Weekly Shounen Sunday #28 (2019) Editorial section




This week's question comes from Shizuoka, and asks "It's the rainy season! What song do you like listening to on Rainy days?" 

MAO (Rumiko Takahashi): Asami Kobayashi's "The Sound of the Rain is the Sound of Chopin" 
Detective Conan (Gosho Aoyama): Stuff like "Fate" (Lol)...? (TN- I assume he means the Detective Conan ending song of the same title?)
Hoankan Evans ~Dead or Love~ (Mizuki Kuriyama): Yuuko Andou's song "Words of a loner" has a rainy day motif. 
Komi-san wa komyusho desu (Tomohito Oda): Enya!
Kimi ha 008 (Syun Matsuena): Durning rainy days I enjoy listening the sounds of the room itself.
Maojo de Oyasumi (Kagiji Kumanomata): Kirinji's "Don't despise the rain" ...though well, I guess it is a song associated with rain anyway...
Fire Rabbit!! (Aya Hirakawa): Rainy days are for western songs~
switch (Atsushi Namikiri): BEGIN. 
Tonikaku Cawaii (Kenjiro Hata): Nothing in particular.
Amano Megumi Suki darake! (Nekoguchi): Rip Slyme's "Blue Be-Bop". Other than that, stuff like Gonchichi's music and such.
Souboutei Kowasubeshi (Kazuhiro Fujita): The Musical "Singin' in the rain." The theme especially. It makes me feel better, especially the movie. 
Sokyuu No Ariadne (Nobuhiro Yagi): Bohemian Rhapsody. I've been listening to it a lot more lately, actually...
Yuko sae tatakaeba (Sei Fukui): Sakanaction's "Ame(b)"!
Major 2nd (Takuya Mitsuda): Chisato Moritaka's "Rain".
Daiku no Hatou (Michiteru Kusaba): I can heaar (Can heaar) the Frog's sooong (The Frog's sooong.)
Ponkotsu-chan Kenshocuu (Tsubasa Fukuchi): Motohiro Hata's song "Rain".
Be Blues! (Motoyuki Tanaka): Seiko Matsuda's "Rain Resort".
Maiko-san chi no Makanai-san (Aiko Koyama): Yuko Hara's "Hydrangea Song."
Gofun go no Sekai (Hiroshi Fukuda): Nature's natural tune called raindrops. (Lol).
Anonatsu 1959 (Ashibi Fukui): Lone Wolf and cub.
Chrono Magia: Infinity Gear (Takeshi Azuma): Hideaki Kikunaga's "Rainy Blue" is the only correct answer!
Tantei Xeno to Nanatsu no Satsujin Misshitsu (Teppei Sugiyama): I love Remioromen's "Umbrella Jellyfish".
Undine wa Kyou mo Koi wo Suru ka? (Shinya Misu): I like to listen to songs that fit the seasons. Right now, "Alala's Spell" is in.
Zettai Karen Children (Takashi Shiina): I can't really say too much due to copyright issues, but it's a feeling of "being soaked for your sake, dummy". (TN- I thiiiink he's talking about the song by Iori that was used in the Detective Conan anime "As long as you're here".) 
Aozakura Bouei daigakkou monogatari (Hikaru Nikaido): Mr. Children and Mr. Big.
Youkai Giga (Satsuki Sato): That tune by Aki Yashiro.
Tokaichi Hitoribocchi Nouen (Yuuji Yokoyama): Tokaichi doesn't have a rainy season, teehee~ 

That's cheating Yokoyama. I thought about looking up all of these songs but that'd make this translation even longer so you'll just have to Youtube them yourselves, sorry! Some interesting choices here, though a lot of them are just...rain themed songs. I guess that's not wrong but rain plus more rain feels...soggy to me. I say this, but I listened to amplified's song "Mr. Raindrop" while translating this, so I'm not only a hypocrite but I'm off brand too, heh. 

On that note, we now have a new host for the TOC that looks, well, way less bland than this one. (I can call it when I see it, even if it's about me.) You can check it out here! Also if you want manga sales numbers, you should follow the creator of the TOC compository here they're a good person who gets my respect. I may keep posting the TL's on the editorial like this for a bit, but don't be surprised if they eventually migrate to that site fully in the future. 



This week's exciting Evans chapter is about the importance of sleep. What, doesn't that put you at the edge of your seat? Edge of your sleep, I mean?  So the Cowboy who wishes to be popular is on a stakeout this week, and the rapscallion he's up against is the worst kind...!! He's popular with the ladies! That just can't stand, no matter how you look at it. Evans, Evans, Evans. If only you'd notice what you have right in front of you, literally! Pheebs is also with him, and she's ready and rearing to go. For once it's not a double meaning, she really just wants to take the guy out. Wait, no not that guy, but the bad guy.Though I'm sure she'd also like to take her guy out.  But Evans insists on waiting until he's asleep. The thing is both of them really just want to have a moment to talk, but as usual their pride makes it impossible for this simple truth to come out. That and Evans is still a low key hi-fi pervert so he reacts when he sees an opening (what kind isn't clear, but the narrator says it's perverted.) And Pheebs despite herself starts to fall asleep. This chapter plays into their childish sides and does a great job of that --even Evans wants to sleep but would never do so in front of Pheebs, even though the two of them are clearly tired. In the end all three end up getting a great night's sleep, and the guy is captured by Sharon (who appeared a few chapters back).  Not a word was said between the two, and they even missed their mark. It's said love makes you stupid, and I believe Pheebs and Evans are the poster children of this. It's the kind of chapter you really don't even need a translation for, which takes some good comedic storytelling --maybe it's not the most exciting one but for the sake of just being funny? It works, so don't sleep on it!


Coming in right after Megumi is a chapter of Souboutei that hides nothing --in the case of Kurenai at any rate. I suppose a part of this comes from Fujita being an artist of another era, and in fairness Kurenai isn't treated as fanservice in this chapter by any of the characters --even Izu who looks like the type who'd take a gander at her goods barely registers Kurenai --until she tries to kill him. We'll get to that later though, as the chapter itself has an interesting conversation where Sakamaki mentions his old friend Zanka as he and Kurenai have a chat about friendship. A chat that's interrupted by Izu's appearance. I had been curious since last week (and Izu's introduction) what his alignment is in this very complex web of characters, since he did come in towards the tail end of this tale(?) and while he doesn't seem outright hostile it seems presumtuous to call him a friend. So does this chapter give us the answers we I need? 



Yes and no. Izu's relationship with Sakamaki is...informal to put it lightly. He doesn't fear the evil proprietor of the estate in the slightest, and even tries to slice him down in an effort to ascertain whether he's a human or not. This of course goes badly for Izu who is given a very stringent lesson in the hierarchy courtesy of Sakamaki's powers, but it does illustrate just what is at stake here --jovial he may be but Izu isn't weak. Yet Sakamaki has him begging after just a small display of his power. What's more interesting is that Izu seems to be human despite his impossible age and powers as pointed out by Kurenai who saves his life by asking Sakamaki to spare him. It's also revealed Izu is as he was back during his time period and not some thrall of the Souboutei. He also implies he's done something to be immortal, hmm...anyway Izu's just here to make a report about his daughters and Takoha perhaps making an advance on the mansion in the near future and asks for permission to kill them. Kurenai can't have that of course and goes in for the attack...before Sakamaki stops her because he wants Takoha brought in alive so that they may talk to one another again. Izu seems placated and leaves, but then by the end of the chapter he implies that he's an agent not for Sakamaki but Shino? Whatever Shino is happens to be afraid of Sakamaki and kept in check by him, but what does Izu get for helping them? It was a chapter of intrigue and I'm looking forward to seeing where it all goes. 


A new character in Ponkotsu! It's the one thing I've been asking Santa Fukuchi for since the series began, and in neither July or December he's delivered! However, is this character the brand and or flavor I hoped for? 



Meet Anzu Wakura, Hirari Yumesaki's friend. She's already figured out that Yumesaki might be in love with Mito, based on how strangely she's been behaving lately. Unfortunately due to Mito's looks and blunt way of speaking Anzu gets the wrong idea of what kind of guy he is and she can't have her friend falling for some kind of delinquent! Yeah, she's that kind of character. Admittedly I was worried this might go the harem route with another girl, but I should have learned to trust in Fukuchi --even Takkoku with it's quasi harem elements managed to subvert things in a fun way which Ponkotsu seems to be doing too. Granted things could change with time, but for right now Anzu is a lot of fun, and just the kind of character that will play well off Mito and Yumesaki. Why even her confronting Mito over being a delinquent is hilarious because the duo think she knows about their investigations so there's a lot of talking past each other going on, and while Mito tries to calm Anzu down, Yumesaki's power of the day activates allowing her to sort of float for a bit. How's a guy supposed to deal with two problems like this at once? He doesn't, but when things go awry he shows he's dedicated to Yumesaki by saving her. That's enough to convince Anzu he's on the up-and-up, though the chapter ends on a note where I'm not sure if Anzu knows of Yumesaki's powers or not. Still I think she's a great addition to the cast, and I have high hopes for future installments with her. 



I hope you were paying attention to Xeno because some of the characters we've met so far are back in a big way for this seemingly final arc. Xeno and Ayla come as told to the final Murder room just to find that everyone's been hurt badly, and their old buddy Inspector Himemiya is among the fray. He's not once to mince words and immediately blames Xeno for what's happening. It's magnets again, always magnets --just like in the first case where they met. This callback is bad for Himemiya, but if you've been reading Xeno from the start, it's kinda awesome in a terrible way. If I didn't know any better, I'd think that Kinoo is planning on having Xeno revisit six of the murder rooms, since this was the set up for the first one. 


Kinoo's situation is strange too --especially since Xeno hasn't dabbled in much supernatural happenings up until now, yet it's somewhat implied that Kinoo is using another body to talk to Xeno? He's the son of Kazuto Shiwabuki the Prime Minister. Speaking of Dad --Kinoo whats them to look for him, since he's "ever so worried". After all he managed to escape that massacre, so who knows where he could be? As a bit of motivation, he has Umi's sister Sora with him. With no choice, Xeno has to head to the core of this place --the seventh murder room where Kai's final gift awaits him. Thte stakes have been set and now it's time to settle things. I'm not sure what form the final confrontation will take since there's so much that could happen between then and now, though there's more than enough reason to think that Kinoo will make it hard for them and entertaining for us. 


It feels like it's been a while since we've seen Kuro, hasn't it? Though at least for now those hoping for more of a development on it's love story will have to settle for that on a later date, as Satou doesn't seem to be in a hurry. Good for the series' future, but not so great for development, sadly. 



Of course I'm not one to complain, but it does feel like just a little Satou is retreading old ground in hopes of building a sense of dramatic tension. Something I wouldn't mind as much if there was a reason for it...like, I do like these characters enough to want to see more of them and tease out their relationship, but at least with Kuro's side of things in Youkai Giga the fact that development is interposed with other chapters makes this feel even slower than it would if it ran weekly. In short it's kind of the problem Conan has right now (To me.) Though it's not all a waste --Osaki speaks as if these days she's sharing with Kuro can't go on forever, which means Kuro may have to make a choice as to whether he'd stick with Osaki or with the son of his master, as well as what is Osaki hiding behind those words and her oft lonely expression? It's enough of a tidbit to keep this chapter from feeling like a complete retread, but since it's likely we'll get another non-Kuro story next week, it feels almost cruel to have the story move so little and then not take us anywhere. Still, at least now we have a destination of sorts, so perhaps the journey there will make up for it in time. 


And that's it for this week! No RYOKO makes for a shorter (and lonelier) write-up, but I'm glad you came anyway. Now lets all  hold hands and pray (if you're into that sorta thing) that RYOKO is only off for one week, and we can all meet back here again safe and sound. Until then, take care! 



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