Although it’s totally impossible for me to say everything I want about this in a single article, just let me say: thank you so much!

While I was lazing around at home on Saturday, I got a push notification from LINE NEWS.

“Kochikame comes to an end with the volume 200 after 40 years.”

It was such a disturbing news that I couldn’t actually believe my eyes.

Kochikame is a super long comic series that has been serializing in Shonen Jump for over 40 years.
The comic contains a vast amount of cutting-edge information and the main character Ryotsu’s self-devised business schemes which I think have enormous potential to create a number of successful and very real venture companies if implemented appropriately.
There are the three noteworthy things that I’ve learned from Kochikame.

1. Names of luxury cars

Kochikame is packed with the author Akimoto’s various hobbies. One of the most strongly reflected is definitely cars. Kochikame taught me a lot of cool luxury cars during my ignorant elementary school days. For example, Porsche. There is an episode where a fake luxury car dealer appears and sells Porsche as Porushu. While there is a car brand called Ferrari Testarossa, it’s sold under the name of “Ferrari Testa-ossan Donai Shite Man-nen” which sounds like a completely different thing.
Toyota Mark II appears as Mark Souzu (Souzu is a piece used in Chinese board game, mah-jong) and Benz appears as Benshi, which is just hilarious. Speaking of fake names, there are much more to mention besides cars.
For instance, SONY is changed to S.ONY and the well known military figure G.I. Joe is changed to C.I Joe, both names which are just devastatingly eccentric.

2. Mechanisms of TV ratings

Kochikame also taught me what TV ratings really are. There is an episode where Ryotsu tries to manipulate TV ratings using some special device to do business. I think this is a brilliant idea but since this method forcibly changes TV channels people are watching, Ryotsu ends up receiving some punishment, as usual. With the TV industry slowing into a decline, I first thought it could lead to some sort of new business, but I stopped thinking about it after getting so many vicious ideas that are mostly illegal. Speaking of punishment, there are a variety of funny and unique ways in which the division chief Ohara comes to punish Ryotsu.

3. A variety of things of shitamachi

Kochikame is mostly considered a rough-and-tumble gag manga but that’s definitely not all that it is.
One of the reasons Kochikame has been attracting so many people is the heart-warming episodes occasionally seen throughout the series. In these episodes, we get to see something that’s long forgotten in our modern day: shitamachi from the Showa era.

Although it’s unrelated to shitamachi, there is an episode that shows an interesting way to eat Korokke and remembering that episode always makes me want to eat Korokke. How you eat it? You crush it and put a lot of sauce on it and eat it together with rice. I know it’s not so graceful but I still do that sometimes.

In spite of these three interesting things about Kochikame, there are more and more interesting and funny episodes continuously coming up to my mind. There are so many ridiculous but memorable episodes I’d love to talk about: Ryotsu boiling his leather shoes to eat them and spitting them out after realizing they were actually made of artificial leather; Ryotsu getting grade-A beef from his chief and accidentally dropping it into a dirty ditch completely wasting it; Ryotsu turning his dirty underwear inside out and rubbing a lemon onto it saying “Hmmm, great.”; Ryotsu fighting a huge swarm of cockroaches in his room. I simply can’t forget all these awesome episodes deeply ingrained in my mind!

My apologies for bringing up some random unrelated topic again, but there is a very memorable scene for me where Ryotsu rushes into a washroom in a vegetable shop saying “Let me use the washroom!”. Every time I’m put in the same situation, I desperately rush around in search for a washroom recalling that scene.

Kochikawa is ending with the volume 200. I feel nostalgic and melancholic. This news was broadcast on NHK the other day and the newscaster clearly stumbled over the word, Hashutsujo. This was definitely a great feat to serialize it without taking any break for 40 years straight.

Mr. Akimoto, thank you so much for the great moments you gave us and for all your hard work.

Source : http://honz.jp/articles/-/43289