Fujimura-kun's Mates.note
Haru Fujimura is a delinquent who skips school because he cannot make any friends. One day, Class Representative Usami Eriko note comes after him to convince him to go back to school. And how does she do it? By threatening to color his cat's nipples black. Well, not really, she convinces him to go back to school by becoming his first friend. Though it turns out that not only is she the representative of a different class, she is VERY interested in becoming a different sort of friend, and doesn't hesitate to let him know. Add in a male class representative who walks around in a horned helmet, and a half-Japanese female class representative who insists on speaking mangled English, and Fujimura finds himself the only sane man in a world full of cloudcuckoolanders.
Fujimura-kun Mates is a manga by Shiki Seiichi, full of random humor, an Unwanted Harem, and very impressive leaps of logic. The manga was serialized in Gangan Online from 2009 to 2013, and compiled into eight volumes.
Compare and contrast with D-Frag!, another comedy manga about a delinquent meeting a cast full of oddballs, but replacing the harem and rom-com antics with more screwball misadventures in and outside school.
Tropes in Fujimura-kun Mates include:
- Aside Glance: Fujimura gives a pretty good one in chapter 10, after Shizuru's repeated declarations that she's Going Commando.
- Attack Pattern Alpha:
- "Formation A" consists of arranging three desks around Fujimura's chair to trap him while they all eat lunch. Complete with Speed Stripes.
- Also "Formation W" which alters the sleeping arrangements of six futons to force Fujimura to sleep in the middle of his three girlfriends.
- Beach Episode: At the start of their summer holidays.
- Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: The whole manga.
- Lampshaded, subverted, and played straight in chapter 46. When the gang decides to have a pillow talk, Fujimura refuses, to which Eriko responds by asking who will be the tsukkomi. In the end he still does it; he just thinks about it instead of saying it aloud to prove a point.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Fujimura, upon seeing Eriko's luggage for the beach trip:Fujimura: DO YOU THINK THIS IS A MANGA!?
- Background characters refer to each other as background characters, and lecture each other on not standing out too much.
- The mosaics used for censoring can also be seen by the characters. They even comment on how ridiculous some of the censoring is.
- Cloudcuckooland: Fujimura's town is pretty much a district of insanity.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Pretty much everyone except Fujimura.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: Eriko's threat to color the nipples note of Fujimura's cat black if he doesn't go back to school.
- Creepy Child: Himuro tends to get like this whenever Shizuru annoys her (which is often).
- Deadpan Snarker: Himuro. Fujimura himself qualifies whenever he's not busy being outraged at the antics of everyone else.
- Easily-Overheard Conversation: Many seem to think Fujimura can't hear them...
- Eldritch Location: Eriko's house, as revealed in chapter 77.
- Engrish: Inui does all three, often at the same time. This results in a fair amount of her dialogue not making sense.Inui: I'm fond of a little Air Hand!
Fujimura: Air...ah, Karatenote ...you half-Japanese only use English in useless places, dammit. - Face Palm: Courtesy of our resident Straight Man.
- Fanservice: In the beginning of the early chapters, the manga had a lot of shots of Eriko (and Inui in one case) in fetish outfits and situations (cat girl, swimsuit, wearing a guy's hoodie and no pants). It completely disappears by later chapters but there's still the picture of the Unwanted Harem as Playboy Bunnies.
- Gay Option: The male class rep declares himself to be this.
- Gilligan Cut:
- Despite thinking that Eriko and Subaru are up to no good (as usual), Fujimura refused to spy on them. You can guess what he did next.
- When Eriko asks Fujimura to speak with her alone, Chika wonders if the two have eloped, leading to reassurance by Shizuru that it couldn't have possibly happened. Then, on the next page...
- Heel–Face Turn: Subaru gives up delinquency and joins the Fujimura bandwagon after meeting him.
- Hero with Bad Publicity: When Fujimura saved a girl from some bullies, all anyone focused on was the fact that he badly beat up some classmates and avoided him in school.
- Hypocritical Humor: There have been at least two situations where the half Japanese foreigner Inui calls another character a Yankee or a gaijin. And yes, Fujimura lampshades it.
- Indirect Kiss: Shizuru thinks this might be the reason why Fujimura has a problem with her drinking milk straight from the carton at his house.
- Innocent Innuendo: Well, not quite innocent. In a contest to see who would do the most perverse things with Fujimaru, Shizuru boasts that she'd blow his flute... Of course, she probably meant his actual flute. The others took it as something else entirely.
- Insane Troll Logic: Inui compares delinquents "defending their territory" to superheroes defending a city. The result? Subaru's old delinquent friends make a Heel–Face Turn.
- Japanese Delinquents: Fujimura has a reputation as one and the fighting skills to match. Another character is a reformed delinquent.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Sometimes the manga likes to remember that it has a fourth wall. Moreso whenever Shizuru is involved.
- In Chapter 5 Shizuru tells Fujimura of her plan to make everyone see him as a good person. Fujimura points out that her voice was way too loud and now everyone knows that it's staged, making it useless.
- In Chapter 23 she starts making an inner monologue about how there's something special between her and Fujimura. Since it's an inner monologue, nobody else hears her and Fujimura wonders why she's gone quiet all of a sudden.
- A lot of times, the gang talks about very private or embarrassing topics at standard level of volume seen in Shonen manga. This results in scorn or disdain from passersby and in one occasion, has led to them being kicked out and banned from a restaurant because they were disturbing the other customers.
- While hilarious, Shizuru's incompetence still has far-reaching consequences. Himuro spends some of her summer vacation doing student council work because spending most of her time fixing Shizuru's mistakes lead to her falling behind in her own work.
- In Chapter 5 Shizuru tells Fujimura of her plan to make everyone see him as a good person. Fujimura points out that her voice was way too loud and now everyone knows that it's staged, making it useless.
- Loves My Alter Ego: Inverted. A chapter dealt with a delinquent asking Fujimura to help him meet the "Seventh Yakishini" because he has a huge crush on her. Of course, the Seventh Yakishini was Subaru prior to her reformation. He insults current-day Subaru for being a girl that's "secretly trash", and doesn't realize why Subaru is asking him oddly specific questions such as how strong she was and if this "Yakshini person" would look good with a ribbon in her hair until it's too late.
- Marry Them All: Fujimura ends up doing this to the harem as well as Himuro, much to his chagrin.
- No Name Given: Helmet
- Nosebleed: Eriko gets these a lot. Not that the rest are exempt.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Eriko claims that she heard from witnesses that Fujimura was having a lover's quarrel with Shizuru. The witnesses turn out to be Inui and the male class rep, only with mosaics over their faces.
- Precision F-Strike: Eriko. Possibly from getting some words mixed up.
- Rescue Romance: Subverted most gloriously in chapter 17. Fujimura's convinced that Yumizuka Subaru was the girl he saved from a group of delinquents, but as it turns out, she was the delinquent leader herself.
- She Is Not My Girlfriend: Fujimura insists that he and Eri are just friends. Though he refuses to outright reject her advances.
- Shout-Out: Dragonball, Doraemon, Saint Seiya, Gundam... Non-Japanese pop culture has also been referenced as well. Himuro's family inn, for example, is called the T-800 Inn because she liked the movie and made her dad change its name to it.
- Take That, Audience!: Shizuru says that Rival is read as Homo, since people will misunderstand their friendliness with each other.
- Trap Door: Himuro's trap of choice. At one point she does this to the entire student body at once.
- Trap Master: Student Council Vice President Akira Himuro seems to have installed a system of trap-floors all across town without anyone noticing, including the entire school gymnasium floor.
- Umbrella of Togetherness: Eriko has one of these with her and Fujimura's names on it.
- Unwanted Harem: Fujimura's constant refusals are not stopping three girls from deciding on their own to share him. And as of chapter 34, it's possible that there's a fourth girl that shows interest in him. He ends up with all four.
- Yaoi Fangirl: Subaru reveals she is one of these.
- Younger Than They Look: The representative from 1-C. Yep, you're reading this trope right, as he's referred to as a boy.
