Stop!! Hibari-kun!

Stop!! Hibari-kun!
Cover of the first volume, featuring Hibari Ōzora (left) and Kōsaku Sakamoto (right)
ストップ!! ひばりくん! (Sutoppu!! Hibarikun!)
Genre	Romantic comedy[1]
Manga
Written by	Hisashi Eguchi
Published by	Shueisha
English publisher	NA: Peow2
Imprint	Jump Comics
Magazine	Weekly Shōnen Jump
Demographic	Shōnen
Original run	October 19, 1981 – November 28, 1983
Volumes	4 (List of volumes)
Anime television series
Directed by	Takashi Hisaoka
Studio	Toei Animation
Original network	Fuji TV
Original run	May 20, 1983 – January 27, 1984
Episodes	35 (List of episodes)

Stop!! Hibari-kun! (Japanese: ストップ!! ひばりくん!, Hepburn: Sutoppu!! Hibari-kun!) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Hisashi Eguchi. It was serialized in Shueisha's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump from October 1981 to November 1983, and the chapters were published in four tankōbon volumes. The series was adapted into a 35-episode anime television series by Toei Animation that aired on Fuji Television from May 1983 to January 1984. The story focuses on Kōsaku Sakamoto, a high school student who goes to live with yakuza boss Ibari Ōzora and his four children—Tsugumi, Tsubame, Hibari and Suzume—after the death of his mother. Kōsaku is shocked to learn that Hibari, who looks and behaves as a girl, was assigned male at birth.

Eguchi wanted to create a romantic comedy manga where the main female character is a cross-dressing boy so as to poke fun at the genre. He took more time to draw the chapters compared to his earlier manga, and as the serialization continued, he found it increasingly difficult to keep up a weekly pace for the chapters. He eventually abandoned the series after the editor-in-chief of Weekly Shōnen Jump refused his request to release the chapters every other week. From July 2009 to February 2010, Shogakukan published a three-volume Stop!! Hibari-kun! Complete Edition omnibus collection, which features various revisions to the originally published chapters in addition to newly drawn cover art.

Stop!! Hibari-kun! has been described as achieving a dizzying reality with Hibari by contrasting a girlish exterior with a male interior. The series has been praised for its overall light and pop literary style, and the delicate touch in how Hibari is drawn has been described as so attractive that it makes the reader forget that it is a gag manga.^[2] However, the jokes surrounding the yakuza characters have been criticized as extreme and no longer humorous in modern times. The series has also been described as having had a hand in paving the way for the J-pop phenomenon.^[3]