87 Clockers

This is my first review, so, be gentle, guys.
Manga - 87 Clockers
Genre - Slice of Life, Drama, Sports, Comedy, Shounen.

To be perfectly honest, I'll be totally biased here. I absolutely love this manga! It merges the two things that I see as the entire purpose of my life. Manga and PC Enthusiasts.

It is still an ongoing manga. In fact, it has barely begun at only 10 chapters at the time of writing this review. But regardless, I had to write this review. To put it simply, it is quite detailed, in the information that it has. Perhaps, it was researched for the manga, perhaps, it was through the Mangaka's personal experience, I'm willing to bet on the latter. Only because, this isn't a field you'd normally be interested in researching. You need the drive of a true enthusiast to enter this field.

Plot - The story is that of a music degree major, Kanade. A violinist, who thoroughly enjoys his violin. In his third year of Music College, he's a an average college student. But, he has no drive, no real motivation to do anything with his life. Thinking about what sort of job he might do after college, if not go overseas to train under a maestro, he walks to his home. Which is when, he sees a girl barefoot in the snow. This chance encounter changes his life. He enters the world of Enthusiast Overclocking and E-Sports.

Character Development - Well, 10 chapters isn't normally enough to give proper development of the characters. But here, even within 10 chapters, I feel endeared towards the characters. It is really good so far. The characters and their relationships to one another is pretty complicated at this point. But, I'd like to presume that a clearer picture will be painted, given enough chapters to develop.

Art - The art is well, good. I cannot go out and say that it is amazing and stuff. But, unlike some I've read, it is pleasing to read. Definitely not annoying to look at. The best part about the art in my opinion is the very well detailed Computer Components. From the CPU, to the Motherboard, to the RAM, to the video cards, to the Nitrogen Coolers, it is definitely well contructed and depicts a proper picture of how those things work.

Conclusively, I'd like to say that: Since this is a new series, one cannot perfectly judge it for what it's for right now.
To sum it up: Basically, what Bakuman was to the Manga Industry, 87 Clockers is to the PC Enthusiast Industry.
I really like it. I love the concept of it, bringing this extreme end of PC Enthusiats to some spotlight. Only time will tell, if it will be a hit or a miss.

I hope Kanade gets Hana!

Rating - 8.4/10(Subject to change, as I plan to edit and change it once the series ends.)

After Nodame Cantabile, one of my most favorite manga, I was expecting a lot out of this series from Ninomiya-sensei. I happen to be very big on computers too, so I was excited to see what was in store. Ultimately, I was very surprised that this series took the complete opposite direction from Nodame and became one of the worst manga I've ever read.

Story: 3/10
From the start, the story is pretty shaky. The exaggerated hype around overclocking makes it clear that Ninomiya-sensei isn't someone who is knowledgeable on the subject and the degree of hype around simple ideas makes the story very hard to take seriously, at least to me who is familiar with it. I did somewhat expect this going in though and was anticipating the romance part to make up for it. However, it turns out the entire story is one big NTRfest, which ultimately is what seals the score for story.

Art: 7/10
The art is typical of Ninomiya-sensei, something anyone who's seen/read Nodame will be familiar with. I quite like the art style actually, unique enough to distinguish the author without being terrible, but nothing that wows.

Character: 3/10
Another dive here. Our main heroine is the typical submissive female who enjoys getting abused and the story magnifies this in the worst possible way. If you enjoy this type of thing, try reading/watching Paradise Kiss (for whatever reason, I couldn't set that as a recommendation for this series). This fact is actually what disappointed me the most given Nodame's strong character. Our main character is a lost sap who runs around being an "OP character" but gets kicked to the wayside at the end for the shitty dude who is your run-of-the-mill jackass. Another character is a fat, rich stalker. I don't think I need to say more.

Enjoyment: 4/10
Given what I scored the story and the character, I don't think this needs much explanation. The only reason this even gets this high of a score is because of the mildly entertaining OC battles, but that's about it.

So as a final word, if you are thinking of picking this up because you enjoyed Nodame like me or many others out there, don't. Pick this up because you enjoy NTR and stories like Paradise Kiss.

Before you read this, know that I am very biased to Ninomiya's works as Nodame Cantabile is my number 1 favourite Anime & Manga... But this was a disappointment.

At first, I quite liked this series a lot. I was in a computer science program at school at the time when this manga first came out [in English] so I was excited to learn about overclocking! Ninomiya really expresses this hobby nicely as she didn't make it too confusing and everything was presented well so anyone reading would understand what it was. The overclocking matches were presented well. They were thrilling and fun. As usual, the "opponents" in the series were amusing to watch like they are in Nodame. The main character is very different from Nodame and Chiaki which is refreshing. He's very level headed and intelligent. I loved watching him grow while he learned the basics of overclocking. However, he and the other main characters were all so one dimensional. There was not much to them.

The story - It's rushed and it lacked impact. With only 53 chapters, it felt like half of the story was pushed into a few chapters at the end. I felt so sad, because I wanted to see this series prosper the way Nodame did. There was some travel aspect in this but it was still so, so rushed.

Let's talk about the art! It was good as usual. I wished the recurring and main characters didn't look so much like Nodame and Chiaki though, that was a bit weird especially when their personalities lined up as well. I wish Hana was more decisive rather than ditzy.

Overall, it's an okay series. Be sure to check it out if you want to learn about overclocking but don't expect a "wowzer" because it's just too short to be enjoyed.