.

THE CLIFFHANGER: Kanna begins teaching the boys her methods. She says that one must make one’s own pen tip by hand, and squeeze the ink from a squid! The boys are all riled up, ready to do anything, when–aah, man, they’re feeling pretty tired out. Time to quit for the day. Will Kanna be able to teach these impossible students?!

THE PLAYERS: Kanna is pretty boring, as are the three boys– Fumio (the blondie), Fujio (the serious glasses-guy), and Shouta (the one who always looks kind of zoned out)– they work well as a group, but individually they’re quite bland. Though like I said, if you consider all three boys as one character, it’s a good character. They’ve all got their super-high goals (like winning tons of awards, getting their manga made into a movie), and they seem so determined, but they give up at the drop of a hat!
Back to Kanna. She’s a boring character, but she has some moments. For instance, how intense she is about her manga! She’s used as a comedic foil, basically.

THOUGHTS: GDGD-Dogs doesn’t seem like it’s going to shape up to have much of a plot. The chapters are pretty short (about 15 pages each; both chapters 1 and 2 were published in one issue of Aria), so it seems like it might be more of a gag comic?
Nonetheless, it’s a fun concept. I laughed a couple of times. I’m going to stick with it because it’s an Ema Tooyama comic, but overall GDGD-Dogs isn’t as great as I expected it to be. __________________