Have you ever wished that a beautiful girl would just fall into your lap? Have you ever dreamed about meeting someone who looks exactly like your celebrity crush? How about sharing a single room with four beautiful women wearing nothing but skimpy undergarments? If you’re a fan of the female gender, then don’t be embarrassed: everyone has had these flights of fantasy at some point. Super Ball Girls teaches us, however, that some dreams are left far better as just that.
This article contains images that could be considered NSFW.
Currently serialized in Shogakukan’s Big Comic Superior since 2022, Super Ball Girls has a seriously impressive team behind it. Penning the story is Muneyuki Kaneshiro, most famous for Blue Lock and As the Gods Will, while the art is handled by none other than Akira Hiramoto: the equally twisted mind behind Prison School, which won the Kodansha Manga Award in 2013. Both of these men have been active in the industry for a very long time, but this is the first time that they’ve ever crossed paths.
In terms of plot, Super Ball Girls follows 20-something year old Eita Ichiyoshi as he works a dead end job at a chocolate factory. After failing to get good grades at school, failing to get into a good university and failing to hold down a good job, he’s pretty much given up on life and any prospects for the future. The only real dream he has is a vague one that many can relate to: “If only a cute girl would all from the sky right now.”
Unfortunately for him, that wish comes true.
One day, while walking home from work, Ichiyoshi sees something glinting in the darkness. He’s able to grab it out of the air when it gets close enough, whereupon he realizes that it’s a bouncy ball, also known as a “super ball” in Japanese. Thinking nothing of it, he puts the ball in his pocket and heads home, going about his normal routine. It’s only when he decides to throw the ball at a box of waste chocolates from work out of frustration that a beautiful woman suddenly emerges from within that and immediately kisses him on the mouth - with full tongue and no clothes on.
The twist comes, however, when three more bouncy balls shoot out of the mysterious girl’s back to form three other naked figures in the tiny room. Here is where Ichiyoshi has a horrible realization: despite finally realizing his only dream, he can’t act upon his base desires. Kissing these girls, let alone going any further, would only lead to more of them being born. He could potentially end up unleashing an unlimited amount of these unknown lifeforms on the world, and who knows what their intentions are?
Super Ball Girls therefore asks the question: what would you do if you actually gained a harem of infinite girls? Although you might think that that’d be the best thing in the world, there are very real concerns. For example, how are you going to feed the new additions to your household on your already-stretched budget? How are you going to protect them from danger given that they don’t know anything about the outside world? And how are you going to do all this while working a job away from home most of the day?
To make matters even worse, the girls that suddenly appear in Ichiyoshi’s apartment are both super strong and essentially immortal. Even if they get burned, they heal in a second, and even just pushing someone away sends them flying across the room. They also have an intense desire to kiss human males in an effort to reproduce: they’re like a plague or a virus, even evolving to take the exact form that men desire. Looking at them with lustful eyes actually makes you part of the problem.
One particular incident in volume one also underscores another key part of Super Ball Girls: horror. Fueled by the desire to reproduce, one of the girls born from Ichiyoshi’s initial kiss picks up a guy at a nearby convenience store and gets down to business. When things go a little too far for her, however, she pushes his face away and accidentally twists his whole neck around, leaving him in a bloody heap on the ground. It’s a gruesome image that marks just the beginning of a trail of exploding heads, entrails and other body parts that litters the four volumes read for this review.
In this sense, the practical limitations of having a harem are underscored by the horror of super strong lifeforms suddenly arriving on Earth. Yet, Super Ball Girls is a deconstruction for a reason: while it subverts the usual tropes of harem, it does so to uncover what it really means to love someone unconditionally. Although Ichiyoshi initially finds himself uncontrollably attracted to the girls, the bond they form thereafter is a lot more robust and wholesome. They see each other as a family first and foremost, which allows them to make it through thick and thin.
One of the antagonists remarks that this is a kind of “fiction”: a convenient story that humans tell each other to cover up their base desires for connection and companionship. She actually becomes very skilled at engineering this kind of façade for reproduction, as the super ball girls can only create more of themselves if they kiss a man when he is aroused. The ultimate thematic goal of the plot then naturally becomes to prove her wrong, emphasising the value of human connection and true love.
Nevertheless, Super Ball Girls isn’t just an exercise in subversion and deconstruction. The unique talents of Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Akira Hiramoto both come to bear here to create an utterly unforgettable experience: there may be a lot of naked bodies and big butts, but it’s all built on top of a rock solid foundation in terms of world-building and storytelling. There’s simply nothing quite else like it out there right now.
You can read Super Ball Girls in Japanese via SHOGAKUKAN. Volume one releases in English next year via Yen Press.
