Splatoon: Squid Kids Comedy Show is a Yonkoma manga series serialised in CoroCoro Comic, written and drawn by Hideki Goto, and based on the Splatoon video games by Nintendo. This is a Gag Series, as the title implies, and focuses on short comedic vignettes with Rapid-Fire Comedy.
This manga focuses on two Inklings, Hit and Maika. Hit is an Idiot Hero who moved to Inkopolis from the countryside, hoping to become a cool squid kid. Maika is a city girl, who quickly befriends Hit, and acts as the comedic foil to Hit's absurd antics.
Splatoon: Squid Kids Comedy Show contains examples of:
- Amusing Injuries: Hit is a frequent victim of these. Whether it's a Cranial Eruption from a vehicle collision, losing his hair in a fire, or forgetting about his species' Super Drowning Skills, he's quickly back to normal and ready for the next gag.
- Art Initiates Life: In one short, Hit attempts to swim through ink, and ends up in a manga artist’s ink, leading to him popping out of said artist’s ink bottle.
- Bland-Name Product: “Time to Stream Online for Popularity” starts with Hit watching an unboxing stream on SquidTube, inspiring him to try livestreaming himself.
- Denser and Wackier: Is this to the games it's based off, to an even greater degree than the mainline manga, with barely little to no references to the single-player campaigns, and every event is the set up to a gag of some kind.
- Hack the Traffic Lights: Not exactly hacking, but when chasing a thief in the first series of vignettes, Hit does use green ink to paint all the traffic lights green to cross the road at a red light. This idea doesn't work as he hoped, since he didn't consider that this also leaves the other street with green lights as well, and a vehicle proceeds to slam into him.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every series of vignettes will have "Time" as part of the title, either in the sense of "X Time", or "Time to X".
- Partially-Concealed-Label Gag: Invoked by Hit when he attempts to livestream. He brings a bobo skimmer tub onto the stream, and claims it’s a new weapon, which he proceeds to prove by shooting ink onto the sign advertising it, leaving the letters to spell bomb.
- Punny Name: Hit's name refers to his accuracy with the Splattershot. Maika's name is a pun on Ika, the Japanese word for squid.
- Signs of Disrepair: Hit causes this on multiple occasions, usually when trying to cover a sign’s message with ink because of an issue with it, such as the writing being the wrong size, or the message being outdated. He always runs out of ink, and leaves some letters behind, which usually ends up spelling out something silly, like sports day becoming spot day.
- Super Drowning Skills: Like the games, Inklings are a victim of this, which Hit often forgets about, leading to either Maika stopping him at the last second, or him actually diving in and melting.
- Talking with Signs: Unlike the games, where Judd has Telepathy, here his One-Word Vocabulary is gotten around by him holding up his referee flags with words printed on them.
- Toilet Humour: Early on, Hit seems to perform a Dodge Roll with a Splattershot, when the technique can only be done with Dualies. Maika quickly learns that he's actually propelling himself with his farts.
- Trail Of Breadcrumbs: In the very first sketch, Hit is unable to help stop the thief, as he used all his ink to make a trail from his country home all the way to Inkopolis.
- Undisclosed Funds: Downplayed when Hit plans to stream on SquidTube, only to find out a camcorder is a lot more expensive than expected. The price can be partially seen, 17 digits of it, but the rest of it goes off the page.
