While I was aware for the longest time ever that Kyou no Go no Ni was originally drawn by Minami-ke’s mangaka (Sakuraba Koharu), it was only after the recent release of the new OVA did I dig up the older OVA episodes from my external hard drives.

As I feel that a significant part of appreciating KnGnN is recognising its title, I’ll just do a little something extra that the fansubbers didn’t when they translated it into “Today in Class 5-2″:

Go and Ni in the title mean 5 and 2 respectively. The “no” in between 5 and 2 is the Japanese hyphen. Don’t ask me why. It appears in phone numbers as well. Kyou simply means today (jing ri in chinese). The “no” after Kyou is like the apostraphe s (’s) in English and thus it is more accurately translated as “Today’s 5-2″.

The elegance is lost in the translation “Today in Class 5-2″, but “Today’s 5-2″ will sound kind of weird, and either English translation loses the artistically resounding “Kyou no Go no Ni”. Underscores how knowing some Japanese goes a long way for watching anime.

KnGnN was off to a rather boring start, and I was wondering how something like this could possibly match up to the slice-of-life-cum-comedy great Minami-ke and other popular SOL series’ like ARIA and Lucky Star. It seemed that the only redeeming factor of the first episode was the Chika, Megumi and Hirakawa fanservice, which was done sunny side up.

Aren’t you a ‘lil too young to worry about your weight just yet?
/

However, the SOL aspect was still weaker than that of ARIA or Minami-ke, and the ecchi wasn’t mind-blowing either. Couldn’t possibily match up to the likes of Kanokon. So half-way through the 2nd episode I was asking myself: why bother with this crap?/

I was, however, glad that I pressed on, as it was only at the end of the 2nd episode did the KnGnN give a sharp kick to the spinal cord in my back.

Chika & Ryouta. Ryouta is actually asleep btw.
/

Kyou no Go no Ni is essentially a pure and almost perfect replica of elementary school life. It actually dug up some of my long forgotten memories from my primary school (we call it primary school in Singapore) days back when I was Primary 5, which I won’t be blogging about :)

Ryouta’s spikey hair leaves me wondering whether Key drew inspiration from Kyou no Go no Ni.
/

Sakuraba Koharu chose a most interesting timeframe to base his manga on, when girls were way ahead of the boys on the maturity curve. This maturity is contrasted rather distinctly with childish Ryouta, the manga’s male protagonist. I personally find it amazing that Sakuraba-sensei has been able to draw out his childhood memories so expressively. I mean, KnGnN is childhood itself expressed in its entirety. Most animes and visual novels just use a childhood friend as a plot device and do not do much to elaborate.

Koizumi Chika.
/

Having read some scanlated episodes of Minami-ke, I do pray that Koharu Sakuraba’s debut manga KnGnN gets licensed as if anything has proven, Yotsuba&! and ARIA and quite many other SOL manga I have read has shown that slice-of-life is still somewhat better presented in a form where timeframe isn’t restricted, rather than in animated form.