Super Radical Gag Family Manga Begins Its Fifth Series
The 44th issue of Akita Shoten’s Weekly Shōnen Champion published the final chapter of Kenji Hamaoka’s Appare! Urayasu Tekkin Kazoku, known in English as Bravo! Super Radical Gag Family. In the same breath, it announced that a new series, Extreme! Super Radical Gag Family, will launch on November 13.
The new title is the fifth entry in the long running Super Radical Gag Family franchise, which Hamaoka first began all the way back in 1993.
The series has been remarkably durable. The original ran for 31 volumes, followed by two more series across the 2000s and 2010s, and the just concluded chapter is set to be collected in a 24th and final volume in December. In a sign of its steady pace, the manga did not take a single week off until 2023, when Hamaoka paused briefly for a family trip.
The comedy itself is pure slapstick, following a mischievous second grade boy named Kotetsu Ōsawagi and the chaos he stirs up with his family and friends in Urayasu City near Tokyo.
Its reach has gone beyond manga too, inspiring television anime in both 1998 and 2014, each directed by Akitarō Daichi.
My take: A gag series running in some form for more than three decades is genuinely remarkable. Rolling straight into a fifth title shows how much affection there still is for Kotetsu and his chaotic family.
