In case you couldn’t tell from my recent content, I’ve been reading a LOT of Shounen
Jump manga lately. Their mobile app, which grants access to nearly every title in their
massive back catalogue for just two bucks a month, has made it way too easy for me to
go on the kind of comfy nostalgia binges that lead to my latest Yu-Gi-Oh deep dive. But
it’s also given me a chance to see what’s new in the magazine – as the app includes
“simul-published” chapters of their currently running series.
As a kid I never really got into the habit of reading manga beyond the event then-ancient
stuff I could buy at indigo books, and Doctor Stone was the first time I ever got to experience
the anime hipster delights of loving a series BEFORE IT WAS COOL. Now, though, I’m reading
a whole whack of great manga that have anime coming down the pipe, along with a few whose
adaptations have yet to even be announced. And I really can’t recommend this totally
unjustified feeling of superiority enough. Or the manga themselves, I guess. Although
I did have to wade through a whole mess of mediocre slop and straight up
diarrhea to find em, so I guess it might be a good idea to help
you guys get started with one of my patented lists of things I like and think you’d like
too. First up, we have Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Chainsaw
Man – a Manga that I’ve been hooked on since I first downloaded the jump app a year
ago. And… look, I’m aware that this one’s already about as cool as un-animated manga
get, but I still REALLY wanna talk about it. I mean, it only makes up a quarter of this
video, but it accounts for, like, 85% of my motivation for writing it. The series JUST
pulled off one of the greatest twists I’ve ever seen in… anything, and I really wanna
make a video essay about how it did it, but obviously that would need to be MAD spoilery,
and I don’t wanna ruin it before you have a chance to read it. So take this as your
two month…ish warning to get caught up before that drops.
I do promise I’ll make the silent voice book club video before that happens, though.
Of course, I don’t expect you guys to instantly jump on a manga based on the promise that
something good happens several dozen chapters into it – even if that thing is REALLY GOOD
– so lemme give you a brief rundown of the story, to convey some of its more immediately
obvious charms. To say that Denji is a kid down on his luck
would be an understatement. Trapped under the crushing weight of his formerly deadbeat
- now just dead - dad’s debt to the Yakuza, the boy spends every day fighting and killing
devils with the help of pochita, his pet chainsaw dog, and selling their body parts – as well
some of his own - to the mob for pocket change. It’s… not a great life, but it sure beats
getting hacked to pieces by zombies and stuffed in a dumpster oh fuck, sorry Denji, I totally
jinxed that. Luckily for him, he dies with Pochita by his
side, and in one last act of love, the adorable little devil dog gives up his body to fuse
with the boy and revive him as a man. A CHAINSAW MAN. Shortly thereafter, some public security
devil hunters show up to take out the zombie devil, only to find that Denji has beaten
them to the chainsaw punch, and their leader, the lovely Makima, takes him in as a new recruit
– under threat of execution if refuses. Not that she really needs to take such a coercive
tack – after the life Denji’s lead, he’d to put it on the line just to get some jam
with his toast. Plus, he’s got a bit of a thing for Makima on account of her being
the first girl he’s ever met, and he’ll do anything for boobs. I mean love. Even if
it means he has to work alongside an annoying stuffed shirt, like his new boss, Aki, or
an annoying demon with a VERY stuffed shirt like his fellow rookie, power.
From that setup, you might expect hilarious shounen Hijinx to ensue. And they do. But
at the same time, the series has a way of subverting expectations and swerving without
warning into some of the most profoundly disturbing horror you’ll find in any manga without
Junji Ito’s name on it. Not just fucked up body horror – although, boy howdy, there
sure is a lot of that – but also the kind of cold, creeping dread that sticks with you
long after you put it down, fueled by an unnerving nightmare logic that permeates even the manga’s
lightest moments. If you like to laugh your ass off and then
stare up at the ceiling contemplating your own mortality as sleep escapes your fear-addled
mind, this is the manga for you! With all that said, there is a chainsaw man
anime already rumored to be in the works, and I can understand wanting to wait for that
to drop. But if you do, you should know that you’ll be waiting a while yet, and even
when it does finally come out, there’s basically no way for an efficiently-animated work to
fully capture the gruesome detail and raw atmosphere of Fujimoto’s artwork. Some genres
just work better in manga form, and Horror is at the top of that list.
So… read Chainsaw Man, please. I’m asking for your sake, really, but if not for yourselves,
do it for me. ‘Cause I REALLY wanna make that video essay.
Now on the subject of future ambitions, Time Paradox Ghostwriter accounts for another solid
10% of this video’s existence. It’s one of the newest additions to Jump’s lineup,
and already it’s shaping up to be one of the best, too. But Jump is constantly fielding
pitches for great new manga, and competition for space in the magazine is fierce, so series
have to do numbers fast and keep doing them if they wanna stick around.
So, having just been disappointed by the rushed ending of The Promised Neverland and too soon
cancellation of Zipman, I have chosen to weaponize your collective eyeballs to keep this cartoon
I like around. This is a responsible use of my platform.
And I feel comfortable being so up front about the fact that I’m using all of you like
this because the premise of Time Travel Ghostwriter is so neat that you’re gonna want to read
it anyway. And that premise is actually tied to the fierce competition I was just talking
about. Teppei Sasaki is a young wannabe manga-ka
who’s spent years spinning his wheels, sending unsuccessful pitches to his jump editor, after
winning a runner up prize for a new manga artist competition in his teens. For all his
talent as an artist, he just can’t seem to come up with any truly great ideas, that
is until one night, right when he’s ready to quit forever, a flash of inspiration strikes
and fuses his microwave with a toy robot and his refrigerator.
Sorry, did I say inspiration? I meant lightning. Now, if you know anything about microwaves,
then you can guess what happens next – all of a sudden, the timer dings, and Teppei discovers
that it’s cooked up a brand new issue of shounen jump from ten years in the future.
In that issue he finds the debut chapter of a brand new manga series – White Night,
an instant-classic work of fantasy fiction so audaciously brilliant that he can’t help
but run outside and shout a whole essay about it immediately after reading it.
When he returns, the manga he left inside has mysteriously vanished, leading him to
believe that he was dreaming or hallucinating – either way, there’s only one conclusion:
the blueprint for THE NEXT ONE PIECE just leaped, fully formed, from his subconscious,
and now he need only put it to paper. The next day, his pitch is accepted – not just
as a one shot, but as a new series to be launched immediately – it’s THAT good. Overnight,
Sasaki’s dream has come true. His future looks bright. And he walks on air all week…
until the next chapter of White Knight zaps into his microwave.
Yeah, it turns out he wasn’t dreaming. Itsuki Aino is very real, and, as she’s currently
working on an early draft of White Knight, VERY pissed. Though… the story doesn’t
take that in the direction you’d expect. Time Paradox Ghostwriter’s delightfully
off-kilter high concept is tempered somewhat by an impressive devotion to realism, both
in its astoundingly detailed, textured artwork and its depiction of jump’s editorial practices
and the manga industry at large. Beneath all the sci-fi shenanigans lies a surprisingly
relatable tale of frustrated ambition, artistic soul-searching and imposter syndrome, with
a small but strong cast of supporting characters. It’s not just the time travel stuff that’s
givin off steins;gate vibes, is what I’m sayin’.
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If great character interactions are what you’re looking for, you’re also gonna wanna give
Spy x Family a read. Or, uh… just Spy Family, maybe? Not sure if that title’s a Hunter
x Hunter deal or what. But regardless of what exactly it’s called, one thing’s for sure:
this manga is an absolute delight. The neighbouring nations of Ostania and Westalis
have long stood teetering on the brink of all out war. Even the tiniest political incident
could be the spark that sets both countries ablaze … though a few brave souls are working
diligently to douse the flames of conflict behind the scenes. One such man is Twilight,
agent of Wise, Westania’s intelligence bureau, and master of disguise capable of imitating
any target and infiltrating any stronghold. He works undercover in the Ostanian capital,
Berlint, and despite their best efforts, the only thing the government knows about him
is his code name – he truly is the perfect spy. But his latest mission, project strix,
calls for him to go even further above and beyond: in order to make contact with Donovan
Desmond, reclusive president of Ostania’s Far-right National Unity Party, he must build
a fake family in just seven days, and enroll his new child at the same prestigious private
school as Desmond’s son. The child comes easy enough – disguised
as psychiatrist Loid Forger, twilight simply adopts the brightest-seeming kid he can find
at a local orphanage, a young girl named Anya. Shortly thereafter, he lucks into meeting
Yor Briar, a clerk at city hall who needs a pretend boyfriend to get her nosy family
and coworkers off her back about being single, and ends up getting a pretend husband after
a hilarious miscommunication. With his cover complete, Twilight begins working to infiltrate
Eden Academy, but there are two small wrinkles in his plan that he’s overlooked.
Firstly, it turns out Yor is kind of an, uh, assassin who’s using him as a cover story
too. And secondly, Anya is an escaped human experiment with telepathic powers that have
instantly made her privy to both of her adopted parents’ secrets. Which she’s fine with,
because as a TV-addled – and, frankly, pretty stupid – 5 year old, she thinks all the
spy stuff and clandestine murder is just super cool.
Spy x Family is an absolute riot, with, sharp, darkly comic writing made all the funnier
by its wildly expressive artwork. That core comedic trio is funny enough all on its own
– Loid’s deadpan is flawless, Yor’s flustered reactions and twisted sense of social
standards always get laughs, and Anya’s just endlessly endearing - but the manga’s
kept layering great supprting characters on top of them, each one zanier than the last.
You have not seen comedy until you’ve seen a siscon secret police officer interrogate
his undercover inlaw. What’s kept me coming back to the series,
though, is its surprisingly warm heart. Despite their strange circumstances and ulterior motives,
each member of the forger family quickly develops a sincere affection for the others, and as
the series has gone on, those bonds have only gotten stronger. Spy x Family strikes just
the right balance of light and darkness in its storytelling, and if you need a good wholesome
smile amid all the everything right now, it will more than deliver.
By the way, if, after you’re done with it, you’re still craving some gag manga goodness,
the recently launched “Magu-chan: God of Destruction” is also a lot of fun. The whole
“regular kids living with a cute would-be world conqueror” schtick is a bit played
out at this point, and since only two chapters have been released as of this recording I
can’t FULLY vouch for its quality yet, but its “idiot genki girl and ancient eldritch
deity” dynamic feels decently fresh and fun, as these things go, and those two chapters
have made me laugh out loud more than a few times.
On the other hand, if you’re looking for another series with a lot of heart, then you’ll
enjoy my fourth proper recommendation, Act-Age – wait, act-Aaaahj? REALLY? Okay.
Act-age tells the tale of Kei Yonagi, a gorgeous but unsociable teenage girl with a surprising
hidden talent: she’s a natural method actor, able to instantly recall any emotion she’s
experienced previously and convey it with absolute accuracy. With her mother dead and
savings running low, Kei wants to use her abilities to support her siblings, but her
untrained talent a double-edged sword. Those intense, at times traumatic emotions affect
Yonagi just as strongly as when she first felt them, and she has a tendency to get so
immersed in her roles that she can be a danger to herself and her fellow performers.
Still, she’s got a lot of potential, and while she fails her first audition at a major
talent agency, one of the Judges, a passionate auteur director named Sumiji Kuroyama, sees
potential in her. Taking her under his wing, he plans to polish this diamond in the rough
until she shines brighter than any other star, all so he can use those refined talents to
make his dream movie. As the sole Talent represented by his newly
formed studio, Daikokuten, he sends Kei to work on commercials, Netflix original dramas,
movies, and other projects, stealing the skills of her costars in each production.
This novel story structure allows Act-Age to explore many sides of acting, from the
stage to the screen, and the amount of research that Tatsuya Matsuki has clearly done into
the subject is impressive. Obviously the series takes some very anime liberties in both streamlining
and dramatizing the production process of films and the like, but there’s keen attention
paid to the details at every turn, and from my own experience as an actor, I see a lot
of truth in how the series portrays different approaches to the craft.
Those approaches are embodied in a broad cast of vividly realized characters, established
actors and fellow newbies alike whose lives and careers intersect with Kei’s on the
various projects she works on. And as the development of her acting abilities is intrinsically
tied to her emotional development, it follows naturally that these big personalities collide
to create some deliciously compelling melodrama. As was the case with Beastars, the high school
drama geek in me was all but bound to fall in love with Act-Age the second I learned
of its premise. But it’s that tight narrative construction – where each aspect of the
story feeds in to all the others – that really makes this manga remarkable. Act-age
is one of the best dang dramas I’ve ever read, period, and if ya ask me, you should
read it too. That’s all the manga recommendations I’ve
got in me today, at least for new series. I would also highly recommend checking out
the original Yu-Gi-Oh manga if you haven’t read it already, because it is WILD and my
wacky worldbuilding video barely scratched the surface of some of the messed up stuff
that happens in it. For now, I will leave you at that.
I’m Geoff Thew, Professional Shitbag, Signing out from my mother’s basement.