Hima-Ten! Chapter 1 Review – “The Schoolgirl Prez and the House Cleaner”

Hima-Ten! by Genki Ono is the latest manga series to debut in Shonen Jump. Genki Ono doesn’t have an extensive mangaka history. Other than working on several one-shots, Ono’s only other ongoing manga work was the 2017 Full Drive series that ran for 20 chapters. That is normally the case for new mangaka, as we’ve seen with how many series debut and only last 20-26 chapters in Shonen Jump. Now Ono is getting another shot at writing and drawing an ongoing manga series. Let’s see how it debuts with Hima-Ten! Chapter 1.

CREATIVE TEAM

Writer & Artist: Genki Ono

HIMA-TEN! CHAPTER 1 SYNOPSIS

Tenichi Iemori is a 16-year-old high school student working part-time for a house cleaning service in order to save enough money to pay for his college tuition so his parents can afford school for his younger twin siblings.

On the first day of his second year of high school a new student named Himari Yoshino transfers to his school. Himari is a famous fashion influencer who is the CEO of her own beauty make-up company. Tenichi’s homeroom teacher assigns him, since he is the class representative, to look after Himari as she makes her transition into a new school, something even Tenichi has a tough time doing all day.

After school, Tenichi goes to the apartment he was hired to clean. He is stunned to find the luxury apartment is a complete pigsty. Just as he gets ready to clean I he is surprised to learn that the apartment is where Himari lives alone in. End of chapter.

REVIEW

Hima-Ten! Chapter 1 follows all the tropes we have seen with plenty of romance slice-of-life manga in the past. Genki Ono certainly follows the trend of having two leads who are complete opposites come together due to circumstances of their families. What does make Hima-Ten! Chapter 1 able to stand on its own is the development of the personalities of Tenichi Iemori and Himari Yoshino.

To be honest, Hima-Ten! Chapter 1 follows all of the typical plot points expected from the debut of a romance slice-of-life manga. Here is nothing new that Ono is looking to introduce into the genre. There is a formula to this kind of manga debut and Ono follows that exactly. So if you are looking for something that will break genre breaking or introduce something new to slice-of-life storytelling you’ll be disappointed.

Ultimately, what will always make or break Hima-Ten is the chemistry and personalities of the lead characters. It’s there that Ono does deliver on making Tenichi Iemori and Himari Yoshino stand on their own and as a pair you at least build some investment in. Their respective personalities are easy enough to get into as individuals and as a pair.

Ono shows an understanding of the genre by making sure to focus on the character that is more immediately sympathetic, in this case Tenichi Iemori. That is not to say that there aren’t elements about Himari Yoshino that can elicit sympathy. But clearly on an introductory level Tenichi’s character is much easier to focus on because of how “normal” he is compared to Himari.

We see this with the opening pages that quickly establish Tenichi’s motivation. While his family is not poor they are the definition of middle class. Tenichi clearly built up a self-awareness that unless his parents tirelessly work non-stop that they can’t support the schooling of three children close in age. By establishing this there is strong motivation given to Tenichi’s character that you can understand why he works so hard at school and at his part-time job.

The best thing that Ono does is that he doesn’t make Tenichi’s life that of a loner. Tenichi has a supportive home life while at school he is recognized enough as a hard worker to be the class rep. That stability is at least refreshing from a lead character, especially from some recent Shonen Jump offerings.

Establishing Tenichi as the straight man right away works in compliment to Himari’s immediate class idol status upon her debut at school. Ono is able to focus on making Himari a fun character at school that everyone loves and Tenichi has to play things straight. We actually get some world building thanks to Himari from at least the school setting. Thanks to Himari’s introduction we learn more about Tenichi being viewed as the reliable one by even his teachers, to a comedic degree.

Ono does a good job establishing Himari as a confident character throughout Hima-Ten Chapter 1 that builds well to what happens in the final few pages. Learning how she has taken her influencer fame to already have a beauty company does show she has a good concept of hard work. While she does take a light hearted approach to things there are enough hints in the dialogue that indicate she put in a lot of work to get to where she was. The seeds were at least planted to delve further into her character history in an extend arc, which is why Tenichi was more of the focus in this first chapter.

From here what will be important will be where Ono takes the story of Hima-Ten. Establishing that Himari is going to be an ongoing client for Tenichi gives them a connection point outside of school. But what will be important for the long-term is what stories will be made from this. Because this is a story that can only be played for comedic purposes for only a few chapters. There needs to be more substance given to the story.

This is where Hima-Ten’s supporting cast will be extremely important. Thus far other than Tenichi’s family we only had Honoka Kanai, Tenichi’s childhood friend and fellow class rep, and the homeroom teacher. From the looks of it Honoka will likely be Tenichi’s love interest to create a love triangle with Himari included. Ono does not shy away from following that trope. Though, this once again makes who else is in the ongoing supporting cast important. There needs to be a range of characters so that the story in Hima-Ten! isn’t solely reliant on tropes of the genre.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Hima-Ten! Chapter 1 is a by the books romance slice-of-life manga debut. While Genki Ono doesn’t introduce anything new into the genre the lead characters are at least established well to be likable leads. This does series does add some genre diversity to Shonen Jumps offerings. Though to be a long-term success Ono does need to find a way to go beyond the basic plot devices of the genre that this debut is completely reliant on.

Story Rating: 6 Night Girls out of 10

Art Rating: 6 Night Girls out of 10

Overall Rating: 6 Night Girls out of 10

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