Hit the “Random” button and see what comes up! In this feature, we take a look at whatever manga the Random Number God decides to throw at us and find out if it’s worth your time.

This time:Higajo no Mon, by Ato Sakurai

I’m getting really tired of this setup. Genius but slacker guy who is dissatisfied with his daily school life meets a mysterious girl who may or may not have magical powers, and she teaches him to love live whatever again! Woohoo!

No seriously, that’s it. The girl’s no Haruhi (and thank goodness for that, Haruhi’s a huge bitch), with the gimmick being that she actually does have magical powers and enlists our slacker protagonist to help her learn how to control them. The catch is that she needs to know how to use them before the entrance exam to witch high school, which requires a display of magic, The other catch is that the exam is at 3 a.m. the next day. Why any academy, even a witch one, would hold their exams at 3 in the morning is beyond me, but whatever, it’s the plot.

Anyway, they go through a bunch of silly tests to figure out why Rinjou can’t control her magic, and it turns out it’s because she has low blood pressure and needs to normalize it to control her powers. Sure, whatever. It makes as much sense as anything else in anime. Of course, the best way to get her heart pumping is to hold hands because this is a silly anime romance. And then blahblahblah, it works, happily ever after for them, and I get to sit here and write this post about something I thought was unremarkable.

Verdict: Unremarkable

This oneshot was clearly written with trying to get a serialization in mind. Okay, I guess pretty much every manga oneshot is written with exactly that in mind, but Gate of Higajo is particularly transparent about it. The last lines of the manga are basically, “Wait, I won’t be allowed in a girl’s school for witches, how can I keep holding you hand so you have magical powers?”  “Well then I guess you better crossdress!”, and I summarily rolled my eyes perhaps harder than ever before at the blatant sequel (series?) hook. Please spend your precious time on a worthier manga.