As you may be able to tell from the panels above, Keijo!!!!!!!! can be described in one word: stupid. It takes the standard conventions of the sports manga and applies it to a “sport” that consists of girls in swimsuits trying to push each other off wobbly platforms floating in swimming pools, using only their butts or breasts. Purely an excuse to draw pretty women’s asses? Not quite. What saves this from just being wank fodder is that the mangaka, Sorayomi Daichi, takes the sport absolutely seriously while still being aware of how silly it is; Daichi is also very good at thinking up inventive new techniques or combos, in the best tradition of bullshit sports manga powers. Everybody has their own breast or butt focused superpower, which the onlookers breathlessly explain and the heroine has to counter.
To give but one example, the girl above here has the very special power of being able to copy any of the other player’s abilities just by fondling their asses, activating them by remembering how they felt: unlimited ass works. It’s gloriously dumb and the author pulls out one example after the other in each new chapter and that for at least ninety chapters, that being as far as the scanlations have gotten. I won’t pretend that this is anything other than dumb entertainment, following a storyline that you can find in dozens of other, better (pretend) sports manga, but what I like about it is that it’s innovative, honest and open in its fanservice and not demeaning to its characters — what also helps is that these are actual adults, rather than the usual high school girls. Not perhaps a series to be proud of that you read it, but certainly a cut above the usual harem fanservice nonsense. And yes, of course it will get an anime.
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