Work Text:
Bonjour One and All: A Review by Mai Minakami
I did not care for Bonjour One and All by Daisuke Naganohara, and I believe, in fact, that it insists upon itself. In my professional opinion, the very first word, “Bonjour,” tells the reader all he needs to know. It is the same word as the beginning of the title. Very predictable. Very on the nose. Very unoriginal.
I am writing this as someone who worked closely with the mangaka on her first work, Stop! Kiss Thief!, and I believed, at the time, that Naganohara’s career could not stoop any lower. I was wrong. Kiss Thief was simply the unleashing of a horny teenage girl’s fantasy. Bonjour, on the other hand, is an abomination to every major religion in the world. Of course, I am not referring to the homosexual acts between the Lord and his Chief Inspector, as the sexual orientation of Naganohara’s characters are a matter of taste. What I’m referring to is, well, everything else.
The pacing, in the first place, is an abomination, as I said, to every major religion in the world. Right at the very beginning, we have the established relationship between the Lord and the Chief Inspector, and it feels as though we have intruded on their privacy, but where’s the build-up? Where’s the drama? They start right off the bat talking about their long john silvers to each other, suggesting a sort of “sounding” type of situation, and yet, the explicitness of these encounters is not my problem with the work at all. The two men seemingly have a wholesome, albeit kinky, relationship with one another, and yet that all falls flat on its face five pages later when the Lord cuts off his Chief Inspector’s bonjour, creating an accidental visual metaphor, and I must say, I was unsure Naganohara could pull off such an ingenious, yet trite and overplayed metaphor upon the page. When the Chief Inspector’s “bonjour” is removed, it is a very dramatic moment, meant to show the man in a more serious light, and yet, I’m not buying it. All the Chief Inspector does for the rest of the manga is cry. That is what I mean when I say that it insists upon itself. There are better ways to suggest that a scene is sad.
But the worst part of Bonjour One and All is not the smut, or the pacing, or the drama (or lack thereof). The worst part of Bonjour One and All, and I won’t spoil anything, is the ending. I saw it coming from a mile away. In fact, it was so obvious that I gaslit myself into thinking there was no way it could possibly end that way because it was just so obvious…and yet she did it. Daisuke Naganohara managed to create THE WORST ending of any manga in existence, I guarantee. It made Attack on Titan look like Fullmetal Alchemist, and yet people are calling it genius. Critics I’ve spoken to have raved that Bonjour One and All is a breakthrough of josei manga and that people, women and even men, will finally take the genre seriously. Kyoto Animation and Studio Ghibli are fighting over the rights for the movie adaptation! Studio Ghibli! Imagine the Lord’s bonjour in the same museum as Totoro and Ponyo!
In conclusion, if you want to be swept away by the beautiful world of feudal Japan whilst touching your own, AHEM, “bonjour”, say Au Revoir to Bonjour One and All, and watch Blue Eyed Samurai instead.