Winner of the prestigious Kodansha manga award, nominee for the 2006 Eisner Award for best U. S. Edition of Foreign Material, and the inspiration for the anime of the same name, this is the first volume of a hilarious shonen manga series. It's narrated in brief vignettes that cleverly satirize other shonen manga set in boys' high schools, such as GTO and HERE IS GREENWOOD. Takashi Kamiyama is an intelligent, well-behaved young man who, in order to support a friend, ended up at Cromartie High School, a dumping ground for punks and misfits. Unfortunately, that friend failed the school entrance exam, and now Kamiyama is left alone to face a school full of serious badasses, plus a robot who seems to have convinced almost everyone he's human, a bare-chested thug who can't speak Japanese and bears a strong resemblance to the lead singer of Queen (the late Freddie Mercury), and a gorilla who appears to be smarter than the majority of the students (not that that's difficult).