What would you do if your crush had ear-splitting farts?

Such are the deep, philosophical questions Aimi and Nami, two friends-slash-rivals in romance, ponder as they pull out every unhinged stop to catch the eye of their oblivious classmate Kirio—conducting nightly rituals to entice him into their dreams and listing what they love about him down to the very last organ.

But can their hilarious friendship survive the battle for the heart of this boy who hardly seems to know they exist?

Kirio Fan Club has a story and art by Chikyu no Osakana Ponchan. English translation is done by Matt Treyvaud and lettering by Madeleine Jose. Published by Kodansha USA (April 28, 2026). Rated T.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Kirio Fan Club is odd in the best way. Ostensibly, this is the story of two high school girls who are obsessing over Kirio, a boy in their class. Nami may have known him since middle school (at least to look at) and Aimi appears to have only met him in high school. They spend their days talking about their Kirio-based fantasies, indulging in such delights as contorting themselves over how his jersey number on the school soccer team means that he likes them or whether or not he'd still be hot if he farted explosively. It's pure teenage girl weirdness with none of the gloss and shine used to romanticize them in manga. I knew these girls. I was them.

It's that last that really pushes this series into fun territory for me, because it opens up the story for so much more than just goofballs crushing on the same guy. Given how they basically never interact with the object of their affection, and there's a real sense that Kirio himself may not be as important as they're making him out to be. He's quite possibly an excuse for them to be friends – in the one chapter not from their perspective, another classmate notes that they don't seem to have anything in common and are one of the odder pairs in class because of it, even as they spend pretty much all of their time together. Some of Aimi's claims about her love for Kirio in particular make me wonder if she actually likes him or if she likes the idea of liking someone, and one of Nami's lines makes me question if Kirio is the person she has a thing for at all. It's amazing what you'll pretend in order to be friends with someone, after all.

That such a reading is possible in what is ostensibly just a gag manga says a lot about how well done it is. My personal favorite chapter is the bonus, which is nearly wordless as Aimi and Nami spin ludicrous scenarios about Kirio and an umbrella based on the old standby of writing two names underneath one as a way to link them romantically. The art shows the escalation of their game in increasingly funny ways, and when Kirio himself shows up at the end to unwittingly put an end to their play, everything drops back down to earth beautifully. Add to that the fact that we never see Kirio's face and the art is doing a bang-up job in emphasizing the way the girls interact with the object of their musings – because Kirio himself almost doesn't matter.

If you're tired of watching high school girls be perfect or romanticized, Kirio Fan Club is a must-read. Nami and Aimi are messy, silly, and very real in a way that's funny rather than making a point. It's a total delight.

Erica Friedman
Rating:

After reading the synopsis and the first few pages, I was fully prepared to dislike Kirio Fan Club. Then it did something so utterly silly that I burst out laughing. From then on, I found this manga about two high school girls with a crush on a classmate to be so amusingly deranged that it was too hard to dislike it.

Every scenario starts just slightly stupider than you might normally find enjoyable, then escalates from ridiculous, storming right past bizarre into wacky territory and then suddenly, you just have to laugh because it's too stupid not too.

It's been said a million times that humor is hard. I do tend to favor gonzo humor in my manga, as what passes for “funny” is different from culture to culture and person to person. And I'm fairly humorless as manga goes. Gags and bathroom humor often just leave me cold. For a manga to get me to laugh out lough more than once, it must truly be absurd.

This is indubitably a wholly absurd manga, in the sense of “Theater of the Absurd.” It leans heavily into that absurdity and after establishing itself as completely unreliable…it begins to tell a story. Not just any story, it actually begins to develop the story the premise is loosely based upon. So, mad props to Chikyu no Osakana Ponchan for telling a ridiculous story badly on purpose and making it all work in the end and leaving us wanting more.