Hi, dear readers! Since last week I didn’t get around to talking about the new jump start in WSJ, you get a double feature this week! 🙂 But first, an apology to all those who mistakenly thought, as I did, that ahem a certain major character in My Hero Academia was killed off in the manga two weeks ago. (Apparently, just as in The Princess Bride,* there’s a difference between “all dead” and “mostly dead”.)

I’m going to focus on the jump starts this time. As always, my realtime, unedited, and uncensored reactions follow!

Alice & Taiyo 1

• We begin with an internal soliloquy from some androgynous green-haired kid. S/he thought s/he could never be anything more than normal, but dreamed of being on the stage or the screen. Nice water colors: +1.
• Until s/he met Alice, who is definitely female. So I’m thinkin’ it’s a reasonable guess that the other person is Taiyo and male.
• This is definitely a singing manga. I’m feeling the boredom creep in already. -1.
• Alice just returned from an extended visit to America, which has made her dangerously cute and cue the typical reactions from the boys in her school. -1 for predictability and staleness, but +1 because she’s dangerously cute.
• Not only is Alice a superb singer, etc., but she’s also a model. Ok, this is just over the top, so -1, but also, +1.
• Taiyo gets bullied into doing another student’s delivery job. Smart move, b/c Taiyo is about six feet shorter than the other guy. But this is a pretty stale take on bullying. -1.
• One of the deliveries is to Alice’s band club. Taiyo approaches the door, and— WAIT, IS THAT A QUOTE FROM DANTE’S DIVINE COMEDY ON THE DOOR??? “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” (Or, if I remember the original correctly, “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’intrate.”) Classy! +2!
• Alice is sleeping in the clubroom. Taiyo sees her panties. Cue the usual reactions. He’s about to flee, when he sees a deluxe electric keyboard and decides to quietly try it out. I think I can predict where this is going, so… -1.
• Yup.
• Taiyo is embarrassed and flees. But he drops his student ID, How convenient for Alice. -1
• Alice corners him on the bus, teases him and won’t let him have his ID. She did go out of her way to find him, after all (valid point), and says he should show her some gratitude. And then, “Wanna go out?” You can guess how he’s going to take it, and that she means something very different by it. The standard misunderstanding. I’m taking a point off here, and if I prove mistaken I’ll give it back. If I’m right, I’ll take another point off, because reasons. -1
• Well, she explicitly tells him she’s asking him on a date. Either she’s really yanking his chain (and ours), or they’ve just upended decades of shonen storytelling. +2, but I’m taking it back if it’s not a real date.
• Alice takes him home and he meets her cousin Yuri. Yuri immediately assumes Taiyo is her boyfriend, but she shoots that down at once. I knew it! -3!
• Alice takes him to her basement, where she’s got a music studio set up. She asks him to play that song again, and correctly guesses that he wrote it. Sounds like she’s somehow familiar with him as a composer already…? Kinda predictable. -1.
• He starts playing, and she starts singing—singing lyrics that he had written! Ok, this scene is done pretty cool. My inner cynic is momentarily won over. +1.
• Taiyo apparently did a vocaloid version of the song a couple years earlier and put it online. Alice found it and liked it. Meh. -1
• She invites him to join her, he demurs, and a bunch of freakish musician guys bust through the door and frighten him away. Didn’t see that coming. +1
• Taiyo gets a chance to talk to Yuri, who explains (without going into details) that when Alice was in America she went through some kind of discrimination. This is where it gets real, folks. I haven’t experienced a ton of discrimination personally, being an educated, straight, white male; but the one time I did was as a foreigner living overseas, and boy is that a real thing. Kudos to the author for bringing this in! +1
• Yuri explains that Taiyo’s song gave Alice hope again, and takes him to her next live performance. Right before Alice is to sing, lightning strikes the building and the power goes out. Yuri tells Taiyo that Alice is waiting for him, for something only he can do… play an electric piano without electricity!
• Ha ha, I kid! There’s a grand piano standing by, and Taiyo goes to play it. +1
• Of course, it’s amazing. But it’s been set up well, and the visuals carry the scene. +1
• Everyone is moved, but when the lights come back on, no one is at the piano. Taiyo is already running away. Alice corners him, brings him back and says, “Do you hear that?” It’s APPLAUSE! I’m sentimental, so sue me. +1

Final score: +1

I’d say that’s about right. It’s average but with a little more heart than most shonen series, so there’s that.

Verdict: Applause.

Seiji Tanaka: Secretary to the Managing President, General Time Industries 2

• We start off with Delinquent-kun sitting in an office chair, behind a huge desk, with a buxom secretary giving him his daily schedule and ahem straightening his tie. Turns out it’s just a dream, which is annoying; but since I didn’t suspect it, +1.
• Recap. -1.
• Kid is grateful Tanaka (the real secretary) didn’t follow him to school. Turns out, though, that Tanaka has enrolled as a transfer student despite being in his 20’s! It’s corny as cob, and I like it! +1
• Apparently there’s some genius that the kid needs to recruit to his company for the future to go the way it’s supposed to. But they can’t find this genius, and speculate that he’s using a codename. A ‘kind’ teacher promises to ‘consider’ loaning them the student directory if the kid can take care of a tower of paperwork by the next day. I’ve read a lot of unbelievable things in my manga, but this kind of behavior by a teacher takes the cake. -1
• Surprisingly, even though the secretary offers to help, the kid turns him down! If he’s going to be the president of a successful company in the future, he wants to legitimately earn it. So he sets out to do it on his own. +1
• An enemy mook from the future shows up and goes toe-to-toe with the secretary. Naturally the secretary wins. This is only chapter 2, after all. -1
• The kid does all the work on his own. But how? -1
• They get the directory and find a possible candidate. Tune in next time!

Final score: -1

Verdict: You know what I think of paperwork in manga!!!!!!

Alice & Taiyo 2

• We return to our sweet music story, with a video of Alice’s performance circulating at school. Much to Taiyo’s relief, he’s not in it. But Alice “persuades” him to return to the band room: Let’s just say it involves hijacking the school intercom and using four smoke bombs! 😀 +1!
• They argue about whether Taiyo should join her. Alice finally forces him into a compromising position on the couch. I think we know where this is going. -1, and if someone walks in on them I’m deducting another.
• School security bursts in! -1
• … But they actually use exactly the same words I did when they accuse her of “hijacking the intercom”! So, I’m flattered. +1
• Alice and Taiyo go to a local concert by local high school music groups. Some bigshot guy is a jerk to Taiyo, but seems to know Alice already. Alice suddenly turns on the flirty charm and lures him away from Taiyo and the others. It’s clear she has something up her sleeve…
• Apparently Alice did something to the guy and he misses his gig—and conveniently Alice and Taiyo are there to step into the gap. Again, the visuals carry the day, especially Alice’s face. +1

Final score: +1

Verdict: Well, at least we’re consistent.

Seiji Tanaka: Secretary to the Managing President, General Time Industries 3

• Kid and Secretary approach their quarry, a super-genius robot inventor. He naturally wants nothing to do with them.
• Kid challenges Genius to a competition. If Kid wins, Genius joins his company; if Genius wins, Kid will leave him alone. Naturally, Kid has no idea what kind of competition to hold, so the Genius proposes a robot battle… using robots he invented himself. I’m honestly curious to see what will happen with this. +1
• Genius is so full of himself, he gives them a handicap: win one out of three rounds, and have the help of the head of the school’s robotics club assist them. First two rounds are pushovers, but in the last one the student club head’s robot fires a frikkin’ laser from its eyes and blows the head off the Genius’s! Oh, and did I mention that the club head is a lovely meganekko as well as being super smart? +1
• Being a little slow on the uptake, our heroes finally realize that the person they’ve been looking for all along is not the Genius, but the club head. +1

Final score: +3

Verdict: I’d like a time machine to see how the story ends.

What Next?

Want to enjoy the highest quality manga in translations? Consider subscribing to Weekly Shonen Jump or another manga periodical. There’s also a ton of free manga on their site that anyone can read, including through this month only the first thirty chapters of My Hero Academia. (That reminds me: It’s about time for me to renew my subscription!)

Also, if you subscribe, you can join in the weekly votes on the jump starts and have a say in what series get picked up for long-term serialization. One of the first votes I did was for a new and unusual series called The Promised Neverland. (You can read the first three chapters for free if you scroll down.) I voted to keep it; they did; and it’s become a runaway success. AND THE ANIME IS COMING NEXT SPRING I’M SO EXCITED OHMUHGORD!!!! Ahem… So anyway, join and vote, and you could end up helping launch the next Bleach or One Piece!

If you’re a fan of  The Princess Bride film but have never read the book * it’s based on, consider checking it out! It includes some hilarious scenes not found in the film. 🙂 Though my preference is for the film!

If you would like to read one of the great classics of the West, namely Dante’s Divine Comedy, you can read the whole thing—for free, in Robert Hollander’s professional translation, and with his notes, plus a ton of other resources—at the Princeton Dante Project. Dante has even had an influence on anime and manga, most notably in both Fullmetal Alchemist series! If you prefer owning a physical edition of a timeless masterpiece, consider purchasing the book.* The Comedy is not an easy-to-understand story without a guide, and you could do worse than having Hollander walk you through it!

Thanks for reading!

 

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