Manga: 13 - A tale of long-lost love and casual murder.

By: Sorachi Hideaki  Volumes: One  Genre: Delinquent Comedy.

 This is a tale of two children and what happened when they finally met again.
 It begins with a quiet little girl named Iyazo Gorugo reading out an easy about her family. "Father is an assassin, Mother is an assassin, Grandfather is an assassin..." 

 This goes down about as well as me telling my classmates that I had a pet T-Rex. 

 Then on the field trip classmate Mondo Fujieda attempts to make friends by offering some candy. Which makes Gorugo ill. Spectacularly ill.  "Fetch a mop and bucket and a Hazmat suit" ill.

 A humiliated and puke-covered Gorugo vows bloody revenge on Fujieda and then leaves the school forever.

 By the way, when she said her family were assassins, she wasn't kidding. 

 Years later Fujieda has become King of the school delinquents and has put aside his old name in favour of the moniker "Thirteen"
 (Why? Nobody knows and he isn't saying.)
 However his world is about to get a lot more complicated.  Because Iyazo Gorugo has just transferred to his school.
 And she still wants to kill him.

  I sometimes find that manga can work better when the author only has a limited space to tell his story. Here Sorachi Hideaki has precisely 37 pages to work with and does it rather well.
   Once you get past the vomiting and ridiculous violence there is a surprisingly touching tale of two people whose lives were changed by one incident and have been waiting for the punchline ever since. Without giving too much away, this does not go the way you expect.
 The artwork is not the prettiest I've ever seen but does fit with the tone of the manga.  It reminded me a little of Ryuhei Tamura's work on "Beelzebub" , especially in the way he draws mayhem.

 If you fancy a quick fix and want to get to the ending without having to wade through 101 chapters  I would definitely recommend taking a look at this one. 

Find it here: http://www.mangahere.com/manga/13/v01/c001/