Months later.. I just want to share this message. If someone’s interested I can pass the source material.
The conclusion is... Don’t believe the fake news and sites with no sources. There’s no official source saying Kaiu Shirai is responsible for season 2's downfall.
In 2019, the anime crew said in an interview of MAL that they planned to go their own way with the anime and that they were writing season 2 already while western fans genuinely thought those were small changes, done to polish the story (maybe some you remember!). Then In late 2020, Posuka (the manga artist) explained in another interview that Shirai joined the anime after the manga was over, aka June 2020. By then most writing was already done, if he joined he did to supervise, if he proposed some changes they weren’t big. There is an animator from CW who in a fit of rage for overworking and the change of some animations shouted on Twitter, but then deleted and didn’t give further explanations.
Also Shirai was never credited in the official site for the singular episodes and his name was taken off from the credits of the supervision for the last episodes.
This doesn’t mean the author never worked on S2, but Shirai or other people of the crew, surely never asked for such changes. Even more because in Japan the finale of the manga was a SUCCESS for sales, and so overseas. He had no reason to wish to change the anime and those changes go against what he has always wanted from his story (based on interviews, the 2020 fanbook, and beta stuff) it never made sense.
If we need to blame, it’s surely the commission of animes, the group of TV channels, sponsors and Shonen Jump, who give the funds to battle shonens who sold badly and had the potential to become trending (nothing against them) instead something more unique that goes against many of the classic shonen themes, even if the sales would have given preference to TPN (as an example TPN outsold works like Haikyuu and My hero academia).
TPN always had low sponsoring, late announced merch, even season one doesn’t have the treatment the original arc deserved which a portion of the japanese fans didn’t like. Plus, it didn’t sell well in blue-ray dvds.
Shirai’s name has been tainted enough by the western fandom, even people who never actually READ TPN. A manga which ended and sold well internationally, but here is somehow hated, when there are far FAR worse finales of more popular mangas. I hate how it got labeled like this.
Of course it has flaws, of course it's not perfect, but I think this is too much.. There's this trend of hating TPN somehow, when it’s one of the most innovative and special mangas of Shonen Jump, from start to END. A trend where only negativity is brought up and never what this manga archieved. So please don’t taint Shirai’s name with something it was never confirmed.
If you read this, thank you. |
