With the English-language release of BoBoBo-Bo Bo-bobo, I now have an answer to a question that has bothered me persistently: What would you get if the Monty Python crew dosed themselves with peyote and took over writing duties for Fist of the North Star? Well, now I know, although I can’t really consider myself any the wiser for knowing. Weirded out, maybe, but not wiser.

One doesn’t read Bo-bobo; one is mugged by it. It is the only manga I have read so far that could sport a clinical diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder. There is no guarantee that what happens on facing pages or even adjacent panels will have anything to do with each other. Sometimes they simply don’t, and then the author/artist, Yoshio Sawai, will put the characters through agonizing contortions of illogic to maybe make it seem like they possibly have something to do with each other … or not. It’s weather-in-Chicago humor: if you didn’t laugh this time, turn the page.