Manga / Plastic Nee-san

The three main characters of this absurd work. From left to right: Makimaki, Nee-san and Okappa

Plastic Nee-san (otherwise known as +Tic Elder Sister) is a gag comedy manga, written by Cha Kurii. Publication began on September 4th, 2009 in Young Gangan magazine.

Plastic Nee-san tells the story of three high school friends - Iroe "Nee-san" Genma, Hazuki "Okappa" Okamoto and Makina "Makimaki" Sakamaki - and their adventures involving them and some of the other students and staff in their school. Although the three girls are supposed to be the three in charge of their school's Plastic Model-Making club, the manga instead shines the light on the absurd interactions held between characters.

A 12-episode TV adaptation was released in the Spring 2011 season, with each episode only lasting between three to four minutes.

Tropes related to this work:

• Action Politician: The mayor of "THE City", a cheerful fellow who looks like Mike Haggar and wants to punch everyone and everything.
• Always Identical Twins: Uno and Sano, who are mistaken by their own parents half of the time. The solution: hitting their own heads together until they swap bodies. Chapter 137 introduces their previously unknown triplet Miu, who went to a different school... along with several other identical sisters. Oh, they have an elder sister named Risa, who, yes, also has three identical sisters.
• Art Evolution: Try comparing the first chapter of the manga to the more recent chapters. You'll notice that the lineart is cleaner and sharper, the character's eyes and faces are totally different, and a lot more proper shading is used to give the characters more style.
  • Oddly enough, the better the artwork becomes, the lazier Nee-san's temple hat gets until it turns into a simple cone. Okappa's and Makimaki's hats also start getting drawn with no detail half of the time. By chapter 135, the story actually addresses this to show Nee-san doesn't care about plastic models anymore.
• Artifact Title: The series gets less and less related to plastic models as it goes on. Nee-san eventually closes the Plastic Model-Making club in favor of a Calligraphy Club, but the series doesn't get renamed "+Phy Elder Sister" or anything.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Nee-san is the blonde, Okappa is the dark-haired (close to blue) and Makimaki is the redhead.
• Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: Sasaki's policeman father doesn't like to find out that his daughter is dating a "cartoonishly fat man" and sets out to stop that over a robbery involving a highly armed criminal. We never see the outcome, though...
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: A couple of chapters are centered on Mayoshi Takarai, a guy who is crazier than the craziest people in the cast by virtue of narrating his shenanigans to the reader.
• Cardboard Prison: After being arrested for pretending to be a teacher, Takarai easily "crazies" his way out of prison to pull more elaborate stunts.
• Cast Full of Crazy: As lampshaded in chapter 109, practically everyone in the series' setting is insane. Every time a person appears to be normal, it turns out they have some disturbing, perverted or disgusting trait that leaves even Nee-san dumbfounded.
• Characterization Marches On: In her first appearance, Sasaki is merely Okappa without the funny hat, Death Glare gag and all. Her next chapters have her pulling complex pranks on Nee-san, having nervous breakdowns and showing yandere tendencies.
• The Chikan: Okappa comes across an entire train car filled with overly-enthusiastic molesters. She beats them all black-and-blue, except for a scared old man who was the only one minding his own business.
• Cluster F-Bomb: When working as a DJ for a christmas party, Nee-san manages to make the Spongebob Squarepants theme into a barrage of profanities.
• The Comically Serious: Essentially the entire premise of this whole manga, adding layers of humor to each chapter.
• Call-Back:
  • When the story decides to say Okappa was crazy all along, it shows panels from previous chapters where she acted oddly kind to her friends and states those were also "Okappa Days".
  • When the girls start a cooking contest, the mochi-crazy giantess from around a hundred chapters before is seen still sleeping on the back of the room.
• Corrupt the Cutie: In one chapter, Nee-san calls a baby orangutan out of their cage only to taunt and demean them. The ape gives up on befriending humans and becomes famous for throwing rocks at them.
• Death Glare:
  • Okappa knows how to use this only too well, especially when it comes to punishing Nee-san for her behavior.
  • It never turns into a Running Gag for Okappa, though. Instead this quirk is stolen by Sasaki, a yandere who often leers at her boyfriend from a distance and gets the Black Eyes of Crazy look at least twice.
• Drives Like Crazy: After earning her driving license, Nee-san immediately gets her friends into an accident by repeatedly sleeping on the steering wheel. Luckily nobody gets hurt.
• Eye Scream: As thanks for having her hands read by a transfer student named Toby, Nee-san tries to poke his eyes in. It's ok, though, he closes his eyes every time and doesn't care she's attacking him for no reason.
• Fanservice: The story occasionally concocts unusual situations that get the main trio stripped down to their underwear.
• Fartillery: When the "Number Nine" soccer player is laughed at for ripping nearly the entire back of his pants while sliding, he responds by grasping a fart and shoving it on the mocker's face. He then threatens to do the same to Okappa and Makimaki for also witnessing what happened.
• Formerly Fat: Makimaki used to be so chubby as a kid that she couldn't speak properly.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: There are at least two chapters that deal with settings and casts that have nothing to do with the rest of the series.
• Gag Penis: When Azuma is running away from Kuniki's grasp in the Hot Springs Episode, he walks into the entire female cast and his endowment is mercilessly mocked by Sasaki. He's so humiliated he doesn't react to Kuniki pulling him back to the sauna. The girls, meanwhile, have ridiculous expressions going on from seeing what Kuniki's looks like.
• Green Thumb: Ishihara can make flowers bloom by blowing at them. It's about the only time Okappa doesn't laugh at her antics.
• Insane Troll Logic:
  • Uno and Sano are mad that their parents keep mixing them up half the time, so they try to swap bodies by hitting their heads together. According to the narrator, it somehow does work.
  • When Ishihara berates Kuniki for catching food on a pitching glove and tells him to leave, he forces the glove on her face and asks what she'll do if he doesn't. He then gets increasingly desperate because she won't answer and is getting smothered by the glove he can't seem to put off her face.
• Jerkass: The titular Nee-san can be kind of a bitch and often harms others for no reason.
• Killing Intent: Okappa definitely shows this when Nee-san breaks her battleship model in one instance and dropped her shoe on top of Okappa's face in another.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: After Kuniki and Number 9 bond over wearing the same kind of bra, Nee-san blurts out that Okappa also happens to match them. Okappa punches everyone until they forget everything.
• Little Bit Beastly: Nee-san has the ability to produce animal features such as a beak or ears on her head, though the paws are just props.
• Not So Above It All: Chapter 113 establishes that sometimes Okappa gets awfully kind, clingly, annoying and starts teasing others with her large chest.
• Not the Fall That Kills You…: A burglar attempts to escape from Nee-san by jumping from a building like a pro, but breaks his leg like an amateur.
• Only Sane Man: Okappa (outside of "Okappa Days", and even then that's tame), Makimaki, the two recurring student council boys and the two librarians are some of the few level-headed people in the series.
• Pie in the Face: Okappa and Makimaki ask Nee-san to refrain from hitting an old lady with a large plastic model, but when they meet her she hits Nee-san's face with a pie. Turns out this has been going on for a while, and the old lady is winning by 8-2. For being able to defeat Nee-san in such games, Uno and Sano consider this old lady the craziest person in the city.
• Prank Date: Nee-san gleefully recounts her first love story, which was really an extended prank. When the boy jokingly voices his suspicions about her behaviour towards him, Nee-san plays it cool... and then asks when he figured it out. The boy falls silent, as does the snow around them.
• Repeat Cut: The famous scene where Okappa hits Nee-san against the wall is repeated three times in different angles◊.
• Running Gag: Countless can be found:
  • Nee-san constantly starting up trouble for her friends, as well as being random and annoying in general.
  • Makimaki looking for romance, at the expense of embarrassing herself in front of others.
  • Kuniki hitting on the male cast, as well as stripping down to his lingerie. As well as constantly reminding people of his orientation.
• Shaking the Rump: In Episode 12, Nee-san's imagination leads to Okappa and Makimaki trying to seduce the same boy. It quickly goes from an innocent confession on Okappa's part to both Okappa and Makimaki stripping down to their lingerie and literally shaking their asses in front of their "target".
• Spoiler Opening: The opening for the anime averts this by mostly showing gags that didn't make into it.
• Spooky Painting: After cleaning their club room, the trio discovers a portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach they don't remember having before. Bach starts staring to the sides when the girls aren't looking and then blatantly strips and begins making pushing sumo motions as if trying to get out of the portrait. The girls burn him outside... only to have to burn him again the next day.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Yoshi keeps sending erotic pictures of his teacher Masuda to the woman herself, much to the chagrin of his fellow classmates who admire her. Wanting to encourage him to be a better artist, Masuda is oblivious to Yoshi's intentions until her co-worker Mizuno points it out to her.
• Yandere: When Yamada finally works up the nerve to ask Sasaki out, he finds she's really clingy and violent. He manages to make some progress on befriending Sasaki and handles her to the best of his ability, but she's indomitable. He regrets ever meeting her at all.
  "You see, my girlfriend... she's beautiful, but on the inside she's Annie Wilkes".
• Youkai:
  • A kappa comes up sometimes, does sometime vulgar and then leaves as mysteriously as he arrived.
  • The Cutmouth Girl returns after a long absence to haunt people, except she's fixed her mouth and is really pretty under her mask. However, this was not enough for the perverted Yoshi and he turns her into the Cutswimsuit Girl.