My Heavenly Hockey Club

My Heavenly Hockey Club (極楽青春ホッケー部, Gokuraku Seishun Hockey Bu) is a manga series collaborated by Morinaga Ai. It is published by Kodansha in Japan and Del Rey Manga by America. The series is complete in Japan with a total of 14 volumes. The first eight volumes were released in North America.

Story

Hana Suzuki loves only two things in life: eating and sleeping. So when handsome classmate Izumi Oda asks Hana to join the school hockey club in return for being run over by his 'uninsured' car, persuading her with the thought that she has to pay for the damages to the car. True, the Grand Hockey Club is full of boys-and all the boys are super cute-but given a choice, Hana prefers a sizzling steak to a hot date. Then Izumi mentions field trips to fancy resorts. Now Hana can't wait for the first away game, with its promise of delicious food and luxurious linens. Of course there's also the getting up early, working hard, and playing well with others. How will Hana survive?

Characters

Hana Suzuki
Hana Suzuki is your average 16-year-old high school girl, besides the fact that her hobbies are sleeping and eating. She acts rather tomboyish, but can act girlishly when she needs to. Hana is very sensitive about her breasts, and can hit anyone who makes fun of it, mostly Izumi. She has a fetish for fat people and people with large stomachs because it gives her the urge to sleep on them. The club found out after they thought she had a crush on the tennis club's captain but was actually looking at his large-sized brother. Usually, when they go on trips, she and Izumi unintentionally fall asleep together in the car/train and in the place where they are staying at. She joins the Grand Hockey Club after she gets hit by Izumi's car while sleep-walking to school and manages to catch herself, but damaging the car instead. Izumi tries to persuade her to join the hockey club after she punched him for telling her the car is uninsured and that she'll have to pay for it if she refuses to join. After hearing that the hockey club travels to hotel resorts for away games, she joins the all-boys sports club, where they believe nobody will find out she's a girl because of how she acts. They make her goalie of the team because she can do unnatural things in her sleep, like blocking everything from going into the net. She can easily be lured by food to go to morning practice at the school. Ironically enough she is actually considered to be fairly attractive with most boys simply being put off by her personality. As shown in chapter 23, when she briefly becomes possessed by Kokkuri from the game and she adopts a more Yamato Nadeshiko-like personality, she becomes significantly more popular both with her club members and the boys at her school.

Izumi Oda
Izumi Oda is a super rich 2nd year high school student and captain of the Grand Hockey Club. In English, gurando can mean both ground or grand. In this case, it possibly means both, since the team play ground hockey and Izumi thinks of his club as grand. His favorite phrase is "I am the law" and expects everyone to do what he says. After Izumi's car got hit by Hana and he saw that she was okay, he decided to put her on his hockey team. He blackmails her into thinking that the car wasn't insured, when it actually was. She got mad at him for tricking her and quit the club. He said for that the first time in his life, somebody told him they hated him. He was sulking until his friend Takashi finally got Hana to join the club again. Hana is the object of Izumi's affection and for that, Izumi is extremely protective of Hana, although he doesn't realize his feelings. Hence, he gets annoyed when a bear falls in love with Hana and when he thinks Hana likes the tennis club's captain. He has groped Hana on the breast unintentionally a few times, but he said it was because he could hardly tell the difference from her back or her front. It is found out that Izumi is afraid of ghosts, going as far as to sleeping in the same bed as Hana because he is too scared, while Hana held a few dangerous weapons next to her just in case.

Takashi Itoigawa
Takashi is Izumi's friend and jiya. He is in the 2nd year of high school and is the vice captain of the club. Takashi always goes after Izumi and bears a grudge against Hana for being so close to him. Even if he does hate her, he will do anything to get Izumi happy, so he tells Hana to get back into the club, although he says it with a rather mean face. He was against her joining the club from the very beginning because he didn't want a girl joining a boys' club.

Natsuki Serizawa
Natsuki is in his 2nd year of high school and was appointed as Hana's snack person. He is also rich because his family owns a jewellery company. He has a face cuter than a girl's so he is often mistaken for one, but is actually the most manly member of the hockey club. Natsuki is usually the first person Hana goes to for help. Later in the story he genuinely falls in love with a yuki ona (snow woman) and she disappears because Izumi pushed her to her limit. Because of that, Natsuki gets revenge and told Izumi about Izumi's feelings towards Hana. He starts hanging out with her to get Izumi jealous, only to pick up feelings for Hana in the process. He would get jealous when Hana was thinking about Izumi and get angry when someone would interrupt him when he is with Hana. He also told Hana that he was playing around at first but likes her now, and then kisses her and confesses to her in front of izumi. He mostly takes after his mother and gets angry with his father for dumping all the work on his mother while he sets off to be a treasure hunter.

Kinta Ayuhara
Kinta Ayuhara is in his first year in high school and he is the older brother of his twin Ginta. His first love is Rin-chan from St. Johannes Girls' Academy (his younger brother likes her younger twin). Although they both fell in love with twins, they believe that they have opposite tastes in girls. They also believe that they look completely different. Although because Hana gave them the wrong information on what kind of guy Rin-chan likes, his first love did not work out.

Ginta Ayuhara
Ginta Ayuhara is in his first year in high school and he is Kinta's younger twin. His first love is Ran-chan, the younger twin of his brother's first love. He believes (like his brother) that they look nothing alike and have opposite taste in girls. But because Hana gave him the wrong information, his love did not work out.

Reception

"Morinaga flexes her artistic skill in volume one placing scenes in various settings. Both pacing and storytelling are fluid. It's remarkable how everything comes together in this volume - even the absurd." — Kai-Ming Cha, IGN.^[1]

"If you're expecting a gimmick with this one, you'll be both disappointed and satisfied—disappointed, perhaps, that this isn't really about sports, but satisfied at the sheer looniness of the comedy here." — Kevin Gifford, Newtype USA.^[2]

"A reverse harem story done in traditional shojo style, the first volume of this tale of a girl who gets drawn into an otherwise all-guy hockey club won't dazzle you with its quality but may be enough to amuse." — Theron Martin, Anime News Network.^[3]

"A lot of the credit goes to Del Rey's expert translation, which showcases Ai Morinaga's wacky humor. You'll actually learn something about Japanese food, thanks to Hana's insatiable hunger, so you can say with a straight face that My Heavenly Hockey Club is totally educational." — Jennifer Webb, Teenreads.com.^[4]

"This volume has plenty of funny jokes, but I felt it wasn’t quite as funny as the first. I’m also disappointed with the continued lack of hockey. I understand the joke factor of always having something interrupt the hockey matches, but I’m growing a little bored with it." — Matthew Alexander, Mania.^[5]

"A fun comedy with plenty of romantic antics that will have the ladies rolling in the aisles (and maybe even the guys too?). Consistent in both art and story, My Heavenly Hockey Club is a bit of light entertainment that isn’t to be missed." — Scott Campbell, activeAnime.^[6]

"Even when the events are predictable — as in the chapter with the twins in love, where Hana messes up her reconnaissance mission — they’re still very funny. This is a neat, happy read if you’re looking for school comedy." — Johanna Draper Carlson, Comics Worth Reading.^[7]

References

External links

• My Heavenly Hockey Club (manga) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia