Here we are, two whole years later! It feels like only a month ago I was making awful Saike posts on twitter and you guys politely put up with them until I decided to take my show on the road and brought it here. And now we've managed to come to this point! What awaits us from here? I have no idea, but I can say in this moment right now that I'm so glad you all have accompanied me through this trip in the underlooked shounen tome that is Sunday! I'm actually considering more changes to how I present the information so please look forward to those.
On this week's cover is the new serial "Undine wa Kyo mo Koi wo suru ka?" and Ano Natsu 1959, two of the new faces of Shounen Sunday, as well as a very pretty Rena Takeda. It's also the return of Amuro if you've been missing him, but if canon Conan is more your speed then you only have to wait three weeks for him.
First off is our question of the week coming from Niigata prefecture: "Is there something from your childhood days that has never changed"?
Undine ha Kyou mo Koi wo Suru ka? (Shinya Misu): It's my first serial and I'll passionately do my best to overcome my clumsiness. Please look forward to it.
Gopun go no Sekai (Hiroshi Fukuda): The thickness of my face (lol).
Detective Conan: Zero's Tea time (Takahiro Arai): My inability to be a morning person, or my permanent teeth...
Amano Megumi ha Suki darake (Nekoguchi): Not being able to do outlines that well. I keep trying really hard and it doesn't change. I wanna do things over.
Maiko-san chi no Makanai-san (Aiko Koyama): That I suddenly and without warning just head off somewhere.
Fire Rabbit!! (Aya Hirakawa): That I tend to space out whenever I listen to music.
Aozakura Bouei Daigakkou Monogatari (Hikaru Nikaido) That I'm high strung.
Ano Natsu 1959 (Ashibi Fukui): That I laugh a lot.
switch (Atsuhi Namikiri): My dark skin.
Imouto Rireki (Kei Nishimura):That I grind my teeth in my sleep.
Souboutei Kowasubeshi (Kazuhiro Fujita): Well, er, um, ah...that I'm not very smart.
Komi-san ha komyusho desu (Tomohito Oda): My walking speed!
Tantei Xeno to Nanatsu no Satsujin Misshitsu (Teppei Sugiyama): The widness of my forehead. I'm really hoping this isn't a sign of early baldness.
Be Blues (Motoyuki Tanaka): That I prefer being indoors.
Tonikaku Cawaii (Kenjiro Hata): That I get excited every time I see Gundam.
Marry Grave (Final chapter) (Hidenori Yamaji): Thank you for reading this far!! Let's meet again somewhere, someday!
Zettai Karen Children (Takashi Shiina): That I love curry.
Eiga Touken Ranbu (Rokurou Ogaki) That I love drawing! "Touken Ranbu the movie" Opens January 18th! The manga version will be on sale the same day!!
Kimi ha 008 (Syun Matsuena): For the most part I'm still fully a brat.
Maoujo de Oyasumi (Kagiji Kumanomata): That I can't clean a damn thing!!!
Birdmen (Yellow Tanabe): That I like making things.
Hoankan Evans no Uso ~Dead or Love~ (Mizuki Kuriyama): How loose my tear glands are.
Hatsukoi Zombie (Ryou Minenami): The place of my birthmark or my mole....in my heart I'm a different person.
Daiku no Hatou (Michiteru Kusaba): Being a daydreamer.
Memesis (Takuya Yagyuu): Minced meat with soy sauce is my favorite food, I blush easily, and I'm completely obedient to my older sister.
Chorno Magia: Infinity gear. (Takeshi Azuma): I tend to bite my nails.
Youkai Giga (Satsuki Satou): My Birthday.
Tokaichi Hitoribocchi Nouen (Yuuji Yokoyama): I always jump in surprise when the phone rings.
Ugh it hurts to see Yamaji leaving, but at least he's a good sport about it. Meanwhile Satou wins best comment this week just because it's ridiculous yet totally in line. Matsuena also gets a nod for being completely honest. Let's welcome in Misu to the group, and get this show on ther oad!
This week's Sunday gal is the lovely Rena Takeda, born July 27th 1997 in Fukushima. She'll be in a special drama starting January 8th (So I guess it's already airing, huh.) Named "The New king" as the heroine Eiri Mitsui, and will also be in the new drama starting January 18th (Not quite yet!) Tokusatsu Gagaga as Yuki-chan. So she's quite the busy lady, and it makes sense Sunday wants to grab a bit of that and advertise her!
My stars, it's finally happened. They've opened up a store dedicated to Shounen Sunday series! Of course there's not a whole lot there and most of what we get is Takahashi/Conan, but it's a start! It's also...a little pricey. Though it does straight up say on this advert that they're "premium" goods so I guess that's a sign of what to be ready for. I've gotta wait a bit before I can buy stuff but you can be dang sure i'm going to take advantage of this once I can!
So for a real change of pace we get three chapters in one issue. It's a surprise since I don't think it was advertised anywhere that this would be a short form comedy....though yes, welcome to the dry, arid world of Shinya Misu's "Undine wa kyou mo ko wo suru ka"? Which has the English Subtitle of "Undine of the Desert World" though the literal TL of the title is more along the lines of "Will Undine love today too?" So I guess to save myself a little time, rather than stagger three weeks worth of chapters, I'll just cover all three in this entry and consider that the obligatory coverage. It's a little unique (and will probably be something I grow to regret) but it's 2019, and the winds of change are blowing...or should I say the rivers of change are flowing?
So for a brief synopsis, we have a world where water is a rare commodity, and the small kingdom of Rahasa (a fun little play on "Sahara") is the center stage for this tale. Our main character is Asha who admits that he's a rather pessimistic fellow, though can you blame him? This is a world where no one's ever seen rain, and people up and die often due to there being no water. Though if there is one ray of hope in his otherwise miserable existence, that would be...
The Water Goddess Aqurea (That may not be the proper reading of her name, but bare with me.) who has been endowed with the power to create water out of thin air. Her mere presence is enough to energize the people, though lately she's been looking kind of under the weather. What's interesting to me here is that Asha seems to be on pretty familiar terms with the goddess --worrying about her shakiness, and moreover addressing her with "-san" rather than "-sama". Though yes, Aqurea does have a bit of a problem --she seems to be slowly losing her ability to make water. Though to be fair she has been pretty stressed as of late --her grandmother (who seems to be a queen?) passed away and she got into a pretty big fight with her friend Fuyu. Because of that she's been working extra hard to refill the water reserves despite promising Asha she wouldn't push herself.
Though everyone knows about it, hah. Aqurea is a bit of a ditz, but it's endearing. Though yes if she does keep pushing herself she might actually die. Though when Asha asks Fuyu to go talk to her, she makes the point that it's because Aqurea pushes herself that they're able to live so comfortably despite their deserty climate. Asha realizes that they need Aqurea to do this for them to survive, but he's worried about the goddess herself more than anything. Unable to take watching her suffer in silence anymore, he goes and...
Finally spits out his feelings. "I care more about you more than the water you provide!" Let me take a minute to say that I really like Misu's clean artwork throughout the chapter. It's also slightly old fashioned while being contemporary too! Like I could see a manga like this running comfortably in the 90's with artwork like this. Though it's because it's so clean that the characters endearing traits come out even more, and it's easy to follow along.
Aqurea unfortunately (or fortunately?) misunderstands Asha's intent and thinks he's confessing to her, and the suddenness in everything going on makes her body feel weird and well...she gets wet. Very wet. Oh Misu, although in context it probably makes sense, I'm almost positive that the out of context-ness of things is what you're really aiming for, but yes the Water Goddess thinks she's just been confessed to and that's really got the water works going. Onto chapter two!
I like how the chapter opens with both characters being unable to sleep after the "confession" though they've got the same emotions their minds/hearts are on two different planes. Asha thinks he did something wrong unintentionally when he was so forward with Aqurea, and after Fuyu said that her water flow is connected to her health, he's worried he might have said something that would lead to her eventual death. Meanwhile Aqurea can't sleep because she's well...still thinking about the confession. Worse yet (or better?) Aqurea seems to be still pouring on the water works afterward, though now she's apparently unable to control it. It starts to dawn on Fuyu that her best friend might have a thing for the boy. Though they haven't really talked all that much, she wonders if his concern over her health was something more? So she tries to talk to him one on one to awkward effect. (I mean what would you think if a Goddess suddenly asked about your hobbies?)
Things only get more confusing when Aqurea tries to talk to Asha later. She thinks that he's hoping to go out with her, and thinking back to when she was younger and promised to her clan that she'd work hard to provide water and thus keep them alive she figures she'll have to turn him down for the sake of everyone despite really, really coming to like him due to her misunderstanding. Asha really is just trying to be nice, and isn't really interested in her in that way...at least not yet. Rather he just wants to make sure she's happy, healthy and can continue to provide water. Thus he promises to protect her and to believe in him. Poor Aqurea tries her best to turn him down but when he puts it like that, how can she? So the water works turn on again and...yeah, gotta say Misu is really good at drawing...moistness.
I think by now you're getting the tempo of this series beats. (Actually after counting the pages it really is three regular sized chapters that they put out at once. Interesting way of doing things...) Aqurea is great simply because she's good at being a water goddess but terrible at pretty much everything else. Especially hiding her feelings --she's so straight forward that on chapter three most people have figured out that she's in love with Asha, and it's whenever her love is at it's peak that her water flows out effortlessly. Asha tries to point out that there could be other reasons for it, but Fuyu is ready with water of her own --a woman's tears. Something tells me Fuyu is going to be the scheming type, and I'm all for it. Asha's left with no choice but to confirm whether the goddess is in love with him or not, and whether that affects the waterworks or not. To his credit, Asha really does just want Aqurea to be happy and healthy so he's willing to go all in.
They give him a plan to follow but things go awry when the two run into each other inadvertently, and he's unable to really sum up the courage to proceed on their "date". Plus hey, Asha knows what weight class he's in (you might even say he's painfully aware), and believing that a goddess is in love with him is....a lot. Meanwhile Aqurea is still trying to turn him down while simultaneously crushing on him, and it just gets complex. Misu and Kuriyama might be vying for a spot for who can make a misunderstanding the most entertaining in the magazine! But yes, between Aqurea kind of wanting to turn him down, and Asha wanting to be of service to her it's a battle of who can spit out (see what I did there) their feelings first. I could definitely see this series eventually standing toe-to-toe with Komi given time, but only the fans in Japan can make that distinction. That's it for obligatory coverage --is what I'd like to say but next week comes with two more chapters and a color page, so come back for those next week!
Zero goes to the dogs on the first chapter after it's return. I know I sound discouraging towards the series a lot of the time, but honestly it's more of a thing where I just don't have much to say about it because there really isn't much to talk about. Again, it really is what you see above is what you get --Kazami ends up taking care of Zero's dog while he's on the slopes. (Ah so some continuity from the previous chapter.) And the two bond. That's really about it. I keep covering the series because it's Conan, and as much as I try to fight against the notion that Conan = Sunday, there really is some truth behind it. In any case, Zero's back until Issue 11 so if you missed him, there's a bit of time yet, and if you didn't well, at the very least it won't be too long until we're back with Mr. Shounen Sunday himself.
I've been sort of reading 5 minutes since the last time I covered it in the blog, and it's taken a different direction than I thought it would have. The series is more about the Buddha than ever, and it makes me wonder if the time travel component was really necessary? I mean, I can imagine that Fukuda will perhaps tie it all in later, but thirty five weeks later we're still no closer to understanding how time traveling ties into things than we were with the first one. It's a minor quibble as the series has remained pretty interesting in spite of this --Yuuto's been taken and for the first time the wonder brothers are apart. Not only that but it's implied the Buddha have been around for many thousands of years and have a lifeline of three thousand years. Which is to say that they didn't appear after they were created in the shape of Buddha, but that they were always Buddha and possibly always around. Which leads to the other likely possibility that Buddha and humans were at one point existences that coexisted and at some point in history (around a thousand years) there's a gap between the two existences. As they discuss this, Yuuto awakens somewhere and his shackles are similar to that of the Buddha....this was an important chapter for sure, and has got my interest reinvigorated in the series, though I am still really interested in knowing....when will "that" five minutes come into play?
Fire Rabbit's last obligatory chapter on the blog is an interestingly slower one....at first. After a few pages of exorcism comedy, it speeds right into the premise. I was thinking we'd get a few more weeks of Mahiro sort of dithering on whether to take the call or not, but Hirakawa has a story to tell and Mahiro's just going to have to deal with it. The first three chapters have been in all an interesting case study of premise/pacing and I think Hirakawa --thanks to her experience has gotten it figured out. You want to have enough info for the audience to know what they're getting into, but not so much that there's nothing fresh later, or that it's overwhelming.
Mahiro being sure that Itsuki is here to haunt him takes up a bit of the chapter, but eventually we're taken to the two having a heart to heart. Itsuki says he isn't wandering or looking to haunt him or anything, but realizes after the accident Mahiro has been looking into firefighters. Could it be that the experience of being saved and now visited by one has gotten him interested in fire fighting? As much as Mahiro would hate to admit it, the whole ordeal has had a lasting impression on him.
Really like this shot of the city as Itsuki explains that Firefighters protect bright, happy cities like this, as well as saying that he doesn't have a single regret in regard to giving up his life to save Mahiro's. Mahiro isn't sure if he has anything worth protecting, but he knows he's looking for an inner strength that Itsuki has, (not that he'd ever tell him.) and so...
After his graduation he heads off to join the fire force's first squadron --the Fire Rabbit. Again it's all rather fast, but I think it's fitting. Now the two narratives have become one and the story can really kick into high gear. The interest here of course being does Mahiro have what it takes to be a member of this unruly crew? We'll find out as things unfold --I'll be visiting Fire Rabbit here and there, but the obligatory coverage ends here. I still have really big hopes for the series after how fun Tenshi and Akuto was, so hopefully Hirakawa still has that storytelling magic! I'd say from these first three chapters that she certainly does.
On the note of pacing, Fukui's is better with chapter two of Ano Natsu. I still feel like there's a little more dawdling than I'd like but considering the premise, I suppose we're due a little bit more development than most. This chapter essentially is Natsu coming to the realization he's not in Kansa--er, Tokyo anymore, though he is....just in a different time period. (Wanna guess when?) Though no, it's 1959, and his team (of sorts) has just lost a game. Natsu to his credit does run down the situation coolly and comes to the conclusion that he can't possibly be where he is, and their team couldn't have lost, but the scoreboard doesn't lie. Also the girl he ran into last week is actually the team's manager Yasuko Yamaguchi. It's July 24th 1959 and Natsu's in a whole new world.
I'm glad that Fukui didn't wait another week to give us the "reunion" that was due. At a loss, Natsu tries to figure out his next move when two boys fighting interrupts his thoughts and one boy kicks another off the team. Turns out this kid has a history of doing this (they've lost a pitcher and catcher) and now they're in a bind --though this isn't just any kid. It's Masaya Haigou --his grandfather! Now we're really moving along. With the last chapter of obligatory coverage being next week will Fukui be able to make a case for this time traveling baseball series? We'll have to find out then!
Glad to see switch is still bringing in the high quality artwork with both the color page and the spread above. Volume three will be out in two days and I'm hoping that one will be the one to get switch the attention it needs to survive. I'm still really digging Raimu's take charge attitude in the series as above he says only he can inherit the will of Akabane who's been injured and thus can't play.
Though Coach isn't going to make that easy. If daiya is able to score even one point, then he'll have to exchange out immediately, and the charge is on to represent Akabane. I gotta admit even though I'm not too into sports manga, I like how this one feels more like a battle one, mostly because of Namikiri's dynamic paneling and pacing. Here's to Raimu being able to pick up the baton that Akabane left him!
Zettai Karen Children --or well, should I say Takashi Shiina is celebrating 30 years in the manga biz with three big events --a collaboration with animate from March 28th to May 6th, A special gallery from April 26th to May 19th, and character popularity poll that spans the entirety of all his series. I admit I was thinking the announcement would be a countdown for ZKC's manga to it's ending, but I guess the series still has some life left in it yet. Though really, we couldn't get a new Ghost Sweeper Mikami anime? Feels like now would be the perfect time for it, hmm....
Since I know nothing about Touken Ranbu, I can't really tell what place this manga has in the universe. It does really feel like it's expecting you to know a lot about the franchise before diving into this, however. Though from what I can tell from this chapter it feels like these sword boys are helping decide the battle between Mitsuhide and Nobunaga. Weirdly the chapter length is about the same as a normal WSS chapter, so I wonder how this is going to fill two books with three chapters? In any case, Nobunaga falls this week, so where the story will take us in it's finale is anyone's guess.
That's it for the features of issue #7! Next week we celebrate 100 chapters of Maiko-san chi no makanai-san with a lead color page, a color page for Tonikaku Cawaii, a color page for Undine, and the thing that's got me most excited --the return of RYOKO! Ahhh if there was a late Christmas Present this mag could give me, that would be it. As I said before, I thank everyone for being around with the blog for these past two years. the shape might change form, and the series might come and go, but I want to say that I'll be talking about this magazine for a good long time! I hope you'll continue to join me!
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