New Manga First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about the first chapter or so of a new manga.
If you’re a digital artist working through the online content grind, having some kind of identifiable thing that’s distinctly your own is a huge help. For a lot of artists, it ends up being fanart; people become known for doing art of one particular character or many characters from one particular property, and gain a fanbase from there. But there are other paths, and one of the less-traveled is to simply make gorgeous art with some kind of gimmick that serves as a draw. Enter suzushiro333, a Twitter illustrator better known as “that person who draws all those maids skateboarding.” They have been at this for years, and they have gotten very good at it. Good enough to make Maid to Skate, a manga that is undeniably one of a kind.
There is an admirable, almost battle shonen-esque laser focus on the titular subject here. We don’t really learn much about our protagonist, Benihana—whose name, by the way, is a skateboard trick—over the course of these short few pages. We don’t learn a ton about her situation either, such as why she seems to live in some kind of group home with a bunch of other maids. We do learn one very important thing though; in this world, maids skate. Maids skate a lot. Maids take skating very seriously. Maids skating is the entire point of this manga, to an even greater degree than most actual hobbyist manga I’ve seen. And if you don’t like maids that skate? Get out. There is nothing for you here.
It’s honestly not surprising that Maid to Skate is so focused on the actual action of maids skating. Most of this first chapter is a single long action sequence wherein Benihana tries to skate through town to get to a market quickly, and it is absolutely gorgeous; sleek, refined, and with a command of lines-of-movement that even the best working mangaka would have to respect. The entire debut chapter is basically a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 level, and reading it is as fun as playing through one yourself. It knows better than to stick too strictly to plausibility, too. There’s an absolutely great bit in here where Beni retrieves a crying little girl’s balloon by ramping off of a building to snatch it out of the sky.
And to provide a counterpoint to that, she also absolutely eats it while trying to jump the gap over a river (!!). This level of completely bailing is apparently unacceptable for a maid, since she ends the chapter being scolded by the presumable head of her group home.
This does lead me to wonder, though; where does Maid to Skate go from here, if anywhere? Certainly, no one would complain if every chapter was basically just a spin on this. At the same time, I wonder about this delightful little world and the people that live in it, and would be over the moon to learn more about skater maid society. Wouldn’t you?
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter, Mastodon, or Anilist, and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category. If you have any questions about this or any article, feel free to leave a comment, or pop on over to my RetroSpring and ask me there. It’s up to you!
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
The Manga Shelf is a column where I go over whatever I’ve been reading recently in the world of manga. Ongoing or complete, good or bad.These articles contain spoilers.
I should not be writing this. I am, at the moment, ill, with something that is giving me an absolute monster of a headache, stuffing up my sinuses, and just generally making me feel like a wreck. I intended to fully take this week off, both to physically recover and to recuperate from a bout of burnout. Yet, here I am, because if there’s one thing that can bring me back to life, if only for the hour or so it’s taken me to pen this, it’s lesbians. Never accuse me of being an unbiased journalist.
I Belong to The Baddest Girl at School is a fairly straightforward romcom manga. It certainly has its edges, and we’ll come to them in a moment, but for the most part you—or at least I, as a non-connoisseur of the genre—could not distinguish this from any other manga of its type at a glance. The main character is Unoki, a meek, shy boy, who falls for Toromaru, a tiny, feisty powderkeg of a boss girl who embodies every possible distinction between that term and “girlboss.” They’re pretty great together, in a tropey but pleasant sort of way. If the manga were only about them, it’d probably still be just fine. There’s a nice core thesis about not changing yourself just because society tells you to, and about finding someone who loves you for who you truly are. The sorts of things that would ring a bit hollow if the manga were solely about a single straight couple.
But this article is not about a single straight couple, as you’ve probably guessed from its title.
Yuri is having a bit of a cultural moment again, as several titles are currently airing as anime or are about to be in the near future (to say nothing of the return of the likes of, say, Birdie Wing, or the largely self-contained fanbase that “Miyazawan Yuri” has accrued in recent years) but Baddest Girl isn’t yuri. Nothing here even really speaks the same language as yuri, which has rhythms and archetypes all its own. Instead, to my pleasant surprise, I feel like I’ve discovered an example of convergent evolution.
Baddest Girl‘s obligate backup characters, of the sort who tend to stand around and comment on the A-Couple’s relationship, are Yutaka and Matsuri, respectively a serious straight-man type (ironically enough) with a chilly disposition, and a lunkheaded ruffian with a fixation on Toromaru herself and a tendency to get the wrong idea about things. We learn pretty early on that, far from simply orbiting around Unoki and Toromaru’s relationship, they have one of their own. Matsuri thinks of herself and Yutaka as best friends while nursing her sorta-crush on her boss. Yutaka, meanwhile, is a very different story, and it’s clear that she holds romantic feelings for Matsuri. There isn’t any ambiguity here, and some of the manga’s fairly rare spots of true angst come from the fact that Yutaka simply assumes that she and Matsuri aren’t compatible; less because Matsuri is straight (she’s not) and more because of her whole deal with Toromaru.
Now again, Baddest Girl is mostly not about Yutaka and Matsuri, which means that A) their side of the story progresses fairly slowly until a certain specific point, and B) it’d be easy for the cynically minded to write off their presence (and any implied feelings between them) as, basically, bait for a male audience. Baddest Girl did, after all, serialize in Young Ace UP, a seinen web-magazine, during its 2017-2021 run, and it’s hard to argue that their designs aren’t at least slightly meant to get more eyes on the manga. But this would downplay the fact that despite not being omnipresent through the manga’s 77 chapters, Yutaka and Matsuri are some of its strongest characters.
When Baddest Girl cashes in that built-up emotional connection to make it clear that it’s taking Yutaka’s feelings very seriously, it completely works, because we’ve already been following these characters for a while at that point. We know that they’ve been close for years, we know that Yutaka changed her whole sense of style because Matsuri thinks she looks “cooler” if she dresses like an old-school delinquent. So, later in the manga, when Yutaka confesses in a sudden sputtering overflow of emotion after Matsuri brings up the possibility of leaving town after she graduates, it makes a perfect sort of emotional sense. She actually steals a kiss from Matsuri, the sort of thing that is not really ever OK in real life but has a long enough heritage in romantic fiction that I’m willing to let Baddest Girl off here.
At the end of it all, the only thing Matsuri is actually at all mad about is that Yutaka didn’t tell her sooner. Yutaka pledged to always stay by Matsuri’s side several years before trying to actually date her. One can understand Matsuri’s (ultimately fairly mild) frustration at not being trusted a little more.
Even then, she gets over it pretty quick, and the two transition from friends to girlfriends with admirably little further drama; Matsuri even returns the kiss that Yutaka stole from her. Hilariously, this also means that by the manga’s end, Yutaka and Matsuri have actually gone farther, in terms of physical intimacy, than our leads. Unoki and Toramaru are still at the handholding stage as of the manga’s final chapter.
As much as I’m hyping this up as different or daring, the truth is, of course, that Baddest Girl isn’t unique in this regard at all. Even Kaguya-sama: Love is War!, probably the genre’s current gold standard in terms of intersecting popularity and quality, tosses in a bone to this effect very late in its run despite otherwise being straight as an arrow. (It’s one of that manga’s few flaws, I’d argue.) But what is rare is for the queer subtext to have that “sub” cut out entirely, and moreover, in a way that is both structurally elegant and actually reinforces the manga’s core points. Sure, you can, again, be a cynic about it and write all this off as pandering, or as the product of the author’s own interests. But that fails to account for the emotional weight it’s given (and, in fact, that the author is a woman). Plus, the very fact that these characters exist in this story, one that is not actually, really, about them, and feel so normal within it, is its own kind of victory. It’s true that we, as queer people, do need our own stories, but there’s a lot to be said about showing up in the backgrounds of others’ stories, too. In real life, few people have exclusively friends of their own sexual orientation, and it’s nice to see a manga that’s otherwise pretty heavy on tropes and archetypes reflect that. It even folds Yutaka and Matsuri’s relationship back into their usual dynamic, which takes on a flirtatious edge for the final few chapters of the manga, given that they’re now officially a couple.
As far as I can surmise, Baddest Girl was never crazy popular or anything, but mangaka Ui Kashima has kept working (currently, she’s penning the VTuber-themed romcom Liver Diver Lover, which has a beautiful tongue twister of an English title) and I hope she takes what fandom Baddest Girl did manage to pick up as a mandate to keep being herself.
As for me, well, I am going back to bed. See you next week, and hopefully no sooner. (Seriously, I need to rest.)
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter, Mastodon, Cohost, Anilist, or Tumblrand supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
The Manga Shelf is a column where I go over whatever I’ve been reading recently in the world of manga. Ongoing or complete, good or bad.These articles contain spoilers.
If you’re looking to pick future stars from the current Shonen Jump lineup, Skeleton Double is probably not the smart money. (And not just because it’s running in Jump+ rather than Shonen Jump proper. Fine distinction, that.) Frankly, it just really isn’t good enough—at least not yet—to inspire that kind of confidence. It’s also pretty strange in a way totally different than that of the likes of, say, Chainsaw Man or the utterly bonkers Dandadan (which, really, I should get to writing about that at some point). Instead, it possesses an antiseptic half-surreality that places it totally perpendicular to most of what’s going on in the magazine, its direct affiliates, and, indeed, in the battle shonen genre in general right now. I wouldn’t call the manga great by any means, but it’s definitely compellingly weird. Enough so that if it can manage to hang on for a few more volumes beyond the brief 13 chapters that currently exist, we might be surprised.
The very short version of the premise is this; eight years ago, Yodomi Arakawa’s father was hoisted into the sky outside of Shinjuku Station and twisted to death. A violent and bizarre end for an ordinary businessman. Back in the present, Arakawa’s life is haunted by the tragedy, and the normalcy he’s worked hard to try to maintain regardless is shattered upon the appearance of a mysterious talking skull, Yamamoto. From here, Arakawa is sucked into a strange world of strange powers, skeletal beasts straight out of Gideon The Ninth, and a brewing war between a government agency that seeks to control both and the secret “Gyugess Society” that wants to use them to solve the world’s ills. Also, Yamamoto is responsible for Arakawa’s father’s death. Whoops!
On its surface, it’s a decent setup, but right from the jump, Skeleton Double runs into walls of clunky exposition, and much of the earliest stretch of the manga is let down by art that only sometimes rises above “functional.” This does a lot to obscure the manga’s genuine strengths, which are mostly writing-side; chiefly a very dry sense of humor and some interesting, briefly-floated ideas about class conflict. The characterization is strong, too, but only in a sidelong, obfuscated way. Arakawa himself seems almost comically devoid of any notable personality traits, but recent chapters imply that this is less his actual personality and more a façade adopted to cope with the loss of his father. Yoroibata, a member of the aforementioned government agency, is meanwhile utterly inscrutable, shuffling between weird antics like brewing coffee while teaching Arakawa how to fight in one chapter, and totally stomping the Gyugess Society folks in another. Toru Tatara, the closest thing the manga so far has to a main antagonist, is a broad-shouldered, spectacled fellow with braids with a hammy personality who is introduced doing a full bow. It’s an odd mix of total seriousness and outright camp, and Skeleton Double seems pretty happy to toggle between the two. Combine that with the aforementioned dry humor and the occasional sarcastic narration, and you have a manga that certainly has its own identity, even if it’s not a terribly flashy one.
It’s hard to tell how intentional all that is, but one has to imagine that at least part of it is on purpose. There is after all, a particularly great moment in here—perhaps the manga’s single best scene so far—where, after several chapters of being introduced to urban fantasy proper nouns, one of the Gyugess’ soldiers shouts out that a “cypress” is attacking them. As you turn the page, and have the opportunity to wonder what a “cypress” could possibly be, you see this, a beautifully-rendered tree crashing into their base. It is an almost perfect punchline, and if Skeleton Double gets axed before it can truly get off the ground, I think Tokaku Kondou may well have a future in writing comedy manga. (Don’t laugh! It worked out just fine for Aka Akasaka.)
Visually-speaking, a friend of mine correctly pointed out that the casual wear of most of Gyugess’ members gives them a sort of reverse-Jojo character feel, and really does drive home the fact that these powers have been foisted onto utterly ordinary people. They are Just Guys. Guys with superpowers now, sure, but Just Guys nonetheless.
This is perhaps most obvious with the former cab driver Kunikumo, who is Arakawa’s first major opponent fought on equal footing in the manga. Kunikumo is an old man, using his skeleton powers partly to stave off the Alzheimer’s that’d otherwise prevent him from living an ordinary life with his granddaughter. But even this isn’t cut and dry; we soon learn that Kunikumo killed his granddaughter’s parents himself, using his “Quantum” power (which sinks things into solid surfaces) to condemn them to the absolutely hellish death of falling to the center of the Earth. (Yeah, like that one Batman Beyond episode that gave us all a minor phobia of the Earth’s core as kids. Or was that just me?) The obvious sympathy angle is undercut by his brutal methods, and even when Arakawa eventually defeats him and he has his obligate realization that he’s been the bad guy, that too is shadowed. Look at the narration here, its blunt declaration of “he discarded what he wanted to protect….” Is that intended to drive the point home? If so, why does it almost feel like it’s mocking him?
What is the point of all this, anyway? Skeleton Double‘s most interesting trait is also its greatest weakness; the fact that thirteen chapters in, it’s basically still a total cipher. Not that any mangaka—any artist period—is under any obligation to explain their work in excruciating detail to their audience, but it’s a little unusual for a Shonen Jump manga, which are generally pretty straightforward. (And given the entire chapter devoted to how skeleton powers work, I get the sense that if Kondou wanted to explain things in excruciating detail, they would.) You can, from a certain angle, also read elements of it as parodic, but that doesn’t square with the honest attempt at emotional rawness in its most recent chapters. (Reasonable people will also disagree on how well that attempt actually lands. Post-hoc villain backstories aren’t exactly rare in this genre.)
It is totally possible that all of this is nothing more than the result of Skeleton Double actively finding its footing as it serializes. Its mangaka is, after all, new to the medium, with only the surreal comedy oneshot “The God Who Can’t Clean Up” previously under their belt. If so, maybe the real value of Skeleton Double doesn’t come from the story itself, so much as having the opportunity to watch a shonen mangaka work out the format’s structures in real time, seeing how they can bend them to their will and how they’re forced to compromise, where the bones of it lie.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter, Mastodon, Cohost, Anilist, or Tumblrand supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
The Manga Shelf is a column where I go over whatever I’ve been reading recently in the world of manga. Ongoing or complete, good or bad.These articles contain spoilers.
This article contains spoilers for all of Part 1 of Chainsaw Man—which extends very far past what the anime covered—as well as Part 2 up to the current chapter, Chapter 120. If you are not caught up with the manga, stop reading unless you want to be spoiled.
If you wanted to, there is a lot you could discuss with regard to the second part of Tatsuki Fujimoto‘s breakout hit Chainsaw Man. You could talk about its fairly drastic scaling-back of scope compared to Part 1. You could talk about the fun but tense dynamic between Asa and Yoru, Part 2’s main protagonists, and its possible implications going forward. You could talk about the manga’s many unresolved mysteries and how they might be wrapped up before Chainsaw Man one day ends, not the least of which is that of what role, precisely, the mysterious devil hunter Yoshida plays.
You could talk about all of that. But I don’t really want to.
I want to talk about how Nayuta, the new Devil of Control, the Horseman of Conquest herself, is absolutely freaking adorable.
To be fair, we did sort of already know this. When she was introduced in the final pages of Part 1, there was a decidedly creepy undertone to her presence. She was, after all, the Devil of Control. Denji, having just defeated Makima, was understandably not eager to be involved with her reincarnation. Nonetheless, her imitation of Denji’s mannerisms (which continues here) and demand for bread painted a picture of a far less menacing character. Things have changed since then, but it’s still clear that Nayuta is no Makima.
She was, however, absent from the manga for a pretty significant length of time (not as long as still-AWOL Part 1’ers like Kobeni or Kishibe, but still quite a while), and it became clear simply from the length of that absence that her eventual return would be a big event. It has been! She’s reintroduced to the manga by Denji calling her a “problem child with an extreme personality”, and then this happening, in her first on-panel appearance since Part 1.
There’s a lot we could talk about here, even! Yoru did basically force the kiss in the immediate prior panel on Denji, so you can make a pretty decent case that Nayuta is just being protective. And hey, listen, maybe she is! That’s basically what I think. Who wouldn’t react in a pretty extreme way upon seeing some random girl frenching their older brother apparently against his will? Nayuta’s strong reactions are just more noticeable than other peoples’ because she is, of course, still the Devil of Control.
But something that’s much more important than all this is that Nayuta is extremely adorable.
I realize this is unbelievable given that it’s me saying it, but I’m not really putting forward any grand thesis here. The most recent chapter—120, which went up two days ago, on February 14th—has made it very clear that she’s an absolute chucklegremlin. Look at this.
Are you really going to try to argue with that? She looks like she just convinced her parents to buy her an expensive scooter and is dead set on immediately running over the foot of every adult in a 5 mile radius with it. She looks like she was the baby that someone stole candy from and is gloating because she stole it back and kicked the thief in the nuts while doing so. She makes the sound “Gya ha ha ha ha!” when she laughs, apparently. She’s moe, alright? You need to accept this.
Point of clarification: in this panel, “this dog” refers not to any of the literal dogs, even the one that’s actually in-frame, but to Yoru. Confusing, I know.
(And because I know some people perpetually have their minds in the gutter, I do not mean she’s cute in a leery way. She’s like twelve; be normal.)
She also thinks of “wet dog” as a pleasant odor, which is super weird, but she and Denji do keep like 40,000 dogs in their apartment, so maybe it makes a kind of sense.
Again, no grand thesis or theory here. I could spin yarns about how even Nayuta’s worst behavior in these past two chapters is way less terrible than anything Makima ever did, the already-mentioned fact that trying to pry Denji and Asa apart—especially if Nayuta knows about Denji’s ‘love life’—is entirely reasonable, that there are several points in just the few pages here where she could use her powers but doesn’t, and so on and so forth. But really, I know better than to try to pin down where a Fujimoto story is going in advance by now. And really, who cares? Funny gremlin child – look at her.
You may be asking some further questions at this point, such as “is that really it?” and “are you only writing this to paper over the fact that you didn’t get to work on commissions this week” or “are you being mind-controlled by Nayuta herself into writing this flattering but ultimately pointless puff piece?” to which the answers are, in order “yes”, “maybe”, and “well, how would I know?” respectively.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter, Mastodon, Cohost, Anilist, or Tumblrand supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
New Manga First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about the first chapter or so of a newly-available-in-English manga.
Shonen Jump’s rush to find their next big hit has produced its fair share of odd little manga, most of which don’t get the chance to run very long; from the still-in-limbo draconic slice of life that was Ruri Dragon to the sweet-tooth, axed-before-its-time battle shonen Candy Flurry, the casualties are frequent and litter the magazine’s pages—and that of its affiliates—like skeletons on a battlefield. Just the other day, it was this environment that Cipher Academy strove into; confident, swaggering, and about as qualified for the job as anyone could hope to be.
Cipher Academy‘s greatest asset is not actually anything within the manga itself, at least not yet. It’s the manga’s author; NISIOISIN, one of the modern anime / manga landscape’s great eccentrics. (On art, we have Yuuji Iwasaki.) You might not know that from reading Cipher Academy itself, though. So far, it’s actually been fairly tame by Isshin’s standards. Of course, that still means that this thing is pretty weird; the premise alone—our protagonist is a new student at an academy that specializes in teaching its students high-level cryptography—is fairly novel. Add in the general state of the manga zeitgeist, and the introductory chapter drops such shamelessly silly shit as AR glasses that help our hapless femboy protagonist bluff his way to Sherlock status (complete with “elementary!” as a catchphrase), a Jojo-posing mean-girl clique who threaten to indenture him on his first day, a habit of literally censoring some of its own dialogue (mostly, though I would be willing to bet not entirely, for comedic effect), and of course, this admirably-insane single page of exposition, which is, in its entirety, most of the worldbuilding that we’ve gotten so far.
As for what this thing is actually about, well, our protagonist, Iroha, enrolls essentially out of lack of better options. The titular academy is mostly but not entirely a girls’ school, and Iroha is in fact crossdressing throughout the entire thing, almost as a matter of fact. This might conveniently dovetail into some sort of harem setup later on, but the emphasis must be on the “some sort” there, given Isshin’s history with that genre. More importantly; he’s a total airhead and doesn’t have the slightest brain for cryptography at all. Enough so that, when he’s handed his first assignment in his home room (where he sits directly behind the beautiful and brilliant Kyoha. Keep her in mind), he has no real idea what to make of it.
Things seem rather dim for Iroha until he runs into Kogoe, who is on the run from Kyoha and her girls for reasons we’re not currently privy to. Iroha hides Kogoe, aided by the fact that Kyoha is immensely dismissive of him, writing him off as a “token boy”. (A meta-joke? Maybe.) Kogoe, grateful, offers Iroha these.
Google Glass, eat your heart out.
She then lightly teases Iroha about the possibility that she might be dangerous. Is this foreshadowing? Probably, although if she actually is a war criminal that’s less foreshadowing than one or two-shadowing. What we might make of her claim that she enrolled at the academy so she can become “a hero” without “resorting to violence” is similarly fairly up in the air. None of this is that strange; first chapters are supposed to have a lot of setup. (I also feel compelled to point out the SHAFT-style head tilt here. Look at that smirk; priceless.)
The real payoff of the first chapter comes when Kyoha and her circle confront Iroha again. Kyoha, correctly, accuses Iroha of having gotten someone else to do the assignment they were handed earlier. When Iroha denies the accusation, Kyoha forces a wager on her, and it’s here where things start to really take off. (Another sidenote; look at her face in that first panel. Positively Seto Kaiba-ish.)
As mentioned, those glasses that Kogoe gives Iroha aren’t actually just for show. They are, for lack of a better way to put it, hacking glasses. An AR interface that both solves no small amount of any given puzzle on its own but also directly aids Iroha in completing the rest. It seems like quite a handy thing to have at a school full of crypto nerds!
It’s a Unix system, he knows this.
The puzzle as-given turns out to have a fairly simple lateral thinking-esque solution (the cryptogram refers to someone, as Kyoha says, “amongst us.” Thinking about this for a few seconds will tip you off that the grammar there includes Iroha as well. Iroha himself, naturally, is the solution to the puzzle).
But we’re not done yet! In a final and very Isshin-y twist to this situation, this then happens.
Note the speech bubbles; that’s not Iroha himself talking. That’s the glasses. Or rather, Kogoe talking through them. During his very first day at school, Iroha has gotten Kyoha, earlier established not only as a brilliant cryptanalyst but also the heiress to a weapons company, under his thumb, through no active will of his own. Time will tell if that actually holds.
The opening chapter’s final scene is this cut back to Kogoe, squirreled away in some lair, where she casually ropes another definition of the term “crypto” into this manga’s world.
Cryptocurrency certainly works better as the proverbial treasure chest in what promises to be a wild battle-of-wits adventure than it does here in the real world, but more than anything, this scene did make me wonder if Cipher Academy might be more ambitious than I was initially inclined to give it credit for. Certainly, the “censored” speech bubbles are a funny joke, but they too could easily point to something more substantial. This early on, it’s hard to make strong claims, so firmly within the realm of speculation is where we remain.
In terms of pure quality, I’d call Cipher Academy more solid and promising than an out-and-out show stopper, but given that NISIOISIN is involved, it seems likely that even if it totally crashes and burns, it’ll at least do so entertainingly. The fact that Iroha himself is functionally just a pawn of Kogoe at the moment points toward some interesting possible dynamics; either one where Iroha is constantly shuffled between opposing forces, like a repeatedly-captured bughouse chess piece, or one where he must learn to leverage his limited assets in the form of the glasses in order to become a proper contender in his own right. There are a lot of open questions about how the world of Cipher Academy even functions, too.
All of this and more provides a number of opportunities for the manga to open up in interesting ways. I just hope that it actually takes them. If it does, you will likely see Cipher Academy in this column again.
Cipher Academy can be read legally, for free, in English, on MangaPlus.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Magic Planet Anime posts will be extremely irregular for the foreseeable future. See this post for details.
One Piece Every Day is a column where I read a chapter of One Piece every single day—more or less—and discuss my thoughts on it. Each entry will have spoilers up to the chapter covered in that day’s column.
Please keep in mind that many other readers are also first-timers. Do NOT spoil anything beyond this point in the comments!
The Cover Issue: Ritchie the Lion leads what is now his crew to a mysterious island. I’m interested to see where this goes.
Poor Gin. The guy’s got a sense of honor and compassion, but he’s sworn his life to Don Krieg, who has neither. You do wonder how people like that get mixed up in situations like this.
But mixed up Gin very much is; Krieg is so unhappy with Gin’s recent face turn that he fires a cannonball filled with poison gas onto the ship. His pirates have masks to filter the gas out, including Gin himself. But Gin, bless the foolhardy bastard, does this.
Thus, when the gas hits, Gin scrambles to help out a few of the others onboard, willfully abandoning his own life.
Death is never a certain thing in One Piece, but Gin certainly appears to die from exposure to the toxin not long later. The chapter, and thus, the volume, end on this image. Luffy is Gum-Gum gonna kill somebody. (Specifically; Krieg.)
And that is, unfortunately, also where we leave One Piece Every Day itself, for at least a time.
I’ve really enjoyed doing these articles, but I think I overestimated my own personal ability to literally do them every day. I want to continue with them in some form or another but I’m not sure what would be appropriate and would actually keep y’all engaged. If you have any suggestions, feel free to drop them in the comments or on my Discord server. Otherwise, I am going to take some time to brainstorm and hopefully come up with a solution that is both enjoyable for all of you and practical for myself.
Until next time.
One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!
Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
Magic Planet Anime posts will be extremely irregular for the foreseeable future. See this post for details.
One Piece Every Day is a column where I read a chapter of One Piece every single day—more or less—and discuss my thoughts on it. Each entry will have spoilers up to the chapter covered in that day’s column.
Please keep in mind that many other readers are also first-timers. Do NOT spoil anything beyond this point in the comments!
Of all the bit characters One Piece has introduced so far, Gin is one of my favorites. Pin the guy to a dial with “total softie” at one end and “badass dual-wielder of what look like but probably aren’t tonfas” on the other, and then just wiggle it back and forth really fast. That’s basically Gin, who makes his third turn in the manga. To put it in wrestling terms; he’s gone from a face, to a heel, and now back to a face again.
Most of this chapter consists of he and Sanji actively fighting, and for most of the fight it really doesn’t seem like he’s pulling any punches. One of the spectator pirates describes Sanji having his “bones beaten to shards”, which is certainly a colorful bit of description if nothing else. The visuals we get as Gin’s legendary brutality is described are pretty evocative.
But of course, we don’t care about the scores of anonymous pirates that died before the start of this story, which is why the big tentpole moment of this chapter is Gin doing this.
Yeah, the guy has a change of heart because Sanji was so nice to him. The consequences of this? Questions for tomorrow’s chapter, although I will note that Krieg does not seem pleased.
One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!
Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
One Piece Every Day is a column where I read a chapter of One Piece every single day—more or less—and discuss my thoughts on it. Each entry will have spoilers up to the chapter covered in that day’s column.
Please keep in mind that many other readers are also first-timers. Do NOT spoil anything beyond this point in the comments!
The Cover Issue: A lionizing figure leads a revolution, it would seem. I really, really want these guys to show up in the main story now. There is nothing on Earth funnier to me, in this moment, than a lion leading a pirate crew.
In today’s chapter, the battle for the hull and soul of the restaurant ship continues, but not without an interesting new wriggle. Yesterday it seemed like Gin might be betraying Don Krieg outright. Today’s chapter makes it clear that’s not true, he just feels honor-bound to kill Sanji himself. A peculiar buccaneer’s honor, if ever I’ve seen it.
Another important thing happens; Don Krieg reestablishes his bad guy bonafides. How? By tricking Luffy into almost wrecking the rest of the ship. He makes a huge show of firing a “poison gas cannonball” (yes) at the rubber pirate, but surprise, he actually filled the cannonball with shrapnel.
No, sorry, with shuriken. My mistake.
There’s also a fun small detail here, where Krieg tells his men off for letting the fact that Luffy called them “wimps” get under their skin. He says that being bothered by it only proves Luffy’s point. Not ten pages later, he absolutely seethes over the fact that Luffy won’t acknowledge Krieg as proper King of the Pirates material. Some pirates are just always telling on themselves. Things don’t get immediately resolved here, and we can assume that the battle for the oceangoing restaurant will continue well into the next chapter.
See you then, pirates. But before I do, here’s an intriguing bit of cultural flotsam included at the end of this chapter.
The very first One Piece popularity poll, so far as I can tell. I’m a little sad that Nami ranked behind Red-Hair Shanks, who hasn’t shown up since the prologue, but eh, young boys, am I right?
One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!
Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
Hi folks, I always do dread writing things like this. I guess out of some misplaced fear people will be upset with me?
In any case, I’ll cut straight to the point. For the next while, possibly the next long while, posts here on Magic Planet Anime will be a lot less regular. This means I’m probably not going to be hitting every column every week, and there may be fairly long gaps between posts. I sometimes might write fairly random things just for fun if I have the energy, but I’m not going to be capable of posting every column more or less on-time every day of the week like I have mostly (admittedly, not entirely) been doing for this past year.
If all you care about is the “what” and not the “why”, you can stop reading now, but I do feel like I should provide at least some explanation as to why this is happening for those who care or are curious. Hopefully without getting into TMI territory.
The short version is that I’ve been dealing with a fairly serious medical problem since back in April. I won’t go into the icky details, but it’s seriously impacted my ability to do things for myself physically as well as prevented me from walking around like I like to do, so my mental health has suffered pretty severely as well. I’ve been trying to see somebody for this for a long time, but progress has been intermittent and slow, for a whole host of reasons not worth getting into.
I think unfortunately I have been kind of using this blog’s regular schedule as a substitute for a routine, rather than simply building it on top of an existing, healthy routine I already had. This was fine last year and toward the start of this year when I didn’t have any big issues hanging over my head, but now that I do, things have gotten more complicated, and I can’t really be writing about cartoons instead of taking care of important stuff.
Plus; I do think the quality of my writing has suffered a little bit as a result of trying to prioritize consistency. I worry that in focusing on trying to convince myself that this is a “real job”—something that, frankly, is absurd. If anyone doesn’t think I deserve to be paid for what I do here, then doing it more consistently isn’t going to convince them otherwise—I’ve lost a little bit of the passion. Not much mind you, I still routinely put up columns I’m quite proud of. (See herefrom just yesterday, for example.) And plenty more that are quite fun to write (I really must stress that I’ve loved doing One Piece Every Day, even if it is going to be as impacted as anything else). My hope is that by dialing back the scale of my operations, I’ll make fewer, but better columns. And then, when I’ve got all my health issues sorted, I will be able to return in full force better than ever.
As for the immediate future, I have a couple One Piece Every Day columns that will go up over the next three or so days. After that, it’s all a big question mark, and I’m really not trying to push myself, so I don’t want to make any promises. There definitely won’t be much going on here next week, since I’ll be out of town. (I’m being taken on vacation by some close friends. Thankfully, they are paying.)
In any case, I highly recommend following me on Twitter if you want to be kept in the loop. Plus, I sometimes write (much more briefly) about anime there as well. Lastly, if this blog has ever brought you any joy or made you think about something in a new way, please do consider donating, every cent helps and I don’t have any other sources of income.
I think that’s about the shape of it, friends. I’ll be seeing you when I see you.
Oh, and yes, One Piece Every Day will be keeping its name. It would be excellent if I could keep up the “once per day” schedule, but I’ve already missed one just yesterday simply by forgetting to put it up, so uh…no promises. ^ ^;
One Piece Every Day is a column where I read a chapter of One Piece every single day—more or less—and discuss my thoughts on it. Each entry will have spoilers up to the chapter covered in that day’s column.
Please keep in mind that many other readers are also first-timers. Do NOT spoil anything beyond this point in the comments!
The Cover Issue: You know who can beat both an acrobat and a lion tamer in combat? An actual lion.
I like chapters like this that are defined by a couple of solid “WTF” moments. Selfishly, that’s partly because they’re easy to write about, but also I just think it’s fun when a chapter is wholly built around one or two big punches like this.
The fight on board the restaurant’s secondary battle deck continues as the chapter opens. Sanji makes a very brave and spirited showing that he isn’t about to let anyone just walk all over the deck of his beloved ship, not with himself still in debt to Zeff for saving him.
Just one problem; Luffy is also still on board, and he has other ideas.
I do so love Luffy’s habit of just calling all of his moves Gum-Gum Whatever.
Yeah he shatters the battle deck into splinters. Because um….to be honest I’m not totally sure what Luffy’s plan is here? Something about sinking the ship so that Krieg’s men won’t get their prize? He does have some good points about Sanji’s recklessness, though.
In any case, it doesn’t actually matter, because Luffy’s little plan is interrupted by the other big “who did what now?” of this chapter.
Normally I’m not super keen on “this character we’ve introduced as a villain is secretly a decent person” as a development, but I make exceptions for characters who are based as fuck.
And the chapter basically ends there! With Gin betraying his boss and with Krieg saying this.
Tomorrow: The battle for the restaurant rages on.
One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!
Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
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