Posted on June 13, 2022 in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 7

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.

Hello once again, pirates! Let’s start with a bit of meta talk today. This is the first column written after I started actually publishing these, and I’d like to take a moment to sincerely thank each and every one of you who’s supported this project so far. Reading One Piece every day is a hell of an undertaking even with you guys also on-board. Without you, it would be nearly impossible. So yes, sincere thanks all around and I do mean it from the bottom of my heart.

Some points of contention have arisen, though! I’m eventually going to put up a small Frequently Asked Questions page that I can direct folks to for stuff like this, but just to very quickly explain the two things I’ve gotten the most question marks over:

“What are you calling him Zolo and not Zoro?” – The official translation uses “Zolo.” It’s worth noting that both are rendered the same in Japanese (and I do tag the articles with both names), but Viz says it’s Zolo, so “Zolo” is what I’ll be using, in much the same way that the guy from Spy x Family is “Loid” instead of “Lloyd.”
“Why are you reading the black and white version? There are full-color versions that cover most of the manga.” – I prefer to read the manga as close to originally written and inked as I can, and the black and white is better for that.

And that’s the reasoning behind both of those decisions.

But hey, you may well not care about any of that and just want me to get on with it already. Fair enough! Let’s get back to the story. (Though, if you do have any other questions, feel free to sound off in the comments below.)

So! Captain Morgan is dead! We see his damn body slumped on his back on the ground, so that’s pretty final, and I suppose I was wrong yesterday, because his son seems to be out of commission, too. This chapter, then, deals with the fallout of his death. Mostly, people are pretty grateful.

Koby is relieved to learn that Morgan ruled by fear and that the navy isn’t really like that. (Hmm.) Luffy, Zolo, and Koby are rewarded with a hearty meal from the mother of that little girl Zolo befriended. Luffy also impressively manages to scarf down more food than Zolo despite the fact that a bit earlier in the chapter the latter literally passes out from starvation. As they eat, Luffy boldly lays out his plan to travel to the Grand Line to find the One Piece. (A treasure whose name I constantly have to remember not to italicize, despite every bone in my body screaming at me to do so.)

Koby will not be accompanying them, given that he’s still determined to join the navy. But, as Luffy puts it, even if they go their separate ways, they’ll always be friends. That’s a nice thought; that even if the people we meet in life eventually leave us, the real value is that we met at all. And he thanks Luffy and Zolo for teaching him how to stick up for himself.

All this makes for a cute interstitial, but it doesn’t last. The navy boys inform Luffy that, despite his and Zolo’s heroics, they’re pirates, so they can’t be allowed to just lounge about in a navy town. To their limited credit; they do at least let Luffy and Zolo go without reporting them, but this is still a pretty rough thing to do, and it’s called out as such by a few background characters.

Koby, meanwhile, has his future employment with the navy put into jeopardy by this whole event, since the officer he pleads to let him join up thinks he might be a pirate spy. Luffy has a solution to this, of course; violence. Or rather, provoking someone else to violence. He pretends that he’s going to tell the officer about Koby’s past with Alvida, threatening Koby’s career with the navy. This spurs the former cabin boy to fight back (although, obviously, he’s not a match for Luffy, despite getting a solid hit in).

“Disturbing the peace” in this fashion gives Luffy and Zolo plenty of reason to leave, and they make their way to do so.

But it doesn’t take Koby long to figure out that Luffy was deliberately trying to push him away for his own benefit. Accordingly, he runs out to say goodbye to them as they leave anyway, and the sailors prove themselves good sports in their own way by doing this.

With their friend behind them, Luffy and Zolo set out toward the Grand Line, departing with Koby on amicable terms. But, the seas ahead aren’t quite crystal clear.

A single post-chapter page informs us that this is the Great Age of Piracy! An age where “pirates beyond number raise their flags to battle for fame and fortune.” Perhaps it could be said, then, that the true start of Luffy’s journey—and ours—is here.

That’s the first week of One Piece down, friends. Many more lie ahead of us.

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Posted on June 12, 2022 in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 6

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.

Today we come to a problem I was pretty sure we’d face eventually.

So; this chapter is really good. The issue is that it’s almost entirely a single action scene. This is something you can do in the serial manga format. If your average chapter is 20 pages, and you’re reasonably confident that you’ll get enough chapters to tell the, you know, story parts of your story, you can stretch your legs a bit. Some chapters are entirely or almost entirely the “blood” part of the ancient “love, blood, and rhetoric” triangle. This is one such chapter. It’s just always a bit of a challenge to write about something so kinetic.

I can give you the actual events of things in a single sentence; Luffy and Zolo fight Axe-Hand Morgan, and Morgan loses. We learn a few more things in here, admittedly. Morgan seems to have some weird sway over his men, as at one point he orders them to shoot themselves for “cowardice” and they almost do it. Mind control? Something Else? Who’s to say? It’s early days. (For me, at least. I’m sure at least some of you have read One Piece before and are smirking right now.)

Although, on the note of supernatural abilities, this chapter does make mention of the “Devil Fruit” first alluded to back in Chapter 1. My guess then is that these devil fruits are the manga’s plot tokens; Luffy became a rubber band man upon eating one. I’m quite sure that other varieties of fruits could grant different powers. (Honestly, now that I type it out, it just seems obvious. Is this what the vending machine coins in Gleipnir were riffing on?)

^{Sir, I would like to venture that you—a man named “Axe-Hand Morgan” who, in fact, does have a hand that is an axe—are not a good judge of what is ordinary or not ordinary.}

The only other things of note that occur are that Zolo and Koby both get little moments of solidarity with Luffy. The former’s is depicted in the column banner, and Luffy replies to it in a very Luffyish way.

And Koby is brave in the face of what may well be death as Morgan’s son takes him hostage. He needn’t be scared, of course, since Luffy rescues him as part of the battle that unfolds here.

Beyond that, I’m honestly at a bit of a loss. I will say that Oda’s panel composition and command of visual storytelling are really spot-on even in this early stage of the manga. You could remove the dialogue and still have a solid idea of what’s happening, and all of this stuff is just a genuine treat to look at. But aside from that, there’s only so many ways to rephrase “this is all really badass.” Still, if we’re truly in for the long haul I suppose I should be okay with repeating myself at times. So let me say; this is all really badass.

My absolute favorite pages in this chapter are actually the last two, where we see Morgan attacking, and then the aftermath of his being struck down by Zolo on the following page, but not the strike itself, a lovely little visual trick that gives you a brief “wait, what happened?” jolt before what exactly occurred dawns on you. It’s a neat way of making Zolo’s attack somehow seem even cooler by not depicting it at all. I imagine some kid reading that on their way home from school in ’97 and thinking it was the raddest thing they’d ever seen, and that just puts a smile on my face.

Now, it’s not clear if Morgan is actually dead. Generally, in work like this, if you don’t see someone literally get a head chopped off or something similarly definitively fatal, their return is always a possibility. (And either way they still have Morgan’s annoying son to deal with.) Is more stylish violence to come? I suppose we’ll see.

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!

Posted on June 11, 2022 in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 5

Please keep in mind that many other readers are also first-timers. Do NOT spoil anything beyond this point in the comments!

An odd thing about covering anime and manga, at least for me, is that over the years I’ve run into a lot of things that I really love certain parts of but really dislike certain other parts of. It’s way too early to tell if One Piece will eventually enter that particular box, but it’s certainly true of this chapter, which is probably both the best of these first few we’ve read so far and the first one I’ve had any serious qualms with.

Both of these stem from a flashback that takes up the bulk of the chapter. This, basically, is Zolo’s backstory. These kind of one-chapter “here’s this guy’s Whole Deal” narrative shotgun blasts have been common in anime and manga for a long time, but this is a pretty solid one, and I do like what it does for Zolo’s character.

The gist here is simple; Zolo was, as a child, a sword-fighting student at a dojo, and was constantly beaten in training exercises by his rival, Kuina. He gets so frustrated by his constant losses that he challenges said rival to a real duel with real swords, only to lose that too and walk away unscathed only because Kuina spares him any actual harm. The two talk; Kuina and Zolo both have their frustrations, and the two eventually vow that one day, one of the two will become the world’s greatest swordsman. But, not long after they make that solemn oath, Kuina dies in a freak accident. Zolo must now keep the promise himself, and become the world’s greatest swordsman on his own. He even learns how to fight with three swords, solely so he can use Kuina’s as well.

As a piece of stylistic work and economical storytelling, this is great stuff. Stories like this have very old roots, so it’s not exactly innovative, but there’s a lot to be said for technique. The trick of widening the blackspace between manga panels to indicate a flashback is utilized really well here, and it adds a palpable weight to the reminiscence. The drawings within the panels themselves are stylish, too. I’m particularly fond of this one, where Zolo and Kuina clash against a full moon.

But here’s what bothers me, okay? Kuina, Zolo’s late childhood rival, was a girl. A girl who laments that she’s a girl, because AFAB people¹ tend to lose muscle mass and get a bit weaker as they get older, and she thinks it’ll stop her from reaching her true potential. To both the character of Zolo’s credit and that of the manga on the whole; this idea is pretty sternly rebuked as unimportant by Zolo himself. In fact, that refutation is what leads to their promise to begin with.

But, of course, Kuina dies. Off-panel, even. By falling down the stairs, even. Now, there’s only so much I can hold all this against One Piece, considering that it was still finding its footing this early on, and that it is hardly the first or last piece of literature to do something like this, but it’s not exactly a terrific sign when the first female character in the whole thing with some actual motive and characterization gets killed off almost immediately, is it?

So, that’s not a storytelling decision I’m fond of, certainly. But the flashback in general is at least a strong foundation on which Zolo’s character can be built. Zolo is one of just a couple One Piece characters I was at all aware of before starting this project (it’s hard to miss a guy with a sword between his teeth), and it’s cool to know the Watsonian explanation for that iconic design element. (I think the Doylistic one probably boils down to Oda asking himself “wouldn’t it be badass if a guy had a sword between his teeth?” Feel free to correct me in the comments if I’m wrong and he’s actually explained this in an interview or something.)

Meanwhile, back in the present, a bunch of navy boys line their guns up to execute Zolo. (In fact, the whole flashback happens because he despairs about how he can’t die yet because he’s still got a promise to fulfill. You know how it goes.) Not to worry, though; our favorite stretchy pirate boy comes to his rescue.

It’s a classic bit of shonen badassery, and Zolo is so impressed—or perhaps just grateful that he can still fulfill his promise—that he pledges to join Luffy’s crew right then and there. And just like that, Straw Hat Luffy gains his first crewman. And hey, a guy with three swords isn’t a bad place to start!

^{1: Obviously the manga does not put it quite in those terms, being a comic for young boys written in the late 90s, but you get what I mean.}

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Posted on June 9, 2022 in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 3

In today’s chapter, Koby successfully navigates Luffy’s ship to a navy town, a feat that astonishes the young pirate. The fact that Luffy apparently expected to become King of the Pirates by just aimlessly drifting from place to place is pretty great.

More importantly, we meet a couple people here. Chiefly there’s Roronoa Zolo, the tough-as-nails bounty hunter mentioned who was mentioned in the last issue and is currently taking up the banner image for the first but probably not last time. Luffy ponders trying to get him to join his crew, while Koby reveals that he has extremely simplistic views on rehabilitative justice.

Like everyone else we’ve met in One Piece so far, he’s a classic archetype; the bounty hunter with a heart of gold. Everyone in town is terrified of him, to the point that Luffy just mentioning him causes a ruckus at a local tavern. (The same happens when he mentions the “Captain Morgan” who apparently runs the whole place, but we don’t meet him yet here.)

But when we actually meet him a bit later, it becomes obvious that he has a soft center. He has an old school “tough guy / cute little kid” friendship with a local girl, who comes to bring him food and talk to him while he’s serving his sentence of being tied to a post in the prison yard. That friendship arouses the displeasure of one of the local bigshots; the other character we meet in this chapter.

Honestly, “mean, privileged rich guy” is almost cheating when it comes to creating antagonistic characters. Doubly so when their privilege is inherited and they threaten to “tell daddy” when something goes wrong, both of which are true of Helmeppo. Triply so when they’re also such a vile motherfucker that they’re mean to kids, which Helmeppo also is. (Not content with making a guard escort the little girl out of the prison, he smashes her rice balls into the ground! What a dick!)

It very briefly looks like Helmeppo might at least have a sense of fair play; he’s been telling Zolo that if he can survive for a month tied to that post, he’ll be free to go. But, shocker, at the end of the chapter we learn that that’s not actually true, and he’s planning to have the bounty hunter executed in three days. Upon learning this, Luffy delivers on his apparently once-per-chapter obligation to sock a bad guy directly in the face.

Helmeppo’s bloody-mouthed quip about “making an enemy of the navy” is where the chapter ends, setting us up with a thrilling cliffhanger for next time.

I haven’t really been mentioning the after-chapter bonus pages up ’til now, because I’m not terribly clear on if they were part of the original print run or were added at a later date in a rerelease. (Allusion to “Luffy’s Flag”, which hasn’t shown up yet, makes me think the latter.) I’m mentioning this one, though, because it’s a cute little drawing exercise—the sort of thing that really drives home just exactly how young One Piece‘s target audience is, or at least initially was—and I thought y’all might potentially be interested.

I gave it a quick go myself. I admit; I’m not much of a visual artist. But I think for doodling it in Paint.NET with my mouse it certainly could’ve come out worse.

^{Now available on your local NFT marketplace.}

If you deign to partake in this particular game and can doodle a more convincing jolly roger, do feel free to drop a link in the comments or to show me on Twitter. I’d be delighted to see such a thing.

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!

Posted on June 8, 2022 in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 2

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.

“I’ve set myself to become King of the Pirates…and if I die trying…then at least I tried!”

The very first person Luffy D. Monkey tells about his ambition to become King of the Pirates is a dejected, down-on-his-luck cabin boy named Koby. I don’t know what it is, but that’s just absolutely hilarious to me for some reason. He’s the Jimmy Olsen to Luffy’s Superman, except I think if you put Koby and Olsen in a fight, Olsen would probably win.

I said when I began this project that I wouldn’t sugarcoat my opinion if I felt One Piece did something problematic or just straight up bad. We don’t cross into the latter at all here, but the former….eh, yeah, kind of. There’s just something a little weird about this chapter’s villain, a beauty-obsessed overweight woman with a huge mace named Lady Alvida. That said; I’ve definitely seen a lot worse, so I’ll not harp on it too hard, here.

Mostly, she serves as a decent starter villain for Luffy. Her modus operandi seems to be very simple; she asks her crew, under her wood-deck tyranny, who is the fairest of them all. If they don’t say her, she hits them with a giant mace.

When Luffy confronts her, he has an obvious opening; since his body is made of weird magic rubber stuff, he can’t be hurt by the mace, which Alvida doesn’t see coming because, well, why in the living thunder would she? Luffy takes advantage of her confusion, and promptly decks her across the face. I really hope he keeps doing this to every villain, it’s funny as hell.

More important is that we get a little bit of exposition here! Koby balks at the very notion that Luffy could ever be King of the Pirates, which eventually leads him to reply with this article’s lead quote. He incredulously mentions that Luffy will have to go to the Grand Line if he wants to accomplish such a thing. What’s the Grand Line? Who knows! A “graveyard for pirates”, apparently, which sounds suitably dangerous for our hero. Also, I had no idea that One Piece was named after an actual thing within its universe, but apparently Gold Roger’s treasure is called the “One Piece.”

In general this chapter does a lot to establish that, yeah, even ten years after the prologue, Luffy is still kind of amusingly dumb. It’s a likable sort of dumb; he doesn’t really sugarcoat anything and speaks his mind in an extremely straightforward way, even when he maybe shouldn’t.

The beginning of the chapter reestablishes that he can’t swim (who am I to judge? Neither can I), and he almost dies by being sucked into a whirlpool. Only to emerge like this a few pages later.

Luffy is an odd one, and he ends this chapter with a new boat (still just a small dinghy, but hey, it’s a new small dinghy), and a new companion; the aforementioned cabin boy, who wants to eventually join the navy.

A pirates’ graveyard and a mysterious bounty hunter. I wonder what sort of adventure our boys are about to sail themselves into? I suppose we’ll find out tomorrow.

Until then.

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!

Posted on June 7, 2022June 7, 2022 in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 1

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.

The temptation when starting a project like this is always to make grand statements of intent and purpose. I’ve already explained my reasoning at length in the intro article, though, so all that’s really left to do is aweigh the proverbial anchors and set sail. As I mentioned there, some back of the envelope math tells me that even if I keep up the rate of one chapter per day, every single day, with no breaks, and even if no new material came out at all, it will take me somewhere on the order of three years to catch up to the current chapter. Lots of things can happen in three years, but the great cliché goes that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. We take that step today, together. I do hope you’re reading along.

I wonder what it was like, on that hot July day in ’97, to read the first chapter of One Piece. Did people read this and just know that they had something special on their hands? I certainly didn’t, I was a mere three years old at the time and even if I could’ve read comic books of any kind, I don’t believe One Piece was translated into English for some time until after it debuted.

I suspect that most people took away from the first chapter back then basically what I took away from it today; it’s got some really great action scenes and some nice cartoony art. For the first step of a thousand-mile journey, that’s probably more than enough.

Another thing that strikes me right out of the gate is a strong—albeit, simple—theme. There’s some solid thoughts had about the true nature of strength itself here. We’re introduced to Monkey D. Luffy as a kid, and he has a kid’s idea of what it means to be strong. His role model / eventual hat donor Captain Redhair Shanks just taking it in stride when “mountain bandits” intimidate him and his crew in a bar confuses Luffy. (And because Luffy is a young boy in a shonen manga, he expresses that confusion loudly and angrily.)

But when they go after Luffy himself later in the chapter, Redhair’s crew dispatch most of them with minimal fuss, proving that they could have fought off the bandits all along. There’s having strength, and there’s knowing what to do with it, and over this chapter, Luffy learns the difference. (Or at least, gets the first of however many lessons.) I think the key is here, fairly early on, where Redhair pretty much lays it out plain.

I’m particularly fond of the scene where the bandit leader kidnaps Luffy. He’s eaten by a sea serpent—a properly cartoony-monstrous thing, all crocodile teeth and fish fins—and it’s up to Redhair to fight the thing off and save Luffy. The fact that he loses an arm in the process barely seems to faze him. He saved his little buddy, that’s the important thing, right?

So the prologue ends, and years later when Luffy sets out on his own journey, he avenges his mentor by clocking that “local sea monster” right across the face as he paddles out to sea in nothing more than a wooden rowboat. The two-page spread of Luffy womping the monster is nice and dynamic, incidentally, it’s probably the best art in the whole chapter.

^{If you’re}^not^{reading along you’re probably puzzled as to why he has Mr. Fantastic-esque stretchy powers. The answer is that he ate a magic fruit. Manga truly is a medium without parallel.}

An image that strikes me even more though, is the final page of the chapter. Luffy, despite being alone on a little rickety-rack ship in the middle of the ocean, loudly declares to no one in particular that he’s going to become king of the pirates! To surpass Redhair Shanks (and eventually return the older captain’s straw hat!), presumably find Gold Roger’s buried treasure which we learned about in the chapter’s intro. All that good stuff! Adventure, hoy!

^{As in the ocean, so on land, and as he goes, so too do we.}

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!

Posted on June 6, 2022 in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Announcement & Overview

One Piece, Eiichiro Oda‘s magnum opus, is, by some metrics, the most popular manga ever written. It’s a defining work of the modern shonen landscape, and in a broader sense, massively influential to a whole generation of creative talents both within Japan and abroad. The adventures of Monkey D. Luffy and his crew, the Straw Hat Pirates, have been captivating audiences for 25 years; a quarter of a century as of next month. But, if you know enough about anime and manga to even be aware of this blog, let alone be reading it, you know all of that. So why am I telling you something you already know?

Well, to be frank, despite its massive popularity and a reputation that precedes it by a nautical mile, I’ve never read a single page or watched a single minute of One Piece. For whatever reason, until recently, I’d just never felt compelled to. This is, in its own way, strange for me personally. I’ve been a fan of anime and manga since I was pretty young, and I was a child of the Toonami era of American anime distribution. On top of that, I really like pirate stories! Around that very same time, the Pirates of the Caribbean films were some of my favorites (and I still kind of like them today, despite their poor critical reception and any thoughts I may have about a certain actor who was in them).

But I was a dumb preteen, and then a dumb teen, and when I was that age I had a vague snobbery to my taste in anime. I don’t remember, exactly, but I think, knowing myself at the time, I probably just assumed that anything that was that popular couldn’t possibly be worth my time. In hindsight, this was very stupid for a lot of reasons, but there’s not much sense in dwelling on it. Still, even as I’ve gotten older the time just hasn’t felt right.

It occurred to me a few weeks ago that this was also a very dumb attitude to have. A few things put it in perspective for me; the keen awareness that while I’m not old yet I’m certainly not getting any younger, the recent popularity of tumblr phenomenon Dracula Daily, and my own aforementioned thoughts on a certain actor in a trilogy of pirate movies that I used to like.

And then, about a week ago, I learned—spoiler for a recent One Piece manga chapter, I think, coming literally right after this interjection, you’ve been warned—that there is a trans woman in the series as of a recent chapter of the story. And that scrap of representation was, I think, what the last of my weird, completely irrational, totally pointless defenses against this shonen series needed to fall. “Fuck it” I thought. “What is there to lose?”

Hence; this project. The premise is extremely simple. I will read the One Piece manga. Every single day, you will have a new article to read—usually on the shorter side—about a chapter of said manga. Starting from the beginning. In order. One day at a time.

It will take me, provided I take no breaks, and not accounting for any chapters that have yet to be released, about three years to catch up to where the manga is at the time of this writing, June 6th, 2022. I am setting myself a fundamentally absurd task, to not just read a very long story but to write about it, to write about every single part of it.

I have a lot of reasons for wanting to do this, but the biggest is simply to see if I can. I’m not quite brave enough to leave myself no escape hatches here; if the columns are pulling little interest by the time I’ve finished the first collected volume I’ll probably pull the plug and just continue reading the series by myself. Likewise, if I burn out on the project I will allow myself to take hiatuses. But still, I’m optimistic. The real honest core of this whole project is that I just Want To Do This. It’s a Mt. Everest for a lifelong couch potato.

Also! I want you, yes you, the girl, boy, enby, or whatever else you may be reading this, to read One Piece along with me. A chapter a day is not much; while One Piece on the whole is very long, the individual chapters are only a brisk 20 or so pages each. It will be entirely viable for you, dear reader, to settle in with a chapter of the story and one of my columns at night before you turn in for bed, or in the morning before you go to work. Is assuming that you want to arrogant of me? Maybe, but I think it’ll be fun, and I place a lot of value in fun.

As for how I’m doing this, here are the basics.

I will be reading the chapters myself in chunks, usually a few at a time, because I want to keep a nice buffer for myself so that way there will be—ideally!—a new One Piece Every Day, you know, every day.

I fully intend to give my honest thoughts on each chapter. Those may be very brief or very lengthy, and they may skew positive or negative. (I have already been informed by some well-meaning friends that there are some things in this manga that have Not Aged Well, but I have never shied away from earnestly evaluating art, even if it is problematic at times.)

These columns will have their own archive on the main page, as well as their own “recent posts” section. (They technically already do, that was the reason behind that unexplained change a few days ago, for those of you who noticed.)

And that’s basically it! Conceptually, this is all very simple. It is just a matter of effort. And there’s good news on that front; if you’re reading this, I’ve already read the first week’s worth of chapters, and already have the columns written. So, I’m already getting this ship ready to sail, you just need to decide if you’re on board or not.

I hope to see you tomorrow, for the proper casting off.

Until then.

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!

Posted on April 26, 2022April 1, 2023 in Manga, The Manga Shelf

The Manga Shelf: The Exuberant Lesbian Wizard Science of THE MAGICAL REVOLUTION OF THE REINCARNATED PRINCESS AND THE GENIUS YOUNG LADY

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.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before; totally average person from our world dies and gets reincarnated as someone of note in a stock JRPG-style fantasy universe. This is, fundamentally, the rock that the modern iteration of the isekai genre is built on. There are many, many variations of it, but the central premise remains familiar to anyone who has even a slight familiarity with modern anime.

The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and The Genius Young Lady, monstrously long title and all, is really only different in one key way. Our protagonist—and her obligatory love interest—are both girls.

Yes, it’s true, a yuri fantasy isekai. There are a couple of these. I’m in Love with the Villainess is well-liked, and The Executioner and Her Way of Life has an anime airing right now. Revolution Princess is a bit simpler than either of those, though. It is, at least going by the nineteen chapters currently available in English, a more straightforward heroic fantasy. (That’s nineteen chapters of the manga, for the record. It’s based on a light novel, presumably much farther along, by Piero Karasu.) It also draws a bit on the “tech boost” subgenre, a style wherein the hero uses their modern knowledge to fast-track technological development in their new world. It’s a fraught, and frankly, very silly, style, but that doesn’t much matter here. We haven’t really seen many fruits of this pursuit of better living through magitek yet, and indeed some part of the series’ point seems to be in illustrating how difficult doing such a thing would actually be. But I risk getting ahead of myself. Let’s start with the basics.

Anisphia (“Anis” for short) is the princess of a roughly medieval European-ish kingdom somewhere in a fantasy world. She used to be someone else, in another life. We don’t learn much about that “someone else,” but we do learn, crucially, that she was obsessed with the idea of magic. Now living in a world where it’s a reality, she’s hellbent on learning as much about it as she can. (Credit here, the scene of young Anis’ personality being “built” puzzle piece by puzzle piece, and finally completing as her past life memories come rushing back to her, is an intriguingly poetic visual.)

Because of a condition, she can’t actually use magic herself, directly. But over the course of her young life, she studies it extensively, becoming something of a magical mad scientist, creating useful gadgets for herself and inventing an entire field of study; a sort of “applied science of magic” called magicology. If that all seems a little dry to you, early parts of the manga are indeed a bit so. Things get more interesting when we’re introduced to Anis’ co-protagonist.

The daughter of a duke, one Euphyllia (“Euphy”), is renounced by the man she was betrothed to. That man? Anis’ older brother, the kingdom’s prince. It’s not totally clear why he’s dumping Euphy—he claims she was talking badly to a lady-friend of his who he seems to have far stronger feelings for, but the situation seems more complicated than that and we don’t learn all the details—but he’s doing it very publicly, destroying her reputation in the process.

Cue Anis, flying in on a magic broomstick of her own design. In an absurd—even in-universe—turn of events, Anis sees this as an opportunity. She reasons that if her older brother doesn’t need Euphy anymore, maybe Euphy should come with her instead. None of the nobles present are particularly okay with this, but Anis does manage to (eventually) convince the only person whose opinion on the subject really matters; Euphy herself.

Even this early on, Anis’ spur-of-the-moment decision to pick up this random disgraced woman as her (we soon learn) lab assistant is strange, but Anis is a beaming ray of pure personality, and it’s hard both for the other characters and for us the audience to not be charmed by her. Her sudden absconding with the Duke’s daughter somehow manages to scan as romantic.

Anis is, in general, an endearing protagonist, although not a flawless one. She’s charming when taken with the magic of her world, which she’s singlehandedly wrought into a science mostly by herself. She has an enthusiasm for admiring her own handiwork (sometimes to a positively Dexter’s Laboratory-ish degree).

But she also has a cool side. She was born without the ability to use magic naturally, and so Sciences her way around problems that would ordinarily be solvable with “regular” spellcasting. It’s easy to be cynical about this kind of thing nowadays, but Revolution Princess sells this characterization very well, partly by making it clear how into her Euphy is, and partly by cutting it with her general immaturity to not make her too perfect. She can occasionally come across as remote and, when pursuing her interests, reckless.

(There’s also the matter that her disregard for the spirits that are responsible for the world’s magic system, and the stones they leave behind that she uses to power her devices, does feel kind of Reddit Atheist-y at points. Thankfully it doesn’t come up enough to be a real problem.)

Euphy, meanwhile, is so dazed by the sudden shakeup in her life that it takes a while for her to know what to do with herself. She knows she likes Anis, at least in some way. She knows that all the training she did to become the future queen—remember, Anis’ brother is a crown prince—was for naught. She feels directionless and adrift. Anis doesn’t entirely get this, and the two come into conflict a few times over it. Anis, you see, is more than content to let Euphy do what she likes, but since she doesn’t know what “what she likes” even is, it just makes her feel restless.

They come to an understanding during of the manga’s first—and currently only—big, dramatic arc, wherein Anis decides to try stopping a rampaging dragon. Why? Well, aside from the fact that if left unchecked it might kill a lot of people, she wants the magical stone it carries within it to make more magitek gadgets. Fair enough. There’s a whole other slate of stampeding monsters to take care of, too, and Anis gets to really show off her action heroine chops here. (For those of you who, like me, just enjoy watching anime girls go full stone-cold killer, this is probably enough to sell the manga alone.)

The fight with the dragon is a visual treat, artist Harutsugu Nadaka‘s compositional skill is really something to behold in general, and he knocks the climactic battle scene here out of the park. I could easily fill this whole article with examples, and the dragon itself is worth highlighting; all shadowy wings beating the air, teeth and claws.

But I have to say my personal favorite is this absolutely bonkers page where Anis uses one of her gadgets, a magic dagger, to split the dragon’s breath in two.

These would be the obvious highlights of any hypothetical anime adaption as well, but don’t consider Nadaka a one-trick pony who’s only good at fight scenes. He can also excellently portray say, warm intimacy or imposing projection equally well, and it is this that gives the manga most of its visual strength. It’s immersive in a way that’s all too easy to take for granted.

When Euphy saves Anis from her first, botched run at the dragon, the princess is undeterred, and the panel makes her look positively majestic. You can practically see her cape flapping in the wind, feel the breeze blowing, and smell the sulfur and burnt fabric. It’s only natural that this eventually leads to that page of Anis splitting the dragon’s breath above. How could someone this confident not be able to do the impossible?

This is the difference between a relationship that feels convenient and one that feels real, and it’s here where Anis and Euphy seem to finally “click” with each other for good. The general sentiments here are old—far older than the manga format itself—but they’re expressed very well. Reading Revolution Princess, I get why Euphy and Anis are into each other, and the visuals play a huge part in selling that. At a ball, some weeks later and held in celebration of Anis’ victory, Euphy straight-up confesses. I’ve seen a lot of confession scenes over the course of my time reading manga, and I have to say that this is one of the sweetest. I absolutely love how we get to see a rare shot of Anis being totally, sincerely flummoxed by someone else’s actions, the brave isekai heroine reverts to a blushing schoolgirl in the face of such strong feelings. (Note also how this scene and the one immediately above mirror each other. I like that, it’s a nice visual touch.)

I’d tell you more—because goodness dear readers, do I ever want more people to pick this up—but in truth, there isn’t much more, at least not yet. Revolution Princess is still a fairly young serialization, and as good as it’s been so far, I feel as though its best chapters are ahead of it. I can only hope it picks up the following it deserves. In addition to its obvious appeal to the WLWs of the world (or just anyone who likes a good romance), there are other, intriguing plots forming in the background; dragon prophecies, jealous older siblings, and and an eccentric girl who “collects curses.” A world is being built here, and while Anis and Euphy are at the center of it, they aren’t the only interesting parts of it.

I often lament that so much yuri focuses solely on the romantic aspect. I like romance (I’m covering two romance anime this very season!), but having some other plot as well definitely helps things feel more fleshed-out and lived in. In general, I’m fond of this current wave of yuri isekai manga, and I hope that Executioner is not the last to get an anime adaption. Stories like this are built on old foundations, but Revolution Princess is a breath of exhilarating, magical fresh air.

Update: If you liked this article, be sure to check out my writeup on the anime!

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Posted on February 6, 2022February 7, 2022 in anime, Weekly Writing Roundups

The Frontline Report [2/6/22]

The Frontline Report is a weekly column where I summarize my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.

I’ve been a bit sick over the past week. Not enough to impact my blogging, thankfully. I was originally going to have just three shows for you this week, but, what the heck, why don’t we start with a new face?

Seasonal Anime

Delicious Party♡Pretty Cure

If you write about a chosen medium, it’s generally good to know what your Geek Buttons are. A Geek Button is a thing–and it can really be anything, a series, a whole genre, a visual style, a specific actor, whatever–where the more “objective” part of your critical toolkit just fails to work, and you are reduced to a blubbering fangirl (or fanboy, or fanby, as the case may be). For me, magical girls in general, and especially Pretty Cure, are a Geek Button. I cannot pretend to be remotely reasonable about them. I love almost all of them like they’re my children and the few exceptions are girls who I just wish were in better shows. I will die on the hill that the magical girl warrior archetype is one of anime’s best and most important contributions to general popular culture.

So with that in mind, please say hello to the newest Pretty Cure series. And indeed, the newest Pretty Cure; Yui Nagomi, AKA Cure Precious (Hana Hishikawa in what is, astoundingly, her first named character role in an anime.)

She is adorable. Dare I say precious?

The first episode of a given Precure series has a lot of beats to hit; introducing the protagonist, introducing her mentor / helper characters, if any, establishing the broad strokes of the plot for the season, nailing down the basic thematic overtone it’s going for, and of course, introducing the bad guys and their particular version of the monsters of the week. It’s a lot of stops to have to hit in a 22-minute episode, but DePaPre swings it admirably. The general direction in this first episode is really just fantastic, and notably, it’s helmed by animation director Akira Inagami, who had a role as a character designer all the way back on the original Futari wa Pretty Cure. (A hearty shout out to my good friend Pike, curator of Dual Aurora Wave, for that information. I’d have never known!)

The whole thing is bouncy and joyous and just alive in a way that really defines the best kids’ anime. The episode is great looking from start to finish, though obviously the real Peak TV moment is Cure Precious’ first henshin sequence.

Also scattered throughout are the traditional “Precure Leap,” a fun nod to an episode of Futari wa, and some truly ludicrous attack names (a 500 Kilocalorie punch, huh?)

I’m also fond of Yui’s “mentor” character here, the lavender haired gnc king Rosemary. He’s delightfully camp in a way that doesn’t feel overbearing or like it’s making fun of anyone.

Her fairy is adorable too, of course.

And I must make a nod toward Gentle (or “Gentlu” as Crunchyroll’s official subs hilariously render her name), who both puts in a supremely cool showing as the anime’s starter villain and is also the smart pick for Character Most Likely To Undergo A Face Turn And Possibly Become a Precure Herself. It wouldn’t be the first time the series has done that. (My favorite example being from Fresh. Which, fun fact; was the first Precure series that Hana Hishikawa watched as a young child in nursery school, going off an interview she gave a few weeks ago.)

^{Gentle wouldn’t even be the first villain with this specific hair color to eventually become a Precure. Will history repeat itself? Time alone will tell.}

The only “bad thing”, really, about DePaPre, is that it won’t appear in this column much. I’ll try to make exceptions for particularly great episodes but given that I watch it with friends on its premiere night, much like Tropical Rouge Precure before it, it can be difficult to find the time, given that these Reports go up on Sunday.

Still, I’ll absolutely be watching every single week. And if my opinion is worth anything to you, I think you should be too.

CUE!

I don’t really know what to think about CUE! Any time I feel like I should just write it off and stop following it entirely, it does this.

“This,” for reference, is another subtly great episode about the inside of the voice acting profession. It doesn’t start out that way; the first third or so of this episode is actually mostly about Haruna’s pet turtle, about whom she says increasingly ridiculous things. (To wit; it’s not a turtle because he has a name, she asks him for advice, and he looks like “an old man” and “a philosopher. It’s all pretty funny.)

But the episode gets serious at around its 1/3rd mark, honing in on the art of injecting emotion into even very short exchanges of words. Haruna’s role, remember, is just “additional voices.” So in her first scene in Bloom Ball, which the girls record here, she only swaps a single sentence with Maika’s character, who only replies with one of her own. And we hear those two sentences some four or five times over the episode’s duration.

I’ve said this before, but running the same scene back-to-back, for any reason, is challenging. You risk boring your audience, and when the scene in question is this short you risk it even more. But, somehow, CUE! pulls it off again.

The mechanics are very simple; the girls learn a little bit about how voice acting works. They record their lines, Haruna and Maika’s get held because the author (present at the recording) remembers that the bit character Haruna is playing comes up again way later in the story. Once again, this is supposed to sell Haruna as someone with an immense amount of untapped voice acting talent. It doesn’t work quite as well as the showstopper she drops in episode 2, but it’s still pretty good, and it proves that when CUE! is on, it’s on.

For something that should be super dry, it manages to stay quite interesting, employing its favorite trick, jumping in and out of the world of the show-within-a-show. Here, since all present are actually recording, things are further embellished by the show being mid-production. No full-color cuts here; it’s all monochrome and pre-correction. (Let’s take a moment to appreciate the nightmare that making a finished cut that looks convincingly unfinished must be.)

Flummoxing as it sometimes is, if CUE! keeps making episodes like this I will continue to watch them. Just, please, I’m begging you, either focus on the idol girls less or make them more interesting.

Princess Connect! Re:Dive

One of the reasons I declined to give Princess Connect! Re:Dive its own dedicated column is that I know my limits. A picture truly can be worth a thousand words, and a gif from a show like this can be worth a short novel. What am I supposed to say about this?

Okay, fine. If you wanted to, if you were some kind of joyless miser, you could be mad that this episode is all set up and no resolution. Frankly I think that’s an absurd criticism, and the idea that everything must be resolved within the space of a single episode just because this show started out as a “slice of life series” is so far removed from how I experience art that I have a difficult time even comprehending it. Nonetheless it is what some people think, and I’ll give those people their moment of acknowledgement here.

For the rest of us; holy shit.

Princess Connect season 2’s fourth episode is the sort of absurd instant-classic that demands rewinds, screencapping, and a visit to Sakugabooru. And it’s the fourth episode of a twelve-episode season. That’s nuts. That’s the kind of comically overconfident flex that usually presages some great disaster. But why would that be the case here? CygamesPictures aren’t working on anything else this year. It’s amazing what a well-equipped studio can do when actually giving its workers proper time to do so.

The actual plot here is cartwheeling fantasy screwiness that wouldn’t be out of place in one of the many, many books with dragons and swords on the cover that I read in middle school. That sounds like an insult, but this sort of high-stakes epic-in-the-old-sense-of-the-word plot is what’s missing from a lot of modern fantasy anime. It’s spectacle; even down to details like Karyl still playing both sides, the guild of animal girls we meet here, and the giant golem fight that caps the episode.

I feel legitimately bad for the other fantasy anime airing right now. It’s not like In The Land of Leadale or Reincarnated as a Fantasy Knockout don’t have their merits, but they aren’t this. The only competition Priconne really has in this regard is Demon Slayer, but while that show definitely looks great, it’s always had issues with making its flashy animation feel like it entirely fit with the rest of the world. Priconne never even sniffs that problem; the compositing is as excellent here as anything else. Even moments where characters are literally just standing around look incredible.

The only real issue is that Priconne’s plot is so mile-a-minute I could see it getting hard to keep up. (I’m already a bit lost myself. Having not played the game probably doesn’t help.) But even so; at least for me, that feeling actually adds to the exhilaration of watching this thing in motion. The Proper Noun Machine Gun has rarely been put to such good use.

Tokyo 24th Ward

Unfortunately we must end this section of the week’s writeup on something of a sour note.

If I had known I was going to be covering Tokyo 24th Ward this frequently, I’d have just made it another weekly column. Maybe that would’ve been a bad idea, though, given how the show’s shortcomings are generally more compelling to me than its strengths, which I increasingly think are actually rather modest.

Fundamentally, the problem is this; if your anime (or movie or book or album or whatever) invokes political themes, you are inviting all comers to scrutinize it from their own political point of view. Everyone on Earth has such a point of view, whether or not they’re cognizant of it. In of itself, that’s fine, but if your work’s political themes are, say, shallow and inadequate, it raises a problem. Are Tokyo 24th‘s shallow and inadequate? I don’t really know. The signals are, shall we say, mixed.

Getting a big head over this kind of thing is nothing new to mainstream TV anime. Turn of the decade classic Code Geass, for example, managed to be good largely by trading away any actual meaningful political commentary for sheer camp value. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to nail more specific and well-thought-out political messages. Akudama Drive did it only two years ago. (Full disclosure: I haven’t seen Akudama Drive myself, at least not yet, but I trust Inkie’s judgment on the series utterly.) It’s also possible–although both less rare and not as impactful–to make broader statements without rendering them entirely meaningless. Something as goofy as Rumble Garanndoll managed that much just last season.

The gist of the plot forming over Tokyo 24th‘s last two episodes has been this; the graffiti artist / hacker Kunai (Souma Saitou, who has been in many support roles like this) is going to blow up a cruise ship full of the ultra-wealthy.

Normally I’d here provide his motivations, and just from what little we’ve learned about him–his upbringing in the ridiculously named Shantytown ghetto in the poorest part of the Ward, his grandmother’s illness, the fact that Ran has eclipsed him artistically–one could come up with a good half dozen motivations for why this poor man might feel motivated to extreme action.

Kunai’s actual motives are different, and much more personal. He’s been tricked into selling an app he developed by the owner of an enormous corporate megalopoly, a fellow named Taki. Taki rewires the program to turn it into that mysterious “Drug D” we’ve been hearing so much about over the past couple of episodes. Kunai’s resentment, then, is borne not from his situation but from something very specific. He feels as though he’s been used. And he’s right about that! He has been used. Ran correctly points out, when the two meet at the episode’s climax, that Kunai is not the “criminal” he self-laceratingly claims to be. He’s a victim of circumstance. On one level, Tokyo 24th humanizing an actual terrorist to this degree is admirable. On another, it seems like an easy out to give Kunai a single grudge motive rather than anything more circumstantial and messy. Plus, there is what actually happens to Kunai.

At the episode’s end, Kouki–that’s Cop Boy, if you’ve forgotten–bypasses the advice of his friends and orders Kunai shot dead by a police sniper. Kunai bleeds out in Ran’s arms, begging his friend to continue to be the one thing he couldn’t: an artist.

It is difficult to know how to take this.

Is it a shocking display–and condemnation–of police brutality? Does the show think he’s in the right to have done that? (I don’t want to think so, but I’ve gone broke overestimating anime before.) Or is this another thing where Shuuta’s enlightened centrist fence-sitting is going to somehow turn out to be the solution? Tokyo 24th has given me very little reason to believe the former might be what it’s going for, but I suppose it’s not impossible. A number of details about Tokyo 24th‘s worldbuilding lead me to believe that won’t be the case (it’s insane that an anime that uses so much graffiti aesthetic has perhaps two Black characters and zero major ones), but I’ve been wrong before. Honestly in this specific situation I’d be happy to be. But for the record, I’m not alone here. Some critics have been far harsher than me. And I’m split between feeling like I’m giving the anime way too much slack and coming down on it way too hard.

It’s unfair, in a way. An anime that tries to be a Statement opens itself up to all kinds of nitpicking from audiences both domestic and abroad that other anime could easily dismiss out of hand. Should I not be giving it some points for even trying? Maybe, but “some points” might add up to a 3 or 4 out of 10 depending on how badly it fucks up the landing, and I’m not at all confident it won’t. Wanting to be a critique of the state of the world isn’t the same as actually being one. All of Tokyo 24th‘s effort will be meaningless if it cannot find some way to intelligently apply it.

We will see Tokyo 24th here again, maybe as soon as next week. For good or for ill I cannot yet say.

Elsewhere on MPA

Let’s Watch SABIKUI BISCO Episode 4 – “Ride the Crab” – For an episode that features absolutely zero Pawoo, this was still quite a good 30 minutes of Sabikui Bisco. There must be a solid Milo / Bisco shipping community out there, right?

Let’s Watch MY DRESS-UP DARLING Episode 5 – “It’s Probably Because…” – I think people are starting to get sick of My Dress-Up Darling‘s over-the-top horniness. Last week I would’ve disagreed, but this past episode was….a lot. And not really in a good way.

That’s most of what I’ve got for you this week, anime fans. But before I go, a small recommendation! A new manga was picked up by Jump recently, and is available officially in English on the MangaPlus website. It’s called Magilumiere Co. Ltd., a magical girl-action-office comedy whatsit that poses the question; “what if being a magical girl was, you know, a full-on career? And what if an ordinary college grad seeking to enter the workforce suddenly found herself basically dropped into a small Magical Girl Company’s employ?” That’s kind of a long question, admittedly, but Magilumiere does have answers.

It’s to soon into the manga’s run for me to have any terribly detailed opinions on it, but I like it so far, and “magical girl + other stuff” is always a fun combination. Give it a read if you’re so inclined.

See you tomorrow for more Sabikui Bisco, friends!

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 Directory to browse by category.

Posted on November 19, 2021November 19, 2021 in Manga, The Manga Shelf

The Manga Shelf: Down and Tapped Out in WIZARD’S SOUL ~HOLY WAR OF LOVE~

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.

“104.3a A player can concede the game at any time.“
-The Comprehensive Rules of Magic The Gathering

I rarely find reason to bring it up on this blog, but I really like trading card games. I have since I was young, when a nascent infatuation with Yu-Gi-Oh! led me to the medium and I developed a fondness for the Empty Jar deck type as soon as I knew enough about the game to know how it worked. There is something compelling, even slightly mystical, about TCGs. And beneath all the corporate politics that drive the practical, business side of their development and proliferation, card games have a magnetism that is rare in popular leisure. They combine the strategy of classic board games like Chess with the brain-teasing presence of concealed information inherited from age-old traditional playing card games. They’re good fun.

But all this is true of me, and even I think that we don’t really seem to appreciate TCGs here in the west to quite the same level that they do over in Japan. Some would blame, again, Yu-Gi-Oh! I’d be more inclined to thank it. For whatever reason, while the anglophone scene has always been dominated by Magic The Gathering, YGO imports, the Pokémon TCG, and more recently, Hearthstone and its competitors, Japan has developed dozens upon dozens of TCGs which seem to wax and wane in popularity with fair regularity. In doing so, they have gained a foothold in popular culture rare for a pure leisure activity. Naturally, this has an influence on anime and manga. Once again, the original Yu-Gi-Oh! anime is by far the most well-known, but there truly are quite a few of these things. And in the manga format, where there is less pressure to actually push product and more allowance to simply tell a story, the card game genre has taken on some interesting forms. Near the top of the year I covered Destroy All of Humanity, It Can’t Be Regenerated, a romcom with an official blessing from Wizards of The Coast and a title nicked from one of the most famous Magic cards of all time. A fair bit older than Humanity is the subject of today’s column; Wizard’s Soul ~Holy War of Love~. It comes to us from back in 2013, and from the pen of Aki Eda, probably best known as the artist for one of the official Touhou manga, Silent Sinner in Blue. Technically, it is also a romance manga. Besides that, it and Humanity have shockingly little in common. (Although like that series, non-TCG aficionados may find themselves a bit lost with this one.)

Frankly, while it does meet the genre’s criteria in a very technical sense, calling Wizard’s Soul a “romance manga” seems fundamentally misaimed. There is romance in it, but the real focus is on our lead, Manaka Ichinose, in a more general sense. She’s a wonderfully full character, and even at her lowest it’s a serious treat to spend most of the series’ relatively brief 22 chapters by her side.

Wizard’s Soul setting is genre-typical. Like the King of Games before it, everyone in Wizard’s Soul takes the titular card game extremely seriously. Skill in “Wizard’s Soul” can ensure entrance to a good college, defines one’s social groups, and informs one’s outlook on life. It’s a bit less camp than the most extreme examples of the genre (a good recent example of the far end of the scale being this season’s Build Divide: Code Black), and there are no supernatural elements, but the core elements of the setup remain. The game itself is some hodgepodged mix of, yes, Magic The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh!, with a few other elements from other games sewn into the fabric for good measure. The rules are never detailed to us at length (although a dedicated reader might be able to reconstruct most of them from what we do learn), because they’re less important than the general feelings of playing a trading card game. Feelings both positive and, importantly, negative.

Manaka herself sticks out by dint of being a card game manga protagonist who has a complicated, thorny relationship with the game that defines her world. There are several aspects to this part of her character, and it’s worth going over them in detail and one at a time.

For one, she does not play the game much at manga’s start. And it’s implied that on the rare occasion she does sit down to play “Wizard’s Soul”–mostly with her younger siblings or occasional customers at the card shop she works at–she deliberately softballs, not caring terribly much about winning. This in spite of the fact that, as we learn, she’s actually very good.

For two, she is that widely-reviled archetype of TCG player. Her specialty is permission control, and it is hilarious how seriously some characters in the earlier parts of the manga take this revelation, acting as they do that her being the equivalent of a mono blue player is “disgusting” and “twisted.”

And the most important bit. Manaka learned how to play WS from her late mother, also a deadly-serious permission player who spent most of her daughter’s childhood holed up in a hospital with some unspecified but evidently very serious illness. Manaka’s mother is an absolutely merciless opponent, and over the course of a number of flashbacks we learn that Manaka never beat her even once. Her mother spent her waning days on Earth beating her daughter in a card game over and over again, offering thorough, detailed criticism each and every time. She pairs this with a superstition that the worse her luck is in real life, the better her card draws are. We see her essentially playing the game on her deathbed, and it’s genuinely pretty disturbing!

This has, understandably, given Manaka quite the complex about playing WS. The specific feelings she describes; remembering positive experiences with the game only as vague blurs but her constant losses to her mother and the ensuing sharp criticism with haunting clarity, almost scan as abusive. (If that sounds silly, consider that the terminally ill angle aside, this is roughly similar to something that happens in real life with chess prodigies.) I’m not sure she’s meant to be read that way, but the signs match up. As the only real opponent that Manaka never beat, and now never can beat, she hangs over the darker parts of the manga like a ghost.

What does all this add up to? A monstrously skilled protagonist who borderline loathes something she’s very good at. And worse, something that is supposed to be fun. We do get little hints that she somewhat still enjoys WS in spite of herself, but only with a pretty heavy sidecart of guilt until the very end of the series.

So what pushes her into actually playing more “Wizard’s Soul” and kicking off our plot? Well, her father falls for a scam and plunges her entire family into debt. A WS tournament–and the associated prize money–offer a simple, if not necessarily easy, way out. Wizard’s Soul, then, is us rooting for her to overcome these impossible odds and the social stigma that comes with even trying. While her playstyle is a million miles away from that of the flashy card combinations that are the norm for the more bombastic angles of the genre, Manaka is a true card game protagonist with regard to her near-prodigal skill. She remains quite compelling to follow throughout the whole series.

About that tournament; to secure enough “ranking points” to be able to enter it, she challenges and, of course, swiftly defeats the strongest player she knows; her close friend and (unknowingly mutual) crush, a boy named Eita. Wizard’s Soul from here on out takes on the structure of a tournament arc. We get into Manaka’s head as she builds and tweaks her deck and, during her matches, gain similar (though more limited) insight into her opponents’ minds as well.

^{Manaka reworks her deck several times over the course of the manga. Here, she’s reworked it into a mill deck. As an aside, I couldn’t help myself from thinking about how WS must allow a crazy amount of sideboarding.}

All of this leads to a rather complicated knot of human drama where the card game is both part of “the point” in of itself but also a lens through which this is all explored. (Not a new innovation in this genre by any means, but more grounded here than most examples.) Manaka is unable to truly enjoy “Wizard’s Soul” itself because playing it dredges up memories of her late mother’s brutal tutoring lessons. Eita is probably actually the most adjusted of the group, as he gets over the sting of his abrupt loss to Manaka rather quickly, before eventually coming over to her corner as a silent cheerer-on during her run in the tournament. Eita’s “fangirl” Koba attempts to sabotage Manaka’s play at every turn, hating her for stealing his attention and affection and then seemingly spurning it.

Her opponents run the gamut in both character archetype and play style. There’s a “romance decker” named Roman who stubbornly refuses to build anything that’s not a convoluted, flashy combo deck, a snooty metagamer, a big-fish-small-pond incarnate in the form of a country girl who’s hit her skill ceiling, an overweight girl who loves playing huge, direct creatures and smashing her enemies’ faces in (and is subject to more than one fat joke, one of the manga’s few real negatives), and many more besides. A lot of them also underestimate her; dismissing her skill as the product of either fluke luck or metagaming. Something that is both true-to-life, and which generally ends quite badly for them.

Manaka triumphs over all of them eventually, furthering both her own personal growth and with the help of Eita himself, who also slips her a rare card into her deckbuilding box at one point.

That card–“Holy War”, from which the manga derives its subtitle–is a pretty direct riff on MTG’s own “Wrath of God”. Which means that improbably, Wizard’s Soul is the second manga I’ve covered this year to indirectly derive its title from this same specific Magic The Gathering card. TCG nerds; eat your heart out. Manaka in fact becomes decently close with almost all of her opponents. “Wizard’s Soul” is, after all, a game, and it’s through her friendship with these people; people she actually has something in common with, that she can grow as a person.

^{They eventually help her build a new deck, partly out of some of their own spare cards. It’s symbolic, y’see.}

This particular plot development is, in fact, about as close as Manaka and Eita ever get, some fluff in the final few pages aside. But if the romance feels perfunctory, perhaps that’s because equally important to Manaka learning to love Eita is her learning to love play again; something sorely resonant to a person like me, who was raised in a pretty work-first, no-nonsense household. (That’s without accounting for the added layer that I, too, enjoy trading card games.) Honestly I suspect it’s a more broadly relatable theme than one might first assume, given the sheer amount of millennials with ‘productiveness’-related anxiety that I know.

If there’s a takeaway here, it’d be that. Wizard’s Soul will probably never be considered a classic, but it’s certainly a worthwhile manga. As one, it’s a fascinating reminder of how we can find reflections of ourselves even in unlikely places, and a study on the difficulty of slipping out from under anxiety. It’s all quite nicely done; a tournament finish if ever there was one.

The Magic Planet

Tag: Manga

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