Hello everybody. This week I am looking at a series that had potential, but was unfortunately canned after only a few chapters. I’m talking about Hirohisa Tsuruta’s rather obscure series B. Reaction!.
B. Reaction! is about the 15 year old Kensaku Onodera. Kensaku enters an amateur karate tournament at the request of his girlfriend, Akane Ninomiya, who is really only dating Kensaku because he’s a strong fighter. He wins the tournament, and an entry into a professional karate grand prix, but as he is walking towards the buxom ring girl holding his winner’s trophy, he trips on his pant leg. Luckily for him, the ring girl saves him from falling.
Uh . . . nice save?
The ring girl proceeds to give Kensaku a devastating roundhouse kick to the back of his head, sending him flying across the ring unconscious. As a result of this, the president of the grand prix rips up Kensaku’s entry ticket, to the immense dismay of Akane. The next day while walking to his first day of high school with his friend Youichi Oonishi, Kensaku runs into Akane. Akane appears to be happy once again, smiling at Kensaku as he approaches, but then she angrily breaks up with him.
You think she's pissed? I think she's pissed.
While smoking a cigarette with Youichi outside of the school, Kensaku overhears a group of bullies threatening a nerdy student over a photo he took. The photo drops from the student’s hand and floats over to Kensaku. He sees the photo and realizes that it is a picture of the ring girl who kicked him, and she’s decked out in kickboxing gear. Kensaku goes up to the student and asks him who she was, but is interrupted by the bullies. He easily defeats the biggest of the bullies, but before he can continue fighting them, he’s kicked in the head again by the ring girl, but now she’s dressed in business attire. She challenges him to a fight, and goes for another roundhouse kick, but Kensaku dodges it, or so he thinks, as he realizes her kick hasn’t even reached him yet and is caught off guard when it finally does.
This time, however, the kick doesn’t knock him out, but the ring girl says she went easy on him and runs off frantically when she sees the time. Youichi reminds Kensaku that they also have to hurry to make it to the entrance ceremony. We learn that the ring girl’s real name is Nanae Asato and is both Kensaku’s homeroom teacher and English teacher.
While in class, Kensaku watches the video of his fight with Nanae that the nerdy student recorded and accidentally shouts out that he hadn’t lost his fight yet. The nerdy student then stands up and shows his picture of Nanae in kickboxing gear and asks if that was her, and she says that she did do kickboxing three years prior while still in school. The nerdy student then shows off a picture he took at the amateur karate tournament of Nanae in her revealing ring girl outfit, causing a stampede amongst the male students who rush her with questions. Kensaku then stands up, grabs the nerdy student by his tie, and shouts that the woman in the ring girl uniform is his mother.
Nanae then grabs Kensaku’s arm and puts him in a submission hold because of how violently he lifted the nerdy student. Kensaku breaks free and begins to egg on Nanae by taunting how he saw her panties when she kicked him earlier in the day. Nanae proceeds to kick Kensaku straight in the middle of his face.
That looks like it hurts.
Or so Kensaku thought. Once again he saw Nanae attack before she actually did attack. Class ends shortly after Kensaku realizes that nothing happened and after class Nanae is scolded by the school’s headmistress. After school we see that Nanae is also the teacher of the school’s karate club. Kensaku wants to continue his fight with Nanae and tries to find a way into the karate club’s room, so the nerdy student helps show him the way, but what the student actually does is lead Kensaku to the girl’s changing room and shower room. Before he can escape from the changing room, Kensaku and the nerdy student are caught by Nanae after she steps out of the shower room.
Busted!
Nanae and Kensaku apologize to each other for what happened in the classroom, and after some commotion caused by other girls leaving the shower room, they continue their fight. Kensaku eventually realizes that he can see an opponent’s moves before they occur, so he dodges Nanae’s attacks just enough to where they barely glance him. He goes in to attack, but just before he can strike, he notices Nanae isn’t wearing a bra under her karate gi and is distracted long enough for Nanae to knock him out.
The rest of the series has Kensaku having to fulfill his pre-fight agreement with Nanae to do whatever the winner wanted, and she wanted him to join the karate club. Nanae and Kensaku also slowly develop a relationship as the series continues.
As I said before B. Reaction! is short. How short? Well to the tune of only 18 chapters long and the 18 chapters have been collected into 2 tankobon volumes. I don’t have much hopes for the series being brought outside of Japan, which is a shame.
I like this series. I just don’t like how it was ended so quickly. The ending to the series itself is really rushed, clearly done to just give the series some kind of closure. This series had quite some potential for it, which makes me sad that it was cancelled so quick. Still, I highly suggest giving B. Reaction! a read.