Hey all! Reporting in with the fifth and last of the new WSS serials is I your gracious host. Shota Komatsu's been around these parts before, so before we jump into the wild world that is this serialization, let's look into the past. I've looked forward to writing about this one, as it's my favorite of the 2024 serialization round.
The Author
Shota Komatsu
As is standard with these, I don't know too much about Komatsu (mangaka love their privacy!) But a search online unearthed quite the body of work from both Shueisha and of course Shogakukan. The earliest oneshot I could find was one they submitted at the tender age of 27 for a Shogakukan manga award (though it doesn't appear to have won) entitled Halation Temple.
What's immediately apparent is Komatsu-sensei's command of artistry from a lighting perspective to a character design one.
Read a little further and another thing becomes immediately apparent --their unhinged sense of humor. Additionally, it appears this was the predecessor for what would become Komatsu-sensei's first serialized manga Itoyan goto naki which would run in Weekly Shonen Sunday from May 2020 to March 2021. Though we'll get to that in due time. In this oneshot the protagonist Maro (who would again take the reins in Itoyan goto naki) meets a pretty girl and teenage hormones kick in. Except rather than making it awkward for him to sit down for a bit, it has the side benefit(?) of causing his nether regions to emit a heaven piercing light. This oneshot is 9 pages long and since he can't turn his hormones off, his classmate (the girl) and the others turn to the only choice they have:
Komatsu-sensei's method is dry humor crossed with the absurd, much like Rumiko Takahashi before them. Except this is further punctuated by the art being god like, especially for a weekly publication. Their other series are more or less the same to varying degrees, and there's a lot to dig through, so for the sake of time I'll just run through them quickly. Let's start with a Shueisha oneshot published on Jump + entitled Idol of Ninja.
From Idol of Ninja
In this January 22, 2023 oneshot (at least as far as the upload date goes) a ninja named Tanaka uses his unfathomable skills to instead impress girls and pursue a career as a male idol. Don't get it twisted though, he doesn't choose to be an idol because he sucks at being a ninja, rather it's because he's so good at being a ninja that he takes on the challenge of being an idol at the same time. This is the crux of the humor in this oneshot. Imagine crossing over these very different career choices to a bizarre degree that works.
Tanaka even goes as far as using a ninja staple, the “Kagebushin no Jutsu” or “Shadow Clone Technique” to hold up his swooning fans (who by the end of the oneshot include the enemy ninjas). It's absurdity to the highest degree and even with the language barrier is so silly (and cool looking) that one can't help but get a sensible chuckle out of it. Now to naruto run through the Shogakukan gauntlet:
Komatsu's Shogakukan Oneshot Collection.
From left to right, top to bottom: Yosshi, Tenshoku, Japanese Word Chain Game, and Saikou. These works were uploaded to Sunday Webry from around 2021 to 2022 which is after Itoyan Goto Naki's serialization. Tenshoku ran in Weekly Shonen Sunday 2021 issue #36 which means --you guessed it, we talked about it a bit on twitter. The others seem to have been either web only manga or in Japanese word chain game's case was a special feature in the Sunday 8 battle one shot competition where artists are to tell a complete story in 8 pages around a special theme --in the case of this entry the theme was “Sexy ladies.”
Yosshi is Komatsu at their best, incredibly detailed artwork with a bizarre --or put differently, a silly premise. Yosshi looks like he'd be at home in a jidaigeki version of Golgo 13 and has a job to match, getting info out of prisoners using underhanded methods if necessary. Underhanded methods, such as...tickling her.
And farting in her face, which apparently works as a scentastic aphrodisiac?? So it's less (or more?) disgusting than it looks. Though hey, Yosshi gets the job done as the straight-faced magistrate and his officials look on, marveling at the man of men in their midsts.
Tenshoku or “Career Change” is about a boy who dies prematurely. Minutes after his death, an angel gives him a choice --go straight to hell, or complete one last “job”. Which takes him from demon slaying to seeing people's last moments through. This one is a little less silly than Yosshi, but it still has its moments. Check out our twitter for more details.
Japanese word chain game is a short manga based around the Japanese game of Shiritori. Shiritori is a game where you have to say a word that starts with the last syllable of the previous word. In the oneshot, a hitman is tasked with getting a password out of a female liaison, except she speaks exclusively in Shiritori leading to a confusing interaction that leaves the hitman begging for death, and the lady instead going on about an indigenous people of Tanzania, Africa. It's really something that has to be read to be experienced.
The last oneshot Saikou or “Wonderful” (though it could also be translated as “Super Happy” which is probably a more fitting name for this story) is the story about a zashiki warashi granting a girl's happiness. A Zashiki warashi is a spirit in Japanese folklore that is often mischievous, but brings great luck to the people of the houses it inhabits. This one is accompanied by a blue bird of happiness (which is actually a crow) and using a rifle intervenes in a girl's life after she is accused of murdering a man. A detective with mannerisms similar to the eponymous Columbo is investigating her but thanks to the spirit he arrests another lady which is all well and good, however --
This is the face of a murderer. Well, the Zashiki Warashi said she'd bring happiness to someone. Not exactly the right someone. This oneshot is perhaps the darkest of all of Komatsu's work, and while it's good, I personally think humor fits them better. Now to the series I've been alluding to --
The Previous Serialization.
Itoyan Goto Naki
While all the artists in this serialization round have published with Shogakukan before, Komatsu's the only one who's had an entire 4 volume serialization. Itoyan Goto Naki which means from what I can tell means “Very Noble”(I'm not 100% on this so take it with a grain of salt) ran in WSS and was as bizarre as series get. In it, Maro Kouunji (same name as Halation temple) is starting his high school career in a well-to-do school, except he still has the same tendency to emit light from his jimmies when excited.
While Maro's family is well known due to their prominence, thus ensuring his light is one that will lead the masses, one girl: Asuka Izumi has no idea who he is and thus tells it like it is “That's sorta gross”. Rather than this banishing her to the dregs of society forever, it instead entices Maro even more (guess we know his kink). Thus, leading the girl who just wants to have a normal school life and the boy whose mere existence promises the exact opposite get involved with one another. Add in aliens, Gorillas, and flamboyant cross dressers and much to Asuka's chagrin, her life just continues to get weirder.
No, I was not kidding.
All of this weird stuff happening is a precursor to what Kokoro Himeru no Zen Himitsu and there's not much more I can say about it (you just gotta read it) so let's transition over to...
The Serial
Kokoro Himeru no Zen Himitsu
Starting in issue #26 of Weekly Shonen Sunday is Shota Komatsu's second long term serial: Kokoro Himeru no Zen Himitsu. The original billing for the series is a chaotic but entertaining adolescent secret keeping manga.
The Premise:
In Kokoro Himeru no Zen Himitsu or “All of Himeru Kokoro's Secrets” (Though the subtitle Komatsu provides is “Everything about Himeru Kokoro”) world renowned high school bodyguard Tsumugu Ichimonji after taking a bullet for the US president is transferred to a Japanese high school to be the bodyguard for Himeru, the daughter of a wealthy businessman. Except there's a lot more to her than anyone would have ever thought.
Again, not kidding.
One thing that stands out right away in this manga is just how many Hollywood celebrities pop up in chapter one --Marlon Brando right there on the bottom panel, and two more I'll get to. I'm not sure which is funnier, that they're here or, that Komatsu renders them so lovingly. Though yes, Himeru is a normal high school girl, pretty, smart, and popular so, Tsumugu's job seems easy enough this time around until....
Did I mention that this is a weekly manga? He happens to follow her to the roof of the school to find her squaring off against a dragon. Even now Tsumugu's instincts move his body faster than his brain, and he protects her, or well, tries to, but Himeru has a secret --she's immune to fire. So she not only doesn't need his help, but is used to this dragon attacking her.
Himeru explaining her secrets
As is for Komatsu's dry sense of humor, Tsumugu barely registers a reaction to what's going on around him (to the point that even the Dragon is puzzled by this), simply stating that it's his policy to see a job all the way through no matter what it entails. Himeru is tickled by this and despite herself spills her first of many secrets --she's a hero isekai'd from another world who has the envoys of darkness after her for her heroic powers. She doesn't want to involve anyone in her affairs and moves to erase Tsumugu's memories but, before she can---
He's kidnapped by the men in black themselves, and they too are after Himeru for entirely different reasons than the Dragon (which Himeru has enslaved and made her iguana familiar.) leaving the heroine no choice but to storm the spaceship and rescue her new friend Tsugutsugu (her nickname for Tsumugu).
Want some eschewed gender roles in your manga?
Tsumugu asks just how many secrets Himeru is hiding, and that too is a secret. Whether Himeru is just intrigued by Tsumugu or genuinely cares about him is unclear, but that fits the tone of this manga where everything's a secret until it isn't. Tsumugu himself is a source of dry comedy in that he's amazing at everything except mundane tasks, and finds talking to girls and going to school more terrifying than fighting Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith. (Who are actually aliens in this verse??) They're such an odd couple that it only enhances how surreal this manga is --oh and Komatsu's art has only managed to improve in the time they've had away since Itoyan Goto Naki.
Even Patty from One Piece makes an apperance!
Since chapter one, Tsumugu goes to meet Himeru's Dad who's overprotective (which despite the excution is as normal a trope as it gets in this manga) and then protects Himeru during one of her concerts when she reveals she's also a singer known as HIMERU (the caps makes it different) who has assassins gunning for her during one of her concerts. Each time, Tsumugu rises to the occasion and through bizarre superhuman feats performed with his typical deadpan expression deals with anything that comes Himeru's (and by extension) his way.
Fighting off Dad and Assassins one chapter apart.
This manga is so delightfully weird. After having a first serialization cut so short, you'd think that Komatsu-sensei would try to dial things down, but instead they just crank it up an extra notch as if to say "This is me, all of me. Deal with it." Except I feel like where Itoyan was weirdness for weirdness sake which can get old quickly, Kokoro Himeru on the other hand has a slight (read: very slight) method to it's madness that gives the events surrounding Himeru and Tsumugu a sense of progression --things are moving along rapid fire, but due to the nature of there being an overall narrative there's an incentive to keep reading.
The Verdict
I've seen some Japanese readers compare this favorably to Yukinobu Tatsu's Jump Plus manga Dandadan, and frankly I can see it. Shota Komatsu's wild storytelling will have readers constantly guessing on where the story will go next, and after an amazing first chapter it manages to keep one-upping itself naturally in artwork, storytelling, and of course weirdness. While Komatsu's dry sense of humor may not be for everyone, one thing I can guarantee is that you won't be bored. If Komatsu can keep things fresh, then I can see Kokoro Himeru no Zen Himitsu entertaining readers for a long time.
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