Notes: the years referred to are calendar years, as given in the comic book and as per the original Japanese publication schedule. See the timeline and why a timeline? pages. The notation used to refer to a specific episode is explained in the timeline page.
Years 0 and 1 - Year 2 - Year 3 - Year 4 - Year 5
When looking back at the earliest episodes of maison Ikkoku, one is struck by two things: how crude it was at the beginning, and how quickly it got much better. This last impression is, of course, made all the stronger by the fact that Viz comics chose to omit four early episodes from the English version, so that the reader may not immediately realize that, originally, in real life as in the comic book, about five months elapsed between the second English episode and the third one, "Spring Wasabi."
As for the crudeness, the truth is that it is hard to see much promise in the first couple of episodes of Maison Ikkoku: at first glance, it seems that this is just going to be another silly sex comedy, perhaps even similar to the trashy movies that occasionally pop up in certain TV channels late at night, full of horny guys, sexual innuendo, and scantily-clad bimbos. Nor is there anything distinguished about the artwork either.
Sure, a closer look will reveal a few unusual details: Yotsuya's way of getting through into Yusaku's room (using a battering ram!) gives the humor an almost surrealistic touch for a moment, and the tears on Kyoko's face in the second episode also suggest that there is a story in the wings waiting to be told. But, overall, however annoying it may be to be thus deprived of four early episodes, Viz's decision to "cut to the chase" and put out "Spring Wasabi" as soon as possible may have been a sensible one. Many comic book fans only give a new series a couple of issues' try before deciding whether to stick with it or not, and, knowing the turn the series was to take, the publishers might have worried that, on the (dubious) strength of the first few episodes, they would not reach the audience most likely to enjoy the series for the long haul.
In any event, "Spring Wasabi" is a dramatic turning point. We finally learn that Kyoko is a widow (although it seems a bit unrealistic that she could have kept that fact a secret from all the Maison Ikkoku residents for a whole six or seven months), and suddenly she, and the series itself, acquires an unexpected emotional depth. Further, it is at this point that Yusaku first resolves "to become a man worthy" of her love, so that his feelings for her may begin to be properly called love, as opposed to a mostly lustful adolescent infatuation. Even the artwork shows a remarkable new level of skill: the opening sequence of the episode (where Yusaku runs into Kyoko walking the dog) is rendered with care and realism and conveys a feeling of "being there" that will become a standard for the series.
With this, somewhat unexpectedly, Maison Ikkoku becomes a totally different genre, a romantic comedy. From an interview I read I gather that Ms. Takahashi herself was a little surprised by this turn of events, but she seems to have risen to the challenge quite promptly and ably. The remainder of the first year expands the cast to include love rivals for both Kyoko and Yusaku, and to set up some of the basic situations to which the story will often return. The sexiness is not entirely gone, not right away (there are a few exploitative shots of Kyoko, even a bit of frontal nudity in 2.1), but it gets progressively toned down, and it is the humanity of the characters, slowly being revealed by a skilled storyteller, that wins the reader over more than any gimmicks.
Many of these "year one" stories are like diamonds in the rough. (Many are so good, in fact, that they only look rough by comparison to the later stories.) My favorite, an early classic, is the last episode of Part One (1.14), entitled "Campus Doll" and featuring Yusaku and Kyoko as pupeteers. It is hilarious, touching, true to life, and perhaps the first real step forward in their relationship, the beginning of (something like) some kind of intimacy.
I could probably make a case for the notion that Year Two (collected, for the most part, in Parts--and Graphic Novels--2 and 3) was Maison Ikkoku at its best (although I may have to revise this opinion after year 5 is over). If nothing else, it's the first "peak of achievement," as Ms. Takahashi herself might put it. The series, and the author, are both still quite young, and there is an enthusiasm and vitality that shows in just about every page. Lots of funny and clever ideas, totally unexpected plot twists at every turn, and an artwork that keeps getting better and better, including detailed studies of posture (especially with Kyoko), and extremely expressive use of page and panel layout. And, what's more, throughout most of the year there is still growth and development taking place in the characters and their relationship, as opposed to the stasis that sets in in later years and about which I will grumble at length below.
Two longer, multi-part narratives provide a sort of frame and symmetry for the year. In the first one, set in the Spring, Kyoko's family tries to get her to move out of Maison Ikkoku, and resorts for that to some rather drastic measures. In the second one, which runs through the Fall, it is Yusaku who moves out over a misunderstanding. In between, there are quiet and not-so-quiet moments, Summer festivals and close calls. "The One That Got Away," the Summer festival episode (3.6) is probably my favorite of the single-episode stories, but it is really hard to pick just one, they are all so consistently good.
Kyoko and Yusaku are (tearfully) reunited at the end of Part 3 (end of November), and a naive reader might well think that "this is it," the defining moment we've all been waiting for. And then, something really surprising happens...
...nothing.
That's right. Oh, there is a good moment with Yusaku and Mitaka in issue 4.1, and a nice Christmas story in 4.2 ("The Man Who Reached For The Stars"), but the restoration of Yusaku's room at the beginning of Part 4 is almost symbolic: it's the whole situation prior to Yusaku's departure that has been restored, and that will from now on become an essentially inviolable status quo. The "sitcom years" are about to begin...
There is a fundamental difference between a soap opera (which is what most American comic books have been since Stan Lee) and a sitcom. The soap opera depends essentially on a tight (and eventually long and convoluted) continuity between episodes, whereas the sitcom characters inhabit a Markovian world of zero memory: no matter how dramatic or even earth-shaking the events in a particular episode may have appeared to be, it is a given that by the end of the episode their effects on the cast will have been nullified, by the next episode they will have been forgotten, and for the remainder of the series no one will ever refer to them again. (Many American TV series, not only sitcoms, have worked this way, including the classic Star Trek.)
On its third year, Maison Ikkoku becomes a sitcom.
This is not to say that it is bad; only that in order to enjoy it you need to get into the sitcom mindframe. You must not really expect actions to have consequences that propagate from episode to episode: hence, no relationship development or noticeable character growth. In fact, the whole idea behind the formula is that the characters' personalities and their relationships are immutable, and you just change the situations they find themselves in in every episode.
The most obvious example of this on Year Three is a totally off-continuity episode, reprinted in Graphic Novel 5, called Yusaku's Island, which is really very funny but, even by the sitcom standards, rather hard to accept as "canon." But there are examples all over the place. In one episode, Yusaku and Kyoko sort of kiss, but nothing comes of that. In another episode, they go out on a date and have a good time together, but nothing comes of that, either. And in another episode Kozue complains about how cold and distant Yusaku appears to be when he's with her, and nothing really comes out of that, either.
[This, BTW, is almost without doubt the stickiest point in the whole series, from the (somewhat hopeless, I know) point of view of wanting this to be a semi-realistic continuing story. One may come up with more or less contrived reasons for the other relationships' (Kyoko/Yusaku, Kyoko/Mitaka) not changing at all for a long period of time, but I simply cannot believe that Kozue could stick with Yusaku for three or four years without ever kissing and without even once suspecting that he really loves somebody else. We have seen enough instances where she has tried to initiate something, which has never gotten anywhere because of some accidental interruption. But how many accidental interruptions can one reasonably expect in four years' time? Which also brings up the question of just how often they go out together, anyway: I'd expect they should see quite a lot of each other, but in the book we rarely see Kozue more than three or four times a year, and every appearance seems forced, like she's no more than a convenient plot device.]
Quite appropriately, most of the episodes in Year Three are one-shot stories; there is nothing like the long, multi-part narratives of Year Two until the very end (5.6, end of November), when Yusaku breaks his leg and is taken to the hospital. On the other hand, if you just accept them for what they are--short stories set in some timeless universe--many of these tales are really excellent in their own right. Takahashi is in full command of her craft now: she can write and draw just about anything, and she does explore a full range of situations throughout the year, from the muted drama of Mr. Ichinose's drab life (5.4) to the temptations faced by the still sexually inexperienced Yusaku in "Shall we rest awhile?" (4.12), from a boisterous baseball game (4.11), to the quiet pleasure of a brief Summer vacation in Hokkaido in episode 4.18, one of my favorite stories of this run. And there is still some nice experimentation with layout (as in the page in "The kissing scene" (4.4) which consists only of mouths!).
By the end of the year, Yusaku and Kyoko have had a big fight, Yusaku has broken a leg, and it seems as if something is finally going to happen between them at the hospital. Then, on the first episode of the fourth year, something does happen, and then--guess what?--nothing comes out of that, either.
By the fourth year, the series has quite a back history and Takahashi has some fun exploring some of the myths she has created: the impossibility to see Soichiro's face plays a role in a couple of episodes, and the impossibility to find out what Yotsuya does for a living is the basis of another one. She also revisits old themes, occasionally with a new twist: an episode at a spa seems like a throwback to Yusaku's peeping, lust-filled, younger days, until at the very end he gets a hold of himself and gives us a chance to see that he has, in fact, grown up somewhat. And a trip home to her parents gives Kyoko a chance to heal some wounds and show some maturity of her own.
As if to emphasize this growth of the main characters, two new characters are introduced that could almost work as generational replacements for them: Nozomu, a young student, about Yusaku's age at the beginning of the series, moves in and becomes the new target for Yotsuya's pranks; and Ibuki Yagami, a high-school girl, about the age Kyoko must have been when she first met Soichiro, follows on Kyoko's footsteps by developing a crush on her own substitute teacher--none other than Yusaku himself.
This year's longer storylines revolve first around Nozomu and then about Yagami, the first one being pure slapstick, the second one being rather more subtle and overall quite enjoyable. Mostly, they serve to divert attention from the relationship (of lack thereof) between Yusaku and Kyoko, which, after a somewhat hopeful start in the winter, settles firmly into limbo for the remainder of the year. It is not really clear why, but mostly it seems as if both of them had accepted the status quo as a fact of life, and slipped into a pattern that reminds the reader (and other characters as well) of an old married couple. While this is natural, in a sense, given how long they have been together, it is also somewhat sad, because one misses the passion of the early days, and the sparks that once used to fly between them whenever they were physically close.
[As an indication of how much less physical their relationship has become, consider that Kyoko has, in the past, repeatedly slapped Yusaku, wrestled him to the ground, beaned him twice with assorted hard objects, and even bitten him viciously, whereas this year all she does to him is splash his feet with water from her garden hose.]
The last story of the year is also a reprise of an earlier one, with Yusaku and Kyoko once more acting as puppeteers. It's an excellent episode which manages to be incredibly funny and very sad at the same time. This note of sadness will come back, persistenly, over the following year, as Yusaku struggles to find a job, the status quo is finally shaken a bit, and the series takes on a decidedly more mature tone.
This is when Yusaku (whom I feel strongly tempted to call Godai from this point on, since the translators of the series make the switch at about this time) graduates and tries, rather unsuccessfully, to find a job. The tone of the series is not just more mature, it is also, for most of the year, quite a bit sadder than before. Although there are still instances of inspired, truly insane comedy (a certain mix-up with an audio tape comes to mind, as well as most of Mitaka's unwilling courtship of Asuna Kujo and her six dogs), the story reads a little more like a drama, and it is the more dramatic episodes that feel most beautifully realized this year, especially episode 7.4 ("I love dogs, part 2")--the one where Kyoko stays up all night waiting for Godai--which was absolutely heartbreaking for me. (The one where Godai mistakenly believes that Kyoko has been physically intimate with Mitaka, episode 7.8, is also masterfully told and just as sad in its own way, as well.)
Overall, the story picks up a little momentum, as Mitaka and Yagami launch twin assaults on Kyoko and Godai, respectively. Yagami opens and closes the year, and in between it's Mitaka who, being pressured into a marriage of convenience, delivers a sort of ultimatum to Kyoko which eventually (after many misunderstandings, naturally) sends both her and Godai into a tailspin, with Kyoko travelling around the country in an attempt to forget and Godai chasing after her in an attempt to straighten things out. Needless to say, neither one succeeds, but their efforts make for a lovely, very romantic, and very funny sequence of stories with a strong summertime feel to them. It's almost like a topsy-turvy honeymoon (in which they are hardly ever together, though) and it seems to have rekindled the spark between them (pretty much answering my objections to Year Four above). Not that either of them actually does anything about it, of course...
And just why don't they do anything? Actually, the stories this year attempt to provide an answer. Godai wants to wait until he has a decent job to propose to Kyoko. And Kyoko... Kyoko obviously has problems of her own. When Yagami returns in the Fall, in a series of very amusing stories, she ends up confronting Kyoko over her feelings for Godai, trying to get her to be honest with herself for a change. The result is another very moving Christmas episode, a somewhat downbeat note on which to end the year, but an interesting insight into what has been keeping Kyoko from even admitting to herself that she has romantic feelings for Godai.
Takahashi's storytelling is brilliant throughout. Episode 7.1, lost among the cherry blossoms, has some breathtakingly beautiful scenes, which I wish could have been rendered in color. The small, Japanese-style inn at which Godai finally catches up with Kyoko in episode 7.12 is drawn sparingly, and yet one gets a sense of "being there"--one can almost hear the surf from the balcony. And the characters' inner life is depicted just as delicately and lovingly, so that we can't help but feel, not just for Kyoko and Godai, which is a given, but for their rivals Mitaka and Yagami as well. This is a wonderful year for the series--every bit as good drama as the second year was good comedy, and still excellent at both.