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. The first volume was published in January 2007, and as of September 2011, eight volumes have been released by ASCII Media Works under their Dengeki Bunko imprint. A manga adaptation illustrated by Tiv started serialization in the August 2010 issue of ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Daioh magazine. An anime adaptation aired 12 episodes in Japan between July and September 2011.
Plot
Characters
- Alice (アリス) / Yūko Shionji (紫苑寺 有子 Shionji Yūko)
- Voiced by: Minako Kotobuki (drama CD), Yui Ogura (anime)
- Mysterious girl who lives on the third floor over Hanamaru ramen shop. Her age is unknown, but looks like a 12 or 13 years-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 always 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]
- Narumi Fujishima (藤島 鳴海 Fujishima Narumi)
- Voiced by: Atsushi Abe (drama CD), Yoshitsugu Matsuoka (anime)
- Main protagonist. 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 (the shop owner), Alice, and the NEET Detective Team members.
- Ayaka Shinozaki (篠崎 彩夏 Shinozaki Ayaka)
- Voiced by: Yōko Honda (drama CD), Ai Kayano (anime)
- 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.
- Tetsu (テツ) / Tetsuo Ichinomiya (一宮 哲雄 Ichinomiya Tetsuo)
- Voiced by: Kenji Takahashi (drama CD), Masaya Matsukaze (anime)
- One of the NEET Detective Team members. Ex-boxer and addicted to gambling, he loves dice games and horse races. He is a former drop-out of Narumi's high school and has connections with the local police.
- Shōsa (少佐) / Hitoshi Mukai (向井 均 Mukai Hitoshi)
- Voiced by: Nobuhiko Okamoto (drama CD), Kouki Miyata (anime)
- One of the NEET Detective Team members. He is an university student, but his appearance is that of a elementary school boy. He rarely attends classes and is enrolled to use the university library. He is a military otaku who spends most of time playing survival games and is always wearing model guns and camouflage outfit. Expert on spying devices. His nickname, "Shōsa", is Japanese for "major" or "lieutenant commander".
- Hiro (ヒロ) / Hiroaki Kuwabara (桑原 宏明 Kuwabara Hiroaki)
- Voiced by: Junji Majima (drama CD), Takahiro Sakurai (anime)
- One of the NEET Detective Team members and the only one with a driving licence. 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.
- Yondaime (四代目) / Sōichirō Hinamura (雛村 壮一郎 Hinamura Sōichirō)
- Voiced by: Kenta Miyake (drama CD), Daisuke Ono (anime)
- He is the head and one of the founding members of a young NEET yakuza group called Hirasaka-gumi. 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.
Media
Light novels
The Heaven's Memo Pad light novels are written by Hikaru Sugii, with illustrations by Mel Kishida. The first volume was published in January 2007 under ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Bunko imprint;[4] as of September 10, 2011, eight volumes have been released.| No. | Release date | ISBN | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | January 25, 2007 | ISBN 978-4-8402-3691-1 | |
| 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. | |||
| 02 | June 25, 2007 | ISBN 978-4-8402-3888-5 | |
| 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. | |||
| 03 | June 10, 2008 | ISBN 978-4-0486-7097-5 | |
| 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 loose 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. | |||
| 04 | July 10, 2009 | ISBN 978-4-0486-7910-7 | |
| 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. | |||
| 05 | May 10, 2010 | ISBN 978-4-0486-8543-6 | |
| |||
| 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 loose 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. | |||
| 06 | February 10, 2011 | ISBN 978-4-0487-0272-0 | |
| |||
| 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. | |||
| 07 | July 10, 2011 | ISBN 978-4-0487-0691-9 | |
| 08 | September 10, 2011 | ISBN 978-4-0487-0810-4 | |
[edit] 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.[5] The second, titled Utahime no Kiken na Angle (歌姫の危険なアングル), was released on May 7, 2010.[6] 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.[7]Manga
A manga adaptation illustrated by Tiv began serialization in the August 2010 issue of ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Daioh manga magazine. The first tankōbon volume was released on March 27, 2011 under ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Comics imprint.[8]Anime
An anime adaptation was announced in February 2011.[9] 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.[10] The opening theme is "Kawaru Mirai" by Choucho and the ending theme is "Asunaro" by Kenichi Suzumura.| No. | Title | Original airdate |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | "The Two or Three Things I know About Her" "Kanojo ni Tsuite Shitteiru Ni, San no Kotogara" (彼女について知っている二、三の事柄) | July 2, 2011[11] |
| 02 | "You and the Travel Bag" "Kimi to Ryokō Kaban" (君と旅行鞄) | July 16, 2011[12] |
| 03 | "What I Can Do For Those Two" "Boku ga Futari ni Dekiru Koto" (僕が二人にできること) | July 23, 2011[12] |
| 04 | "A Full Account on Hanamaru's Soup" "Hanamaru Sūpu Tenmatsuki" (はなまるスープ顛末記) | July 30, 2011[12] |
| 05 | "He Knows About Me" "Aitsu wa Ore o Shitte Iru" (あいつは俺を知っている) | August 6, 2011[12] |
| 06 | "It Seems Like I'll Lose" "Boku wa Makesō da" (僕は負けそうだ) | August 13, 2011[13] |
| 07 | "Everything I Can Do" "Boku ni Dekiru Subete" (僕にできるすべて) | August 20, 2011[13] |
| 08 | "I Don't Believe in Fate" "Boku wa Unmei o Shinjinai" (僕は運命を信じない) | August 27, 2011[13] |
| 09 | "The 21 Balls of That Summer" "Ano Natsu no 21-kyū" (あの夏の21球) | September 3, 2011[13] |
| 10 | "Concerning You" "Kimi nitsuite" (きみについて) | September 10, 2011[13] |
| 11 | "My Piece" "Boku no Kakera" (ぼくのかけら) | September 17, 2011[14] |
| 12 | "About You, Me and Her" "Kimi to Boku to Kanojo no Koto" (君と僕と彼女のこと) | September 24, 2011[14] |
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