Weekly Shounen Sunday #45 (2018) Features edition

I'm not even sure how to start these things anymore to be quite honest....and that sounds way too dour, haha. So let's just do the direct approach. You. Me. Sunday. Got it? Good.

On the cover is Ms. Asuka Saito of Nogizaka 46. Actually now that I think back, it was Nogizaka's idols that were on the cover when I first started splitting the entries into two. Good to see that full circle effect is in full swing, huh. Aside from her we have Komi striking a very similar pose, Zero being Zero, and 008 which has a cover page this week front and center, as well as switch. Yuugami is also around since he's making an appearance this month --the first in what feels like an eternity to me.

I feel like we're establishing a bit of a pattern here, but it's worth repeating. --Okachi for the TOC order, me for the commentary. This week's question is from Ishikawa and asks "Are there any *** things you're bad at?" A bit of a note, the word used here is "onchi" which has several meanings ranging from tone deafness to being absolutely awful at something. So the the litteral translation of the question is something more like "what kind of **** things are you bad at?"  Bear that in mind as I lead you through these TL's!

Atsushi (switch) Namikiri: I'm bad at exercising.

Syun (008) Matsuena: Rather than being bad at using machines, it's more like my special ability is to destroy any mechanical device I touch. Like one time when I was walking through town the street lights went out.

Kyouichi (Xeno) Nanatsuki: I'm just typically bad at things.

Takahiro (Zero) Arai: I'm purely bad at things.

Hiroshi (5 mins) Fukuda: I'm bad at everything, pretty much.

Takuya (Major 2nd) Mitsuda: I'm bad at riding trains. I don't understand how to do the transfers to get to the city center.

Ryou (Hatsukoi) Minenami: I'm bad at poop (As in I get pooped exercising). (Note: Minenami makes a bad joke --"Undou" is exercise, and onchi is as I explained, so this is a combination of both "unchi", Which can also mean "poop". I tried to make the joke funny, but I'm bad at jokes I guess.)

Mizuki (Evans) Kuriyama: I'm bad at exercising, which I don't is a bad thing, by the way.

Hidenori (Marry Grave) Yamaji: Deadlines.

Nekoguchi (Megumi): Choosing shops or hotels...choosing isn't really my forte...

Norihiro (Ariadne) Yagi: I'm bad at digital drawing, so basically working on computers.

Kagiji (Maoujo) Kumanomata: I've never been able to understand people who have nastily voices.

Tsubasa (Saike) Fukuchi: I'm absolutely terrible at exercising, but I swear I don't have a complex about it!

Hikaru (Aozakura) Nikaido: I'm bad at inking my rough drafts.

Aiko (Maiko) Koyama: Exercising --Biking. Swimming.

Motoyuki (Be Blues!) Tanaka: I've been bad at music for 15 years.

Tomohito (Komi) Oda: I'm bad at remembering things. Everything goes in one ear and out the other far, far away.

Michiteru (Daiku) Kusaba: For a sec I thought this was an incredibly obscene question. (Note, it's because of the ***, I assume.)

Takuya (Memesis) Yagyuu: I'm bad at directions. I get anxious walking around my neighborhood so overseas trips are essentially impossible for me.

Kazuhiro (Souboutei) Fujita: My body is an assembly of bad habits! Fuhahahahahaahahohoho!!

Kenjiro (Cawaii) Hata: I was born bad.

Jun (Yuugami) Sakurai: I'm bad at directions. Whenever my assistant goes out shopping and doesn't come back I feel like crying.

Takashi (ZKC) Shiina: I have no faults. I am completely in tune with the universe.

Satsuki (Youkai Giga) Satou: I'm bad at making dirty stories.

Yuuji (Hitoribocchi) Yokoyama: I'm bad at life.

A lot of people don't like exercising, huh? I guess a mangaka's life doesn't lend itself well to having time for that, really. Also Fujita is always just a joy to read. The man just loves life doesn't he? Also Matsuena is a mood, if nothing else.

This week's Sunday Gal is Asuka Saito who has a pretty intense look about her doesn't she? Maybe it's just me, though? She's going to be featured in the movie "Ano Koro, Kimi wo oikaketa" or "I chased you back then". as the heroine, so that's probably why she's on the cover of Sunday this week. She was born August 10th 1998, and is 158cm or about 5'1, and has an O blood type. The set up for this photo shoot is that she's on a "date" with the reader. I'm shy by nature so I don't think I'd be very interesting (especially when talking to ladies), but maybe some of my readers at home might be interested?

Shogakukan is really advertising webry, huh? Now they're even putting up entire series from veteran artists to read on the site! Get your Fujita, Nishimori and Aoyama on with Cheeky Angel, Ushio and Tora, and Yaiba! Not only that but they're promising the TV commercials will be coming "soon". Though they're cheeky in their own way by not revealing what series will get them. (Or could it be they all will? No way...) On that note, there's a lot of new things going down in the magazine --Koharu Inoue will be drawing a new Halloween themed oneshot, (She's the author of Shinigami Bocchan to Kuro maid which has been featured here on the blog.) And there will be new serailizations by Iori, (called Sangekitou no Mooguri) Yori Katakura (Okashi danshi) and Hikaru Muno and Kakie (Uruwashiki Aguri kyatto) among others. There's a lot of reasons to check out Webry, so if you've got the Japanese skill you really should!

More characters and the theme song are dropped for Karakuri Circus here! The OP will be called "Gekkou" and will be preformed by Bump of Chicken --a wildly popular Japanese band who's not unfamiliar with the ways of anime OP/ED's! Furthermore Shouji Saiga will be voiced by Masahiko Tanaka, Zenji Saiga by Akio Ootsuka, and Lucille by Romi Park. Two of those VAs were in Ueki way back when it aired (Park was Ueki himself!) so it really is like a reunion of sorts. They're promising some really juicy info right before the show airs in the next issue, so that's something to look forward to! Also on an unrelated note, Major 2nd is getting a re-airing on NHK, so if you missed it the first time you can watch it again! It's unusual for anime to get reruns like this, so my thought is we'll be hearing news of a season two before long, and the rerun is to keep the anime relevant until then.

Nice to see that KOTOYAMA is still keeping busy even after Dagashikashi's ending! Turns out he's contributing artwork to the one, the only Megaman! (Rockman in Japan.) Included below is a little talk where KOTOYAMA talks about his enthusiasm for this newest entry into the Megaman legend, as well as a fanart of Roll. While I'd prefer for his artwork to go toward an original idea, I also wanna see more of his renditions of these characters. Look at how adorable Roll is! 

Conan already has crossed over with the popluar game "Puzzles and Dragons" so you had to know that Amuro would show up eventually too --and here he is! I don't know much about the game so I can't talk about that, but the artwork here looks pretty incredible. If you want to add Amuro to your game, you've got from October 8th to the 22nd to do so! Several other sunday series are available as a part of the cross over, so there's definitely a reason to play this if you wanna see them! 

Wow does time ever fly. 008 is already at chapter 31? Feels like it just started. Time really does speed on through the older one gets. (Scary!) Admittedly this is what I've come to expect out of the series, but I have promised to cover any and all color pages, so there you go. I actually don't know how the series is doing saleswise --but if it's getting lead color pages I guess it's doing well enough for Shougakukan.

I may not be a fan of the fanservice, but let me give credit where credit is due --Matsuena's artwork is incredible. Not only does he draw well, but his sense of composition is really on point. Although this really does feel like Kenichi two at this point --which isn't a bad thing honestly. I know a lot of people deride treading familiar ground --especially in Sunday where we have spinoffs and veterans aplenty, but if it worked before and people want it again, then why not just go for it? No shame in maintaining your game. Though yeah, Matsuena knows just how to make a page really pop out at you --and the character design of the lecherous masked man is pretty cool too. Even though I'm not keeping up with this on a weekly basis, it's fairly easy to tell what's going on even though the plot really doesn't move all that much this week. Still if it's well drawn bravado you want, you can't go wrong with 008. 

I really only posted this because Kogoro shows up for a split second, which confirms at least that this series does take place in the same universe as the canon and not some loosely related metaverse. If you can't tell, I'm joking. This week's chapter is about Azusa Enomoto's brother --Sugihito Enomoto coming in to interact with the characters. I'm almost positive he doesn't appear in the main canon (though you can correct me if I'm wrong.), so I suppose this is slowly turning into a place where Aoyama can include the concepts that he maybe couldn't find a place for in the main story? That gets me thinking that perhaps Zero will exist in a world without the main Detective Conan, maybe? I mean I could see it, since the series is already basically acting as a proxy to the main work when it's not in the magazine, so it's not a stretch by any means. Though honestly depending on whether something of note happens, I may not keep Zero coverage in the future. 

Speaking of giving coverage, I keep thinking maybe I should ease up on 5 minutes coverage, but then it does something like this or just looks really cool and I'm back in the pit again. Picking up from last time, we find out the killer buddhas can talk?! Though all this one in particular says is that it wants to Kill humans....in three different languages to boot. This is just the hype that the series needs in the face of the endless battles it had sunk into lately. That approach would have been fine if Fukuda had introduced the series as a battle manga, but since he seems to want to angle this as a suspense one, we need things to anticipate, to yearn for, and at long last here's something. 

It'll probably break my format, but I had to also throw this page in. In the original it's vertical to fit the constraints of the magazine. I can't say I've ever seen a mangaka do something like this for a page --a cover sure, but never a page. I like that Fukuda is pushing his medium, even if just a little. 

But this is where things get really interesting. So in a past chapter Kakeru had read in her sister's notebook that everyone aside from the protagonist would die horribly. Yet after the danger has passed and everyone returns to HQ beaten, but not bowed the book has changed. Now it reads that everyone returns home safely...? Everyone just assumes that Kakeru read it wrong originally, but she's sure she got it right, which is to say that this is no mere book --it's a scroll of prophecy, and they've managed to change the future! That leads to a whole new set of questions --where did it come from, and how did Michiru get her hands on it? Oh and of course the biggest question of them all --who's writing/wrote this book? This is what I want out of a suspense series --a sense of the unknown. I'm looking forward to getting more answers as time goes on. I have to say as well that I like how Kakeru's character is being handled --she was sort of introduced out of left field as the little sister no one talks about, but her involvement so far implies she'll have a lot more agency than I originally thought which is good news.

switch is most definitely not my genre of choice, but I'm really entranced by it's color pages and general artwork. Enough so that I'm actually considering picking up the volumes when they hit in November. Yup, we finally have a date, and it sounds like it's just as I figured --we'll be getting two volumes in one month. That's the sign that Shougakukan has faith in this series, I think --double volumes aren't something that happens willy-nilly. Though one should be a little concerned since the last series this occurred with didn't do so hot in the end....but I think that switch has what it takes to be the next big thing.

This chapter features the end of the senpai/kouhai game, with a shocking but well earned victory for the kouhai. I've mentioned it before that Namikiri claims to not really have a "plan" when writing switch, and that he's taking it as it goes a long. Normally I say as if I read lots of sports series and know... the first game like this is a loss that the characters recover from to drive them to greater heights, so a victory here is rather unexpected to yours truly. That being said, It's likely that this will be the beginning of a new rivalry/friendship, if Raimu's expression and approach to the defeated upperclassmen is anything to go by. Though yeah, the series developments seem to be ---well, not so much fast as they are....not positive either, just...there hasn't been that sense of danger, or loss quite yet. Raimu recovered pretty quickly after his brother's death, and they won this game (again they did work for it so it wasn't an easy victory by any means), as well. In order to see a character rise, they have to fall at some time....right?

It was only a matter of time before detective mania reached the very impressionable princess of Maoujo, really. Of course this only means trouble for the monsters, but hey it's entertaining so they can take one for the team. Much to the Demon King's chagrin, the princess has been hanging fliers advertising her detective agency/abilities....it's kind of great that they still even bother with the hostage precedent, really. Not only that while they don't straight up say it's a Conan parody, she does somewhat poke fun at "Sleeping Kogoro" by being "The Rocking Chair Detective". Considering she does fall asleep in the middle of her own investigation several times leaving the Demon King to solve the cases from behind her chair, it's pretty much a given where Kumanomata is getting this from, haha. As usual she's just way more trouble than she's worth isn't she Demon King? Though maybe if the hero does finally rescue her you should consider taking up a Detective agency of your own --he manages to solve all the cases that she was supposed to after all. 

If you came hoping to see more love geometrical shapes from Komi that started last week, then I'm sorry to disappoint you --it's all about Dad and Mom this week. That being said, this chapter is as adorable as a manga can be without being drawn with sugar. I like that we get these looks into how Komi's mom and dad became a couple, if only because they really do seem to mirror how Komi and Tadano interact to some degree while being it's own thing simply because of their differing personalities. Plus I just like it personally that Komi takes after her Dad more than her mom which is the norm in these stories it feels like. I mean the whole chapter is Dad being too embarrassed to look at his girlfriend because she's too cute for him, and mom taking the issue into her own hands just to realize she's too embarrassed to be seen because her boyfriend is just that cute. Does it get any sweeter than this? I swear Oda (not that one) if you give me diabetes, I'm going to mail Shougakukan directly with my medical bills.

And that's it for the features of this week's magazine! Next week we have Souboutei getting a lead color page to celebrate Fujita getting his own art gallery(!) and Karakuri Circus's anime airing it's first episode. On top of that, a sunday vet returns home (in a sense) with a special (or first?) chapter of "Uruha no Sekai de Arisugawa" by Nobuyuki Anzai running in the magazine! Kind of surprised this doesn't just run in Weekly Sunday (as opposed to the monthly Sunday Super) since this is where Anzai made his reputation, but I suppose a monthly schedule might just be more to his liking. I've already read the first chapter, and it was pretty...interesting to say the least. I'll expand on that more next week so look forward to it!