Yo, anime lovers! Weekly Shonen Jump has a couple of jump starts this week, and you know what that means: reactions! First, though, a couple of news bulletins:

• As of the last 24 hours, fifty people are following Curiously Dead Cat on WordPress! Thank you all so much! And a shout-out also to everyone following me on Twitter, etc., because you’re awesome too! I have a lot more fun, exciting, and uplifting things I want to bring your way in the near future, so there’s something to look forward to!
• It’s getting to be my busy season, so posting may become a bit more sporadic through the end of the year. However, I’ll continue to be here as much as possible!

Now, on to the Jump!

The two jump starts this week were twin disappointments. So let’s have fun mocking them. In the name of justice.

Teenage Renaissance David

Ok, I confess that contrary to my usual practice, I read this manga chapter before writing a post instead of commenting on it in ‘real time’. That’s basically because I was pretty excited! I mean, I kind of have a thing for certain periods of history, and the Renaissance definitely has a lot going for it. So when I saw the billing for a manga about a high school kid who looks like Michelangelo’s David, I thought, “Hey, that’s got a lot of potential! What could possibly go wrong? Who could ever screw an opportunity like this up completely?”

Jinx.

First, the good stuff. A bit of comedic gold, as Botticelli’s Venus in a Half Shell The Birth of Venus

becomes David’s high school crush:

And the Creation of Adam (by Michelangelo again)

gets recast when David emerges from the shower, trips and falls, while his crush tries to catch him:

Unfortunately, that’s as good as it gets.

The entire chapter was one long, uninterrupted cascade of pantie and potty humor. Like, fine, if that’s your thing, a couple gags works; but it got old really quick. Apart from the visuals, the best of which you’ve already seen, there’s nothing that makes this story stand out from any of a thousand identical knock-offs. I take that back—it does stand out as the exemplar par excellence of mediocrity in this genre. So yay, have a medal!

Finally, there was one other odd thing that irritated me to no end, which is probably excessive on my part:

Apparently the whole story is set in Italy, which could be really cool but isn’t here. Anyway, “cazzo” does not mean “crap”! It means the part of the male body that Weekly Shonen Jump covered with a pirate’s head a couple graphics above, and carries a much stronger force than “crap”.

Look, if you’re going to employ foreign expletives, at least translate them accurately, stronzo!

I’m From Japan

This one was downright boring. Some kid who adores Japanese geography somehow uses his knowledge of it to create a martial art, which is somehow actually effective. Too bad there’s nothing distinctive to this story. At all.

So out of my mercy I’ll spare you a description of that. See you round the flip-side!

Thanks for reading!

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