About the only manga that I read these days is “Love Roma” (ラブロマ) by Toyoda Minoru (とよ田みのる). I was able to purchase all 5 books from the series while in Japan. I also picked up a copy of AFTERNOON Magazine (アフタヌーン), the monthly manga magazine which first ran “Love Roma”.

As I flipped through the almost 900-pages of the February 2007 issue I arrived at a page that had Negishi and Hoshino from “Love Roma” on it. I glanced at the next page and saw a comic that was drawn in a style similar to that of “Love Roma”. Was this the work of Toyoda Minoru? Indeed it was!

This was “FLIP FLAP” (フリップフラップ), a 1-issue short comic by none other than Toyoda Minoru. “FLIP FLAP” is a 40-page story about love and pinball. It’s pretty humorous and works up to a hilirious shocker. I was lucky enough to have Teruyo help me read and understand it. Thanks!

“FLIP FLAP” is ‘uniquely Toyoda Minoru’ in that it concerns the humor of love. The story is about a 20 year-old guy named Tsukuba Furio (筑波フリオ, Julio?) who wanders into an arcade to use the restroom. He walks by and sees a girl furiously playing pinball, watches her and falls in love. Her name is Furinami Hikaru (振波ヒカル) and since she is a regular at the arcade, our hero-in-love decides to get a job there. Furio loves Hikaru but Hikaru loves pinball. Who will give into who? Well it’s not quite that simple, there’s a big (or “small”) twist.

Toyoda Minoru’s “FLIP FLAP” is great. If you have the oppurtunity, I recommend reading it. It’s too bad that it’ll probably only ever be published in Japan. Don’t be discouraged though because at the end of “FLIP FLAP”, Toyoda-san announces that he is working on a new manga series! Hopefully that, whatever it may be will one day make it stateside.

Toyoda Minoru’s official homepage

more “FLIP FLAP” scans and info (jp)