Tuxedo Gin, V.1

Tuxedo Gin, Volume 1
by Tokihiko Matsuura
Viz, b&w 190 pages, $9.99
Rating: Neat-O

Tuxedo Gin is a new entry in the supernaturally star-crossed romantic comedy genre. Well, maybe that's not a genre, but it should be. Ginji Kusanagi is a young man who gets in a motorcycle accident on the eve of his first date, and is given the chance to be reincarnated as a penguin: because his death was untimely if he manages to live out his natural span as a penguin, he will be restored to his original body. He is reborn in a Tokyo aquarium, and six months later finds himself the pet of Minako Sasebo, the girl he wanted to date, and who has been pining for him since then. Wacky hijinks ensue.
TG is an uneasy mix of romantic comedy and action/drama. Ginji's "death", you see, was engineered by an evil gang-member as revenge against Ginji, an up-and-coming high-school boxer, and Ginji's buddy Musashi Kondo interfering with the gang's planned rampage at their high school, and so forth. On the one hand, the melodrama is a bit much, on the other hand it gives TG a texture that pure romantic comedies lack; it's actually a bit more like genuine romances in having a villain, and having obstacles to the boy and girl getting together that aren't just shyness and people coincidentally walking in on them.
The art is a bit like Yuyu Hakushou (Poltergeist Report): relatively realistic characters and settings, less special effects and unusual layouts than typical shojou, but in the middle of it this very cartoony penguin. It works for me.