Preface:
This review will contain - small and harmless - spoilers. I feel pathetic introducing a text with this kind of unnecessary warning, but the damned capitalism has created in the minds (of some weak people) that the malignant "spoiler" ruins the experience of a work. I couldn't disagree more. The surprise, the twist, for many (IGNORANT) readers matters more than the whole process. It's clear that anyone who consumes a story caring more about the surprise than the content should go to a magic show or watch a Manchester United game, rather than consuming art. A view that is tremendously molded by consumerism, which increasingly
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demands incessant and immediate insertion into media discussions in order to keep up with the content that is thrown up in our heads on a daily basis. As I am an empathetic and charitable person, I feel obliged to welcome those who disagree with my vision, even if it is clearly the right one. That said, who cares about spoilers for a forgotten story like School Rumble? Be a serious person, please. Don't let the enemy rule upon you.
The superiority of comedy
Discussing comedy and humor is quite interesting, defining what is funny or not is always limited to the relative. But every artistic manifestation is relative, there is no such thing as objectivity in art, and anyone who believes in this kind of idiocy is a poor soul who is only fooling themselves. Now, comedy lives in a relativity within relativity. More relative than anything else. What's romantic, what's horror, what's action, all this is relativized without a shadow of a doubt, but there's a firmer consensus among these genres about which is which and which isn't. The same can't be said about comedy. It's the most normal thing in the world to hear "this kind of comedy isn't for me, it's not my kind of humor", but you don't find anyone saying "this kind of action isn't for me, I prefer another kind of action". The complaint is usually directed at the development, the script, the characters, the art, but not the genre the story is set in. Nobody goes to a romance story and complains that it's not the type of romance, they complain about the development of that romance. Comedy is subtly different. It allows for the short and blunt ''it's not for me, THAT comedy, it's not my kind of humor'' and no one will care or be bothered, they'll think it's perfectly normal, now try finding someone saying in front of me ''I don't like Dragon Ball fights, they're not good fights'', that offends me tremendously, I won't accept it. How can you be that insane? I understand that you don't like some of the plot decisions, you don't like the way the conflicts are resolved, but I'm talking purely about the action, the fighting, the choreography, that alone, how can you criticize it? We can't accept that as a society. Do you watch John Wick and leave the theater saying "I didn't like the action in the film"? If you do that, you're a freak. If you think carefully, you can extend the discussion to how horror also differs from person to person, in fact, everything differs, any genre, not just comedy, but that would completely nullify my entire point, what I've said so far doesn't even make sense, it's just a stretch, it's not exclusive to comedy, but we need to believe in its superiority and the particularity of humor to conclude that more than ever, there is no objectivity in this discussion and because of the impossible definitive conclusion on the subject, deciding whether School Rumble is funny or not will naturally depend exclusively on your judgment.
The schoolrumble-like comedy
School Rumble doesn't use absurd, nonsensical jokes like Ai Mai mi, D-Frag, Poputepipikku, Sakamoto Desu ga? (RIP Nami Sano), Odoru!Kremlin Kyuuden, Asobi Asobase; it also doesn't use meta-comedy and inventiveness like the works of Kouji Kumeta or Dowman Sayman; it's not super cute and silly like Yotsubato, Takagi-San or Mitsuboshi Colors. It's not scandalous like Grand Blue, Danshi Koukousei, Chio-Chan, Jashin Chan, Hinamatsuri, either. But School Rumble isn't what others aren't, School Rumble is what it is, and defining something by a negation tells us so little, and for School Rumble, this actually isn't complex at all, defining the humor of SR is pretty simple actually, not only because the comedy of the story is nothing unique or original, nor is it the first or the best to apply the kind of humor it applies. I consider it to be an efficient and entertaining comedy in what it intends to do, from start to finish, delivering what it promised to deliver, just like that, and I think that's enough. It's a fun read. For some, it may be frustrating to read a story with more than 300 chapters where the structure of the joke always remains the same, that being the "misunderstanding". School Rumble lives in the Meta of the misunderstanding, it's the only formula that varies and alternates according to the characters in its cast, we rarely see a break from this, it's just daily jokes within a romantic development that clearly isn't going anywhere, the only constant progress are the misunderstandings that escalate and transform embarrassing situations into humor.
If you order a pepperoni pizza and the delivery man delivers a pepperoni pizza, are you going to get angry because an extra chocolate pizza didn't arrive? I hope not, because if so, you'd be making life difficult for yourself and for the delivery man. If you read School Rumble and get frustrated with the lack of romantic development that the story pretends to develop, you'll be making life difficult for yourself and for School Rumble. Why should we expect a story to deliver more than it sets out to? If that delivery man give me for free something extra, a coca-cola perhaps, I'd be extremely happy and my experience would be even better, but in any case, it's not what I asked for, and it's not what needs to be done. Gratitude is always welcome in these moments, we just can't fall prey to greed and turn it into frustration if it doesn't come true.
The schoolrumble-like comedy pt 2
Reading a slice of life, whether it's short or not, where a single joke is repeated in different ways with little direct development, is a complex task for many small-minded people. For those who can only appreciate stories where they can clearly see a direct and continuous progression of the story, School Rumble is like torture. For these poor people, what isn't direct development is seen as pointless or dispensable things, and I worry about this type of person. A weekend where you don't progress, you don't work, you just sleep and eat, enjoying time with your family and friends, is that a useless day because you haven't produced directly? The usefulness of time is just one of the many lies imposed on us by capitalism, it's worth pointing out.
To enrich your enjoyment, I'm going to give you one small tip on how to improve your experience and consume a story like School Rumble in a more "appropriate" way, based on my expertise. Just read it slowly, a few chapters a day, between other readings if possible, spaced out, just read and enjoy your moment of fun (if you find it fun). It took me about 3 months to finish a short story that could have been finished in 1-3 days, and it was much more fun this way. That done, maybe you'll discover that this moment too has meaning and importance, because I hate the expression "turn off your brain", our brain never turns off, it simply knows how to appreciate different experiences, it knows what engages us actively and what engages us passively, what requires or doesn't require my attention the most, and there's no demerit in being more or less complex, it's simply a different objective for each deed. Scorsese directed Goodfellas and he also directed The King of Comedy, the Coen brothers directed No Country for Old Men and they also directed Ladykillers, Jackie Chan has acted in comedies, actions, dramas, and even pornographic movies, each of which has its own merit and its own particular objective, and there's nothing to argue with that. A doctor has the same value as a baker, an ant has the same importance as a human being. Buddhist talk, but that's it.
is this racism?
It brings tears to my eyes to find people who are guided by ratings and, even worse, who can only give high ratings to dramas where there is a lot of sadness, a lot of suffering, where they feel emotionally involved, that emotionally is only taken into account if the story is considered "deep", and because of this they can't give the same rating to a comedy that entertained them from start to finish. If the proposed objective, to make you laugh, was met with excellence, why not give it top marks? Don't be a jerk, don't be unfair and don't impose a hierarchy on what doesn't exist; we are all children of God and deserve to be loved. The best defender in the world has the same value as the best striker in the world, an excellent comedy deserves the same respect as a psychological drama, it's for this idea that I get out of bed and fight every day.
Discussing my self-insert in the Final Arc of School Rumble
What I'm going to discuss here is more of a confession than anything else, and I'll be judged for it - by the two people who will eventually come across this review - but every review is, in a way, the confession of a lonely person with too much free time to write what nobody asked for, satisfying his penury by writing. If you notice, it's not too difficult to see that very little, if anything, has been said about School Rumble itself in this text, not least because, as I already said, there are several stories that do what it does and do even better. Angel Densetsu and Ochi no Gosu are closer comparisons and do many things better. Choosing to review School Rumble just happened because it happened, it was what I decided to read at the moment I decided to write, the stars aligned, there's no deep reason, it could have been another story, but I liked it and cared enough to write about specifically it, that's enough. In another reality I would write about another story, it doesn't matter, it would be practically the same review, but that's not what happened, and what happened, has happened and will continue to happen, there's nothing deep about it.
What I'd like to talk about in particular would be the last part of SR, its romantic conclusion itself (which is not an important factor for the story, but it was important for me personally to think about it). An active reader of various media, and it doesn't have to be just oriental, on the contrary, it's a global interpretation, can notice that a consensus has been created about what's really important in love, which is to prioritize the happiness of your partner above all. I agree, obviously. It's a well-established idea for everyone, there's nothing absurd about agreeing that to love someone is to want their good. However, there are circumstances that make me perhaps, or rather, most probably, a bad and selfish person.
You see, altruism followed by heartbreak is a very recurring theme in various stories (again, it's not a Japanese exclusivity, it's a very popular theme). Actions like the protagonist Harima helping his crush withe their crush is something I personally can't relate to and is very far from my emotional reality. With all due respect, if I love someone, I want that person to love me back, love is selfish in that way, I'm incapable of rooting for a loved one's love for someone else, I'm not good enough, I want that person to be tremendously unhappy (romantically) and come back in tears knowing that I'm the only one in their life, not that someone else can make them happy, reason and logical thinking is dismissed here. But reality is calling me, and I know that this is far from the truth, just as I chose School Rumble to talk about it, I could very well choose another story, there is no such thing as a single person and there are no soul mates, it is what it is, i wish you happiness. Now, my support for someone else's relationship, someone I like and care about? Never, I want it to go extremely wrong (romantically), nothing personal. Please, this mere confession allows me to be considered a bad person, but don't confuse my selfish and simple-minded incel-like desire to see my crush's romance fail with an active action to see the real failure taking place. I do nothing but distance myself, close my eyes, cry, and uselessly wish for nothing to work out (romantically) in her life. In this, I identify with Harima, who wishes Karasuma all the worst. And know that the world moves through actions, not thoughts, so I plead not guilty. Characters like those in School Rumble and their conclusions are, in my opinion, selfless angels who recognize true love. A mother's love, unconditional and unlimited love without expecting anything in return, I'm far from reaching that level. School Rumble doesn't set out to discuss or explore these ideas, but the value a story receives is always ascribed by a third party, reading it allows you to explore what the story didn't explore. Fiction is never just fiction, it is a living thing that relates directly to your experience, and your experience actively responds to it. Grades don't matter, don't jump over the wall of text to conclude my opinion. The green 100 is beautiful and does not completely reflect or sum up my experience with School Rumble, it only serves as a guide and incentive for you to get to know this fun classic that does not intend to fool you with anything less than what it promises, that helped pave the way for stories you probably hate or love like Nagataro, Komi-san, Takagi-san. Not the first, not the best, but one of a kind. With the traditional manzai structure, but also with its small and simple peculiarities, delivering the beauty of simplicity, of its humour, its ''romance'', in its ultra-charismatic, funny and entertaining cast, and poor those who can't find the time to appreciate and have fun with it.
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Nov 3, 2023
School Rumble
(Manga)
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Recommended
Preface:
This review will contain - small and harmless - spoilers. I feel pathetic introducing a text with this kind of unnecessary warning, but the damned capitalism has created in the minds (of some weak people) that the malignant "spoiler" ruins the experience of a work. I couldn't disagree more. The surprise, the twist, for many (IGNORANT) readers matters more than the whole process. It's clear that anyone who consumes a story caring more about the surprise than the content should go to a magic show or watch a Manchester United game, rather than consuming art. A view that is tremendously molded by consumerism, which increasingly ...
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Nov 3, 2023
Eyeshield 21
(Manga)
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Recommended
Preface:
Every review I write is confronted with 3 major problems. Memory, Patience and Sense of Purpose. 1 - My memory is horrible, writing a review on a certain subject implies mastering that subject to a certain extent. And that, personally, requires revisiting, noting and re-reading. Activities that I usually practice, but it requires the use of the second part, patience. 2 - To write a review, I need to write primarily in my native language (Portuguese) to then translate into English, an unfortunate submission to the Anglo-Saxon imperialism that I face with each text on a foreign website. To ensure that my analysis is not nullified by ... bad grammar and the fear of judgment of being considered an illiterate, enormous care is put into this part, even if in a limited way. All this requires from me a huge effort both creative, intellectual and willingness, simply to write, regardless of the quality of what was written. 3 - This is the most difficult, I cannot produce anything when I do not feel that I will be relevant or differentiated in some way (apart from academics works that I am obliged to do even without wanting to). That is, it is not easy to produce something new and interesting from scratch. Something new is usually impossible, something interesting is unfortunately even more beyond my range. Now, what allows me to produce this Review? The complete disregard for the three rules I set for myself. I made an effort of revisiting and memorizing, which I don't usually do. I am having patience and spending my time on an activity that many would consider useless, making a point of being prolix enough and producing countless lines of text introducing my experience with writing and so far, with zero mention of the reviewed work. Finally, choosing now to finally address what should be addressed, to recognize that my review will not be spectacular or new at all, but that even so, compared to the horrible and amateurish level of the other reviews on this site, my amateurish and horrible review will be an amateurishly and horribly superior review to those that have already been produced here. Concluding, not the Review, concluding the introduction to my review. I like to write, and today I decided to write about Eyeshield 21, a manga published in 2002, in the Japanese Magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump, written by Riichirou Inagaki and drawn by Yuusuke Murata. The division of this work will not be the conventional one, divided by arcs or moments, doing that would be, personally, both tedious and unnecessary. I will not enumerate and categorize things like a bot. There is no separation between "art: rating 9", "characters: rating 8". If you do something like that, you are a complete and total dumbass, not wanting to be rude, sorry. Now, regarding scores... they are useless. They serve only as a north of direction, not as an end or something defining. But well, if you care so much about little numbers, if I were to categorize, Eyeshield would be in my parameters an ''8", the spoiler is given. However, you will notice at the end that I will give it a top grade, the maximum. Why? Because I can and because I want to. That way it draws more attention and raises your expectation, read it and create your own experience. Maybe the 100 is exaggerated, I think so too, or maybe not, but then you will have to read it and correct me. Anyway, it would not be an unfair grade. If it is good it is 10 if it is bad it is 0. Let's stick to this monochrome world for now. Now, more important than an empty number, is to understand what this story wanted to tell me, if it succeeded, and if it did, how well it succeeded. Then we can, together, decide whether or not it was a good read, if my time was well spent, because if it was used in a good way, it will not have been a waste of time. And how could I develop this if not through my personal experience in a totally partial and subjective way? After all, there is no objectivity in art, implying that there is a wrong would imply that there is a right, and the other way around, and this does not exist at all when it comes to art. Well. Eyeshield 21 - Three acts Act 1 - Power of friendship How do you ensure the motto of the magazine that shelters you, ''Perseverance, Friendship, Victory'', without establishing bonds of friendship, and perseverance towards victory. Nothing embraces this more than Sena and its friends. Nothing here is handed out, nothing is given. If you watch American Football, you know well that there are positions that matter more and which matter less, which receives more importance and which receives less importance . This information I pulled out of my head, my experience following the sport is null, it was the manga of Inagaki/Murata that made me create interest in the art of the oval ball. I will support the Denver Broncos, they have a cool logo. Back to the point, everything is earned, nothing is handed out on a plate. We see a cast carefully assembled, it's poetry, nothing is more beautiful than seeing the careful importance that each character receives throughout the Mangá, each position matters, each member is added to the group over time, slowly, with patience, in a cohesive, natural and organic way, in a genuine manner. Concluding this story and seeing where each one has come, seeing where this same group started from, what they have accomplished, is the satisfaction that can only be achieved by a story that pours passion for its cast, successfully accomplishing the non-simple writing exercise, the good character development. This of course is not limited to the main core of heroes, in a sports manga, rivalry is as important as brotherhood, confrontation, dispute, your enemy is as necessary as, if not more, than your ally. Naturally, its development is of equal importance, and again, seeing its outcome makes us reflect how well written the whole journey was. Fernand Braudel can brilliantly explain even this, knowing that the ''histoire événementielle'' reveals little to us other than the analysis of the present fact, reflecting Eyeshield 21 as a whole, from beginning to end, through the ''longue durée'', allows us to understand the passion and importance that each character, however small, has for the whole story and its message, as a unity. Ok this was extremely forced, it was just to show that I am reading The Mediterranean. Im so cool right?! Act 2 - Winning and Winning Sport, competition, in its very essence, survives through cruelty and the need to overcome the loser. What would be the second place if not only the first loser? What conquers those who are left behind on the journey, what is left for the defeated, or even worse, for the one who has lost before even having the chance to compete, whether out of fear or inability. It is not about recognizing the cruel insignificance of the defeated, but recognizing that this is the only goal, victory, always victory, above all else. Just as the Buddhism teaches us not to fear the inevitable death, Eyeshield teaches us not to fear defeat, but to embrace it. The loser is not glorified, the loser does not receive flowers, he receives purely defeat. What he will do with it, is what makes the total difference, whether the cycle ends in it, or will become a step towards victory, the defeated will only be a defeated during this crucial decision. Act 3 - Do or Die, Misery or Glory To the defeated, oblivion, to the conqueror, the next battle awaits. Glory is temporary and the next opponent presents itself, the path of a winner is endless, there is always the next opponent, and for the elite, the battle is to stay in the elite. It is truly never ending. And it fails to conclude those who believe that victory or defeat matters more than anything else; just as the journey matters more than the destination, the challenge, the battle, matters more than the outcome. The challenger, trying to prove himself the best, even though he isn't, and not being, seeking to be, is what matters. To assert oneself, to test oneself, to challenge oneself, is the duty and destiny of the sportsman, it is his path, and it is where Eyeshield 21 resides. Not-conclusion - The influence on reality It is clear to an attentive reader that more than anything else, Eyeshield twenty one has been influenced by reality. The 2023 campaign of the Miami Heat, in heroic fashion the 8 seed reached the NBA finals, in a totally discredited manner, as did the young athletes from a humble Kanto school. Everything is very evident, Hiruma and his injury and persisting on the court, just like Jimmy Butler in the series against the New York Knicks, the leader, even injured, on the court giving support to his teammates. Wonderful how reality influences our experiences and the experience of great works. The entire run of the Deimon Bats closely resembles the South Florida basketball team, it was wonderful to realize that. If you did not realize even that, I am sorry for your lack of ignorance. You lack intellectual baggage. I don't blame you for that failure, I blame you if you stop informing yourself from here on out. #HeatNation Yes-conclusion - Conclusion (for real) Just as Blue Lock exposes in a not so subtle and superficial way the selfishness within sport, we can project the same idea, in an extremely superior and improved way in Eyeshield. Sport is the selfish desire to be the best, to overcome the opponent. And just like the selfishness of the sportsman, it also shines through in his reader. My desire to produce the best review aligns with Sena's goal to become the best Running back, Monta's to be the best Wide Receiver. That's what sports is all about. Compete, sweat, be better than your opponent, or if not, don't chicken out and try to be anyway. You can absorb what you want from a story, you can project and interpret it in the way you want, just as Musashi managed to become the best Kicker, other athletes seek to overcome him, challenge him, stop him in different ways. We express ourselves and find different responses in the face of adversity, never without giving up, It is always better to fail by giving it your all than not trying at all. The duo Murata and Inagaki with few flaws and many merits recreate and apply with exquisite all the classic bases of the supreme sports genre, one of the most delicious aspects of our favorite media. The beauty of sport, the beauty of competition, the frustration, the pain of the pursuit of victory, the desire to rise above all. Eyeshield 21 addresses everything and a little more, never forgetting its macro or its micro. A reading that, did not prove to be a waste of my time at all.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Oct 26, 2023
Ichinose-ke no Taizai
(Manga)
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Not Recommended Preliminary
(49/50 chp)
• PREFACE
Mangaka Taizan-5 debut in our beloved Weekly Shōnen Jump was received with high expectations. The young author began his career with ''A Story After Everything Went Well'', a one-shot published in 2020, and soon afterwards published two other good one-shots;''Hero Complex'' and ''Kiss Shitai Otoko''. But it was in 2021 that he achieved his first success, in his very first serialization, the excellent ''Takopii no Genzai''. His fantastic art style together with his engaging narrative ensured the young author's initial success, and his new publication in Japan's biggest comics magazine was a sure bet by Jump's editorial staff, who seemed to have found an ... outstanding talent, it was unlikely to turn out wrong. Unfortunately, that's what ended up happening. Due his incapacity in some aspects, in others because of external circumstances beyond his control. What went wrong with Taizan-san's new work, and why did it go wrong? Is Taizan-五 a deceptive farce and its stories were never any good? Was Ichinose Family a horrible, shitty work that past the damn time to be canceled? Perhaps editorial and public pressure has hampered the progress which has been treated unfairly? I don't know, maybe we'll find out. And before you, the spoiled and immature reader who treats your favorite story as a personality trait feel offended, I'm going to give you a trigger warning: I DON'T LIKE Ichinose-ke no Taizai. I have several problems with its narrative and I intend to elaborate on them in the following paragraphs. So if you're someone who gets frustrated at discovering that other people don't share your tastes and can only absorb positive things in your life as a poor, helpless little baby, avoid reading what I have to say. Now, if you don't like Ichinose Family, here you'll find refuge, come with me on this fun and enjoyable adventure that is talking shit about things. • The First Sin - Overdrama You see, my life is already a drama. It's extremely dramatic, I don't have any money, I don't have a car, no bitches, I haven't finished college yet, I'm not 1.90, I'm not famous and I was born Brazilian, it's not easy. I don't need more drama than necessary. Everyone loves a good dramatic and engaging story that you feel compelled to continue, chapter after chapter, and Ichinose's debut delivered just that, a promising world, art with personality and an interesting mystery to be solved. We see from the very first chapter that this close-knit family isn't all that close-knit, and that even before the accident and the loss of their collective memory, they already had a ton of problems and were far from being a happy family. And knowing Taizan-san's former work, it was nothing new to expect heavy themes and a family drama in the middle of this whole mess. And that's fine, despite the drama of my life, I still have more room to appreciate the drama of other lives, I love stories with heavy drama, everyone does. Now, there's a limit to everything, just as my personal drama is supported by my routine, I couldn't bear to see my problems tripled and repeated, again and again, without interruption. What I don't want for my life I don't want for my stories, and it's a narrative waste to destroy an entire dramatic construction by delivering one problem after another, without pause, and with more and more layers of problems interspersed. I UNDERSTOOD, I must be sad Ichinose-ke no Taizai!!! I'm supposed to cry at this point, I'm supposed to be shocked, YES, SHIT, I didn't expect a story that delivers a different Plot Twist in EVERY chapter and escalates the protagonist's problems non-stop, to deliver another Plot Twist and another problem in the next chapter, you've really got me with my pants down this time. The biggest crime that an unpredictable story can commit is to become predictable, to naturalize the unexpected in such a way that everything becomes absurdly obvious. You know that nothing matters because every discovery is going to be emptied soon after by a different problem, you don't have time to breathe and internalize the problems that the story solves, because as soon as it's over you're faced with a new problem, even worse, more abrupt and even more confusing, and that's not the problem in itself, the problem is knowing that this new problem, which was the amplification of the past problem, will become outdated in 7 days with the release of a new chapter, which will make the urgency of this new situation pointless, because now I have another concern in front of me, which will also soon lose its validity, in another 7 days. See that character? His life is sad, you have to care!!! See this situation? Look how bad it gets, look how bad it gets in the next chapter! Look at the incessant, artificial and infinite suffering imposed on our suffering and poor protagonist, our 2d poor soul, suffer with him I beg you pleaseee. That's what Ichinose-ke no Taizai tries to do every single chapter. It's not going to happen bud. I'm like a spoiled child who only does the opposite of what's asked, if you try to convey a message through insistence, it gets lost due to annoyance. I learned this when I was blocked by my ex-girlfriend who couldn't stand receiving anymore of my messages saying that I miss her. • The Second Sin - Overplot-twist We understand Ichinose's first major problem, the destruction of all immersion and empathy for the characters through overdrama, which stupidly naturalizes problems in such an idiotic way that any conflict delivered becomes extremely predictable and with no impact. Now let's discuss an aggravating factor, the overplot-twist. As if it wasn't enough to annoy me by pushing dramas with no weight on a weekly basis, Ichinose likes to spice things up with another annoyance, his twists. Okay, now I don't have my memory, okay my brother is behind all this, no no, it's actually my grandmother, no, she's doing it only for my grandfather, it's my mother who's behind it, no no, it's actually none of those, it's someone else, okay now I'm actually dreaming and I'm in a coma, ok now I'm out of the coma but actually my coma was shared with the dreams of my life and everything was real, ok now I know that someone is manipulating my coma and my family's memories, ok my brother actually has another family, oops, this family is fake and they split up, let's go back to our real Souta family. STOP, LET ME BREATHE. My man writes as if his life were on the line, racing against time, afraid of being axed, and that fear will catch up to him. I can't keep up with you Ichinose (the story and the character), my CPU can't process information at this speed, it's old, I no longer know what to be surprised by because there are too many surprises, my birthday has passed and I keep getting presents nonstop, it used to be fun to be surprised, but it's become inconvenient, I don't want to anymore. What I DO know is what NOT to be surprised by, and that's this story. Once the whole mystery thing is trivialized, once the unexpected becomes routine, why in the hell should I care? It doesn't matter anymore. • The Final Sin - Fucking Weekly Shōnen Jump If the two initial problems were the only ones, I wouldn't be writing this review. I've had this same problem several times with other stories that have similarly irritated me with their overdrama; Hanebado, Violet Evergarden, Kiznaveir, Hyouka, I could name movies, series, books, games, there's no end to it, the point is that my patience for whiny people is short, I'll only care about your problem if it's a real problem, not one specifically fabricated to make me empathize. My suspension of disbelief is here, but it's fragile. For me, this kind of story is like watching bad acting, you see the actor crying, but it's so fake and poorly executed that you become disconnected from the story. This has already been covered in the other two problems, my final problem is structural, it's the foundation that sustains the ills of this story and thousands of others, that is the Weekly Shōnen Jump and its outdated and archaic weekly model. Naoki Urusawa (you have to know him, that's the minimum) has already said in an interview, and I quote: ''Every chapter needs to compose its own story, with a beginning, middle and end, being able to be enjoyed to its fullest, by itself as an individual story, without depending on its connection with the other chapters''. He obviously didn't say it in those words and I don't have the source to assure you that he said this, but that's the idea, trust me, he did say it. The weekly structure allows a comic to be organized in a totally different format from the conventional one. The Japanese comic's production doesn't allow the same flexibility that a novelist or a book writer, where their story is thought out with a beginning, middle and end, with time for several revisions until the conclusion of their complete material. A Japanese weekly manga doesn't have this freedom, it lives by a goal where you establish a beginning, a direction of what you're aiming for, and a vague and distant ending that you may reach in God knows how many years, all of this only, of course, if your story isn't axed. What the conclusion will be like and the path to that distant end is often not even known by the author himself, weekly manga are nothing more than a thematic controlled-freestyle. It has its benefits, its variations and its problems, which are quite a few. Obviously, it's a system that considers countless variables, they take into account possible abrupt endings. They think, and they think A LOT about everything. But the thinking and organization are outdated, obsolete. The only reason Oda hasn't finished One Piece yet is because he can't, he's been trying for 10 years to produce an ending that hasn't yet been theorized by the fans, if it weren't for that we wouldn't have this thousand-year-old story still being published, I'm sure of it. Not to mention that I'm deflating the issue of weekly serialization to a narrative problem, as if the problem were solely the quality of the story, when actually there is a bigger problem, which is the maintenance of the authors' health. We have the recent example (2023) of Black Clover, which was removed from Jump due to the health of its author, as well as other mangaka who put down their pens and never returned simply because of the trauma of living through years of inhuman suffering on a weekly basis. This format is not exclusive to Shōnen Jump, but without a doubt, the country's largest magazine has enough responsibility to dictate trends in the industry, thus influencing the best way to produce manga, or in this case, the worst way. The same man who produced Takopi's Original Sin produced Ichinose-kun. Everything he managed to do well and with quality in his previous story, which, by the way, was published in Jump+, was only possible because of the more flexible structure in terms of publication and pages that the author was given, a much healthier format for both authors and readers. It's not surprising to realize that only 26% of the top 50 mangas in anilist are weekly stories, and only 6% of the top 100 are Shounen Jump stories, many of your favorite stories are stories that have not always been published weekly, and when they have, they have been kept away from Jump eyes. Of course, the biggest hits came out of there, Death Note, Dragon Ball, Naruto, One Piece, it's not for nothing that it's the biggest magazine in Japan, but for every one of those hits, another 50 authors died on the beach, it's a totally cruel and unfair filtering, imposed by an broken formula that makes no sense to still be maintained. Is it the one that makes the most money and is the most successful? That's exactly right. And it's also the least likely to ensure the quality of the story. If you don't want to be radical and break up the weekly rhythm, simply introduce a rotation system, establish obligatory breaks throughout the month (Like Shonen Sunday). I don't know, it's not my job to fix it, my job is to complain. DO SOMETHING This review has been written taking into account the first 40 chapters and ending with those 40 chapters, the show is still at enormous risk of being canceled and has a good chance of ending before it even reaches the one-year mark. If that doesn't turn out to be the case and the story improves from here on it, I don't care, im not reading and i doubt it. A team that loses the first 30 games of the season only to win the last 8 games continues to be relegated. Taizan-五 has already demonstrated his competence, he has a fantastic artistic style capable of carrying a story on its own, but it's a pity that this time it wasn't enough. May the author return soon enough with a new story, this time treating me less like a complacent, ultra-empathetic idiot, and for his own sake, i hope that he can free himself from the shackles of the damned butcher named Weekly Shōnen Jump.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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