Boy Friday

Cover to the eBookJapan edition, featuring an early design of Friday with a later design of Boss.

### Original Run

1974-1975

**Boy Friday** (少年フライデー *Shonen Furaide*) is a gag work by Fujio Akatsuka, which ran in Weekly Shonen Sunday from 1974 to 1975.

## Overview

In this crude take on a Robinson Crusoe-style tale, a young boy known only as "Boss" winds up stranded on a deserted island. After befriending the young island native Friday, the two decide to go adventuring, leading to chaos along the way and meeting the turtle Bakame.

The characters eventually reach Tokyo civilization, where they continue to experience and cause bizarre events a good deal of the time, but their adventures abruptly are interrupted by the tales of another child living in the same setting...

## Characters

### Boss

A rough yet stupid young boy who relies on Friday to get things done for him, and despite being the "boss" of the two has no true leadership skill.

Boss initially starts out in the title with a slightly different character design, bearing rather neat jeans (or overalls in chapter 2), thicker eyebrows, and harsher features. However, his design is tweaked some chapters in to have him instead wear tattered jeans (more befitting of a castaway), thin eyebrows, and a less harsh impression to his face. He also gains a hat over the course of the series.

### Friday

A mysterious, no-nonsense young boy who initially starts out as a more sensitive character but evolves to be more stubborn and more in the line of Chibita. His hairstyle entirely changes along with this (and the alteration to Boss's look), with his bushy afro hair disappearing to leave him bald except for six, small swirls of hair.

Friday's similarities to Chibita are given a nod to later; one story setting casts Dekapan as a grieving father who has been unable to get over the death of his young son Chibita, and wishes to have Friday become a new replacement son.

### Bakame

A rather dumb turtle who was pulled out of his shell and accompanies the two for the rest of their adventures in Tokyo, though at one point he becomes the object of affections for a flamboyant man named Kaoru-chan.

## Serialization

*See also List of chapters in Boy Friday*

* Weekly Shonen Sunday: #33 to #11. See section below for more specific details.

### From "Boy Friday" to "Noragaki"

The case of Boy Friday's end to give way to *Noragaki* is a complicated situation, not simple enough as the latter series starting after the former ended.

The merger number of #3-4 for 1975 gave readers their very first look at Noragaki, who starred in his very own pilot chapter. Soon, with issues #5 and #6, Noragaki himself had hijacked the *Boy Friday* title, leaving those chapters to be "Boy Friday" in name only (and more specifically referred to as "Boy Friday Continues"). This occurred once more with issue #8, in the story "Boy Friday + Noragaki" where Noragaki was the star character with no Boss or Friday around.

It would appear that Akatsuka and his editors had preferred Noragaki much more as a character and concept. Thus, he was gradually if still abruptly eased into place in the magazine, to prep it for starting it as a new ongoing Weekly Shonen Sunday feature rather than continuing the adventures of Boss and Friday any further.

The *Boy Friday* title officially ceased with #11, leaving a seemingly open ending to the adventures of Boss, Friday, and Bakame. However, the start of the"Boy Friday Continues" feature back in #5 would seem to have been a flash-forward with an explanation to what happened to Boss and Friday; Bakame tries to confront Noragaki (then known as "The New Boy Friday") over his claims that he's "Boy Friday", only to be told that Boss and Friday had died as casualties of the recession. Though horrified at the news, Bakame settles into place as Noragaki/Boy Friday's new pet. In "Boy Friday + Noragaki", Noragaki tires of his life as "Friday" and goes back to living with his cat family, further preparing his role as a cat-raised boy for his own series.

These three chapters, due to their awkward placement before *Noragaki* and as part of *Boy Friday*, are often counted as an omake to the *Boy Friday* title and not placed with the latter-run series.

## Reprints

* Akebono: 2 volumes (1975). Unrelated one-shot "Middle-Aged Friday" included as extra content.
* Shogakukan: The Akebono volumes were digitized in 2002 for the "Fujio Akatsuka Complete Works" DVD-ROM set. Both chapters of "Boy Friday Continues" and "Boy Friday + Noragaki" were included in a separate "Boy Friday Continues" DVD-ROM book.
* eBookJapan: 2 volumes (2009). eBook edition adds the "Boy Friday Continues"/"Boy Friday + Noragaki" stories to the end of volume 2.