NG Life Makes for Very Good Entertainment

Volumes read: NG Life 1 and 2
TMIA Rating: b

NG Life is the story of this high school kid who remembers his fabulous past life as a gladiator in Pompeii where he had a great friend and a lovely wife and was happy, dang it, until, you know, the whole volcano thing ruined that. 

In the present, he has a few . . . issues to deal with as the only person who remembers his past life.  First, his incredible best buddy, his closest friend in the whole world has been reincarnated as a girl.  They grew up together in this life, and she is really cute and used to his fussy quirkiness.  (She remembers nothing.) 

She pretty obviously has a crush on him, and this creeps him out something fierce, so he pretends not to notice.  When he looks at her, he doesn't see this cute girl he grew up with in this life.  Instead, he sees his rough-and-tumble, prank-playing best friend of yore.  This leads to hilarious and frequent meltdowns enojoyed by the girl and his classmates and parents. 

(His parents are the reincarnation of his younger sister and this jerk he used to know in Pompeii.  This causes him additional stress, as you might imagine.  His dad in particular is kind of a smirky jerk who really shines with snark in the second volume.)

A new wrinkle is added when he finally meets the reincarnation of his beloved wife, and boy, is he cute.  Yeah.  He.  More meltdowns ensue.

This is one of those manga that makes me happy because it strikes that balance between actual reincarnation memory pathos and all those amusing public meltdowns due to internal stupidity that you can't really explain to people.  The main character provides the tears and the comic relief all by himself.  The supporting cast members do good jobs of supporting and moving the plot along by being mostly normal people living normal lives while our poor main character is drowning in drama. 

It's fun to watch the fight within our protagonist because it happens in a somewhat realistic way.  He can't just say to himself, "Yep, she may have been my best bud in the past, but now she's a cute, smart, talented girl who likes me, so let's live happily ever after!"  Well, he can (and sometimes does) say things like that to himself, but he never listens to himself and usually ends up having an imaginary meltdown . . .

So he vacillates between making progress and falling backwards in the way that he relates to the people around him who aren't burdened with the knowledge he has.  It's just a hoot. 

I also give it kudos for setting up a potential BL situation and never quite going there.  Extra points for restraint that makes the unexpected things that happen funnier.  The author could have taken the easy way out but didn't. 

I'm looking forward to volume 3.  :)


P.S. I had to look in the notes to figure out what NG meant.  Do you know?