Heaven's Memo Pad

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Heaven's Memo Pad
Cover of Heaven's Memo Pad volume 1.
神様のメモ帳
(Kami-sama no Memo-chō)
GenreMystery
Light novel
Written byHikaru Sugii
Illustrated byMel Kishida
Published byASCII Media Works
ImprintDengeki Bunko
DemographicMale
Original runJanuary 25, 2007 – September 10, 2014
Volumes9
Manga
Written byHikaru Sugii
Illustrated byTiv
Published byASCII Media Works
MagazineDengeki Daioh
DemographicShōnen
Original runAugust 2010 – September 2012
Volumes3
Anime television series
Directed byKatsushi Sakurabi
Written bySeishi Minakami
Music byTaku Iwasaki
StudioJ.C.Staff
Licensed by
Original networkChiba TV, TV Saitama, TV Kanagawa, Tokyo MX, AT-X, MBS, CBC
Original run July 2, 2011 – September 24, 2011
Episodes12 (List of episodes)

Heaven's Memo Pad (神様のメモ帳, Kami-sama no Memo-chō, lit. "God's Memo Pad") is a Japanese light novel series written by Hikaru Sugii, with illustrations by Mel Kishida. ASCII Media Works published nine volumes between January 2007 and September 2014 under their Dengeki Bunko imprint. A manga adaptation illustrated by Tiv was serialized between the August 2010 and September 2012 issues of ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Daioh magazine. An anime adaptation aired 12 episodes in Japan between July and September 2011.

Plot

The story centers around Narumi Fujishima, the main protagonist. He is a high school student who is not very involved in his school whatsoever to the point where he does not know most of his classmate's names. However, in a chain of events, he is pulled into participating in his school's "Gardening Committee" whose members consist of himself and Ayaka Shinozaki, Narumi's classmate. He also gets dragged in as a member of NEET, an amateur detective agency filled with unemployed slack-offs who take on and solve cases on their own whims. The NEET agency is led by "Alice", who is a childish, anti-social, extreme shut-in. This is to the point where she never leaves her room filled with computer monitors and stuffed animals. Alice has proven herself a resourceful hacker and an astounding detective, which she normally uses to a decent extent on all their cases. Throughout the course of the story, Narumi, accompanied by the other members of NEET, solve crimes and murders using their limited resources and Alice's genius intellect.

Characters

Narumi Fujishima (藤島 鳴海, Fujishima Narumi)
Voiced by: Yoshitsugu Matsuoka (Japanese); Blake Shepard (English) (anime), Atsushi Abe (drama CD)
The main protagonist of the series. He is a common 16-year-old high school student. He lives with his older sister and because of several school transfers he has become introverted. He is introduced to Hanamaru by his classmate Ayaka, where he meets Min, Alice, and the NEET Detective Team members.
Alice (アリス) / Yūko Shionji (紫苑寺 有子, Shionji Yūko)
Voiced by: Yui Ogura (Japanese); Hilary Haag (English) (anime), Minako Kotobuki (drama CD)
The main female protagonist of the series. She is a mysterious girl who lives on the third floor over Hanamaru ramen shop. Her age is unknown, but looks like a 12- or 13-year-old girl. She is short, pale white and has long black hair.[1] She calls herself Alice (a mixed reading of the kanji for Yūko) and a "NEET Detective". She is a hikikomori and a cracking genius. Her diet is based practically only on Dr. Pepper and leeks. She suffers from severe insomnia.[2] She usually wears bear patterned pajamas and she is always surrounded by a pile of teddy bears. She is the brain of the NEET Detective Team and gathers information to solve the cases with her laptop without stepping out of her bedroom.[3]
Ayaka Shinozaki (篠崎 彩夏, Shinozaki Ayaka)
Voiced by: Ai Kayano (Japanese); Brittney Karbowski (English) (anime), Yōko Honda (drama CD)
Narumi's classmate. She is a very active and cheerful girl. She works part-time at a ramen shop called Hanamaru. She was the only member of the gardening club, but made Narumi join her, starting a friendship with him. Soon after, she mysteriously jumps off the school roof injuring herself and falling into a coma. This motivates Narumi to make a request to Alice: find out why she jumped off from the roof. She eventually recovers consciousness but she suffers amnesia and does not remember anything about Narumi.
Min (明) / Ming-Li Huang (黄明麗, Fan Min-Lī)
Voiced by: Hitomi Nabatame (Japanese); Shelley Calene-Black (English) (anime), Fuyuka Oura (drama CD)
She is the current owner of the ramen shop Hanamaru and the one who takes care of the members of the NEET Detective Club. Her personality is generally brash and tomboyish, often talking to people with a tone usually more masculine than what her looks suggest. However, she is as caring inside as she is harsh, proven by her unrelented support for the NEET Detective Club in spite of its members not being able to return the favor.
Tetsu (テツ) / Tetsuo Ichinomiya (一宮 哲雄, Ichinomiya Tetsuo)
Voiced by: Masaya Matsukaze (Japanese); Adam Gibbs (English) (anime), Kenji Takahashi (drama CD)
One of the NEET Detective Team members. He is an ex-boxer and addicted to gambling, in which he loves dice games and horse races. He is a former dropout of Narumi's high school and has connections with the local police.
Major (少佐, Shōsa) / Hitoshi Mukai (向井 均, Mukai Hitoshi)
Voiced by: Kouki Miyata (Japanese); Greg Ayres (English) (anime), Nobuhiko Okamoto (drama CD)
One of the NEET Detective Team members. He is a university student, but his appearance is that of an elementary school boy. He rarely attends classes and is enrolled in order to use the university library. He is a military otaku who spends most of his time playing survival games, is always carrying model guns and wearing a camouflage outfit, and an expert on spying devices.
Hiro (ヒロ) / Hiroaki Kuwabara (桑原 宏明, Kuwabara Hiroaki)
Voiced by: Takahiro Sakurai (Japanese); David Matranga (English) (anime), Junji Majima (drama CD)
One of the NEET Detective Team members and the only one with a driver's license. Because of his very handsome and gentle appearance he is quite popular among girls, therefore he has many girlfriends at the same time. Narumi thinks of him as a gigolo. Hiro is often seen with two cellphones writing lovely text messages to two different girls at the same time. He collects information or pictures and is an expert of investigation.
The Fourth (四代目, Yondaime) / Sōichirō Hinamura (雛村 壮一郎, Hinamura Sōichirō)
Voiced by: Daisuke Ono (Japanese); Illich Guardiola (English) (anime), Kenta Miyake (drama CD)
He is the head and one of the founding members of a young NEET yakuza group called the Hirasaka Group. He has a ferocious look and a violent attitude. He often lends a hand to Alice's cases. He is also good at textile arts and responds to Alice's calls when one of her stuffed bears needs repair.
Meo (メオ) / Charunee Kusakabe (草壁チャルニー, Kusakabe Charunī)
Voiced by: Saki Ogasawara (Japanese); Cynthia Martinez (English)
She is a fourteen-year-old Thai girl with apparently brown skin. Her father, Masaya Kusakabe, is a Japanese man who married a Thai woman who died in Japan. Meo asks the NEET Detective Team for help to search for her disappeared father after receiving his call requiring her to take a bag containing two hundred million yen banknotes and leave for any safe place. She has been in Japan since she was five, so she speaks Japanese fluently. Her nickname, Meo, is derived from "Maeo" (Thai: แมว; Thai pronunciation: [mæːw]), a Thai word meaning cat. And her first name, Charuni (Thai: จารุณี), is a Thai word derived from Pāḷi, Cāruṇī, meaning a young pretty girl.
Renji Hirasaka (平坂 錬次, Hirasaka Renji)
Voiced by: Kenichi Suzumura (Japanese); Mike Yager (English)
He is the former leader and one of the founding of a young NEET yakuza group called the Hirasaka Group. However, he broke his oath as a sworn brother to the Fourth after their roommate Hisan was supposedly killed. He is known as the person who originally designed the Hirasaka Group emblem, albeit unfinished.

Media

Light novels

The Heaven's Memo Pad light novels are written by Hikaru Sugii, with illustrations by Mel Kishida. ASCII Media Works published nine volumes between January 2007 and September 2014 under their Dengeki Bunko imprint.[4][5]

No. Release date ISBN
1 January 25, 2007978-4-8402-3691-1
Narumi, who recently transferred to a new high school and spends most of his time alone is approached by one of his classmates, Ayaka, who forces him to join the gardening club where she is the sole member. She also introduces him to her work place, a ramen shop called Hanamaru, where he meets a strange group of people: a gigolo, a military otaku and a drop-out ex-boxer addicted to gambling, all NEETs who form the NEET Detective Team, and their leader, a young girl called Alice who lives over the ramen shop. Narumi ends up working at the shop and also becomes Alice's assistant. A new drug, "Angel Fix" is spreading over the city, and Ayaka's brother seems to be involved. One day Ayaka jumps off the school roof injuring herself and falling into a coma. This motivates Narumi to make a formal request to Alice: find out why she jumped from the roof. The team then works to find Ayaka's brother, unveil who's selling the new drug, and what connection, if any, they have with Ayaka's actions.
2 June 25, 2007978-4-8402-3888-5
One day a Thai girl holding a travel bag enters the ramen shop looking for the young detective. Her request is "please save my father". Her father disappeared telling her, Meo, to run away taking that bag and hide. The tension raises when inside the bag they found 200 million yen in cash. The team investigates in search for Kusakabe Masaya (Meo's father) and find out about Hello Corp. and its network involvement in embezzlement, yakuza, and using immigrant women for prostitution.
3 June 10, 2008978-4-0486-7097-5
Ayaka has regained consciousness, but she suffers amnesia and doesn't remember her friendship with Narumi. When returning to the club activities, the student council president calls him to announce the gardening club will be dismantled. Unwilling to lose his and Ayaka's "place", he starts investigating the reasons and finds that four years before, one of the club founders died on the school grounds in a strange accident. The only witness was Tetsu, but he refuses to cooperate. Risking his friendship and even having the team against it, Narumi continues to investigate the past in order to protect their place.
4 July 10, 2009978-4-0486-7910-7
During summer vacations Yondaime is organizing an event and Narumi helps with the promotion of the band. But the other founder of Hirasaka-gumi, the man who gave it its name, has returned to Tokyo. It seems something had happened between Hirasaka and Yondaime. Hirasaka acts friendly towards Narumi but then mobilizes a group to impersonate Hirasaka-gumi and tarnish its name, endangering the realization of the event.
5 May 10, 2010978-4-0486-8543-6
  1. "Details of Hanamaru Soup" (はなまるスープ顛末, Hanamaru Sūpu Tenmatsu)
  2. "The Detective's Beloved Doctor" (探偵の愛した博士, Tantei no Ashita Hakase)
  3. "Hero Manual for a Huge Idiot Chapter" (大バカ任侠入門編, Ōbaka Ninkyō Nyūmon-hen)
  4. "The 21 Balls of That Summer" (あの夏の21球, Ano Natsu no 21-kyū)
This volume contains four short stories without a specific chronological order.

A strange man shows up in the ramen shop ordering a different plate each time and leaves after just one sip, hurting Min's pride. At the same time, someone appears to be stalking Min and even stealing her sarashi. Min request Alice to find who that person is and stop him.

A liquor shop very important to Alice is in danger. A big supermarket is trying to buy the land for a parking lot, plus some strange substance has appeared on its bottles leading its business to bankruptcy. The shop owner's son asks Alice to find who is altering their bottles which she agrees to do with all her strength.

When Yondaime is still hospitalized, a phone call rings in Hirasaka-gumi office asking for a ransom. But without the head, Hirasaka-gumi is not more than a bunch of idiots, and they first think they kidnapped Alice. In reality it was a wrong number, supposedly addressed to the landlady of the building, and the kidnapped was her daughter. Is up to Narumi to take Yondaime role and lead the group to solve the case and rescue the girl.

The game center where the team loves to play is being menaced by yakuza. If it doesn't shut down business, they will raise their rent to a point where it will go into bankruptcy and close anyway. The yakuza leader shows some interest on the virtual baseball game Narumi and the others are playing, and the team desperately wages a bet on a game: if the team wins, the yakuza will forgive the shop debts, but if they lose their game center is lost forever. What the NEET Detective Team didn't know is that the yakuza leader was waging on a real baseball game and not a virtual one. And what's worse is that he was a once a former pro player on the high school league.
6 February 10, 2011978-4-0487-0272-0
  • "The last lecture of Gigolo master" (ジゴロ先生、最後の授業, Gigolo-sensei, Saigo no Jugyō)
Min's cousins Fan Honrei and Fan Shaorin comes to the ramen shop looking for Min's father, Hanada Masaru, suspected of killing Honrei's fiancée. The Fan family is a strong name in the Chinese mafia, and to avoid shame on the name Honrei request Min to act as his fiancée for an engagement announcement. Shaorin claims to have contact with Masaru and tries to pass his request to Alice, but she rejects it. Hiro also shows his true feelings towards Min, and unveils that Honrei actually pretended to marry Min and is using the announcement and his influence to force her. Alice then accepts Hiro's request, to "destroy Min's engagement" and the team starts looking for Masaru before the mafia gets him as he is the only who knows what happened to Honrei's real fiancée. The volume concludes with a short story involving Shionji Gorō, Alice' granduncle and Hiro's mentor in the path of a gigolo.
7 July 10, 2011978-4-0487-0691-9
8 September 10, 2011978-4-0487-0810-4
9 September 10, 2014978-4-0486-6728-9

Drama CD

Three drama CDs were produced by Lantis. The first, titled Oshare Sagi-shi no Matsuro (おしゃれサギ師の末路), was released on July 8, 2009.[6] The second, titled Utahime no Kiken na Angle (歌姫の危険なアングル), was released on May 7, 2010.[7] A third drama CD titled Shutter Chance no Uragawa (シャッターチャンスの裏側) was released on November 9, 2011, casting the same voice actors from the anime.[8]

Manga

A manga adaptation illustrated by Tiv was serialized in ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Daioh between the August 2010 and September 2012 issues. Three tankōbon volumes were released between March 27, 2011 and August 27, 2012 under ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Comics imprint.[9][10]

Anime

An anime adaptation was announced in February 2011.[11] It aired 12 episodes between July 2 and September 24, 2011 with J.C.Staff in charge of the animation. North American licensor Sentai Filmworks simulcasted the series on The Anime Network, and will later release the series on DVD in 2012.[12] The opening theme is "Kawaru Mirai" by Choucho and the ending theme is "Asunaro" by Kenichi Suzumura.

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No. Title Original air date[13]

Reception

As of July 2011, the light novels have sold over 1,000,000 copies in Japan.[14] The light novel ranked at No. 10 in 2011 in Takarajimasha's annual light novel guide book Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi!.[15] Theron Martin of Anime News Network published a positive review of the complete anime series in 2012.[16] Despite his criticism towards Alice for being another moe archetype for the viewers and its glorification of NEETs, Martin praised the series for its well-conceived adaptation, its understated yet eclectic score and for tackling social issues found in Japan. He concluded by saying, "Overall, Heaven's Memo Pad is a very good series which falls short of being a great series...though the stories in between also have their moments."[16]

References

  1. ^ Hikaru, Sugii (2007). 神様のメモ帳. p. 36. ISBN 978-4-8402-3691-1. 人形かと思った。小さな顔、不釣合いに大きな瞳、冗談みたいに白い肌、細っこい手足、シーツに川をつくる長いさらさらの黒髪。
  2. ^ Hikaru, Sugii (2008). 神様のメモ帳3. p. 2. ISBN 978-4-04-867097-5. アリスはひきこもりの私立探偵である。睡眠時間はおよそ１時間というハードボイルド（？）っぷり。, Hikaru, Sugii; Mel Kishida (2011). 神様のメモ帳. p. 62. ISBN 978-4-04-870329-1. 寝ても最長で１時間くらいかな。医者は病気だとも体質だとも言ってるけど。
  3. ^ Hikaru, Sugii (2009). 神様のメモ帳4. p. 2. ISBN 978-4-04-867910-7. アリス。ひきこもりの自称〈ニート探偵〉。ＰＣとぬいぐるみで溢れた自室で、ネットを駆使して真実を暴きだす。普段はいつもパジャマを着て、栄養の大半をドクターペッパーから摂取している。
  4. ^ 神様のメモ帳 (in Japanese). ASCII Media Works. Retrieved February 22, 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
  5. ^ 神様のメモ帳9 (in Japanese). ASCII Media Works. Retrieved March 20, 2016. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
  6. ^ おしゃれサギ師の末路 (in Japanese). Lantis. Retrieved February 22, 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
  7. ^ 歌姫の危険なアングル (in Japanese). Lantis. Retrieved February 22, 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
  8. ^ シャッターチャンスの裏側 (in Japanese). Lantis. Retrieved November 9, 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
  9. ^ 神様のメモ帳（1） (in Japanese). ASCII Media Works. Retrieved April 15, 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
  10. ^ 神様のメモ帳（3） (in Japanese). ASCII Media Works. Retrieved September 14, 2012. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
  11. ^ "Kami-sama no Memo-chō Mystery Light Novels Get Anime". Anime News Network. February 7, 2011. Retrieved February 12, 2011.
  12. ^ "Sentai Filmworks Adds Heaven's Memo Pad Anime". Anime News Network. Retrieved July 23, 2011.
  13. ^ 神様のメモ帳 It's the only NEET thing to do.. Media Arts Database (in Japanese). Agency for Cultural Affairs. Retrieved April 11, 2015.
  14. ^ "電撃文庫で人気のミステリー 『神様のメモ帳』 がTVアニメ化!" (in Japanese). Amazon.co.jp. Retrieved November 8, 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
  15. ^ Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi! 2011 (in Japanese). Takarajimasha. November 19, 2010. ISBN 978-4-7966-7963-3.
  16. ^ a b Martin, Theron (October 16, 2012). "Heaven's Memo Pad Blu-Ray". Anime News Network. Retrieved March 30, 2015.

External links

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