Is Kyou kara Ore wa!! Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Quick facts
Format	Manga (shōnen), 366 chapters, 38 volumes
Run	1988–1997 · completed
Community score	AniList 8.3 · MangaUpdates 8.7
Content	Violence, crude humor

Overview

Kyou kara Ore wa!! (From Today, It's My Turn!!) is one of the funniest delinquent comedies ever made, and plenty of people outside Japan have never heard of it. Two guys transfer to a new school and decide, on day one, to reinvent themselves as the biggest delinquents around. Takashi Mitsuhashi bleaches his hair into a ridiculous blond pompadour and appoints himself the toughest guy in the prefecture; Shinji Itō goes for the shaved-sides look and mostly just wants to be left alone. The joke is that Mitsuhashi is a scheming, cowardly cheat who wins fights through dirty tricks and pure nerve rather than any actual strength, and the two of them keep stumbling into bigger and bigger brawls with rival schools. It ran 38 volumes across the 90s and barely lets up.

What it does well

The comedy is the whole point, and it holds up. Mitsuhashi is a fantastic gag lead — a shameless liar and dirty fighter who'll bite, kick low, and talk his way out of anything — and Nishimori's timing is razor-sharp. Fights that would be deadly serious in other delinquent manga turn into elaborate comedies of Mitsuhashi trying not to get hit while pretending he's completely in control. If you like character-driven slapstick, this is a goldmine.

It also has more heart than it lets on. Under the gags, Mitsuhashi and Itō become a genuinely great double act, and the recurring cast — Mitsuhashi's long-suffering girlfriend Riko, rival delinquents who keep coming back for more — grow into people you're fond of. The series knows exactly when to drop a sincere beat before snapping back to comedy.

And it's impressively consistent. Thirty-eight volumes of gag manga is a lot, and while not every chapter is gold, the hit rate stays high for far longer than it has any right to. Nishimori keeps finding new ways to throw his idiots into trouble.

Where it falls short

It's episodic to the core. There's no big overarching plot — it's a long string of scrapes and rivalries — so if you need forward momentum or a goal to follow, this isn't built for it. You read it a chapter at a time.

The art is very late-80s and 90s Shonen Sunday, and the pompadours and uniforms date it. It's clean and expressive, but it clearly looks its age.

And the humor is broad. This is gag comedy about delinquents, full of face-pulling, dirty fighting, and crude jokes. When it lands it's brilliant, but if that style isn't for you, 38 volumes of it won't change your mind.

Verdict

Kyou kara Ore wa!! is a comedy classic that deserves far more attention than it gets in English. It isn't deep and it isn't plotted — it's just relentlessly, cleverly funny, anchored by one of the best gag leads in manga. The big catch is access: there's still no official English release, so it's frustratingly hard to read legally. If you love delinquent comedy and character-driven slapstick, it's absolutely worth hunting down.