Under Doctor is competent. Which, after a stream of some really bad starts, is a high compliment. Definitely the best way to introduce the batches of 2026. From a visual standpoint, it's at a quality I expect for Jump, where the prior batch of Gonron, Osoegawa and Hero Demon Lord had an amateurish sheen to it. This one is drawn as if it were meant to be a hit. Everything from action, to the character designs to the pacing feels like what a hit should be like. So the skin's perfectly crisp, a well-seasoned batter. What about the meat though?
You know those gacha game character trailers that come out a few days before the new character debuts? They go for about three minutes long, don't really explain anything about the character besides letting them drop some cool lines, then they beat up a bunch of mooks while looking all badass? Under Doctor feels like that. While I won't deny the marketing prowess behind these trailers, I hate them and refuse to watch any of them even if I like the character because it's always overproduced and the in-game character will not do half the cool things they do in the trailer. It's a scam. And it's player money being funded into ads which could've just gone into the game itself.
Hmm... It even looks like a splash art...
So what does that mean for Under Doctor himself? Well, the biggest issue is that we got a whole lot of spectacle but not an ounce of meat. We get the basis of Haiji as a person and a character (The lovechild of Black Jack and Vash The Stampede) but what we don't get is the how and why. As in, why is he even a doctor, why'd he turn away from the assassin life, why is he on the plane, what is this world he hails from that's separate from the ordinary doctor's. All of these aren't touched on, which leaves the meat on the bone to come off underseasoned. I don't necessarily believe you need to play all your cards right out of the get-go, some semblance of mystery is always a plus, but it comes with a downside too. That is, the lack of hooks and hints to any semblance of plot or storyline.
This doesn't necessarily mean it's
bad. These things can be touched on by the second or third chapters. Plenty of time. But in the time it takes for Sakamoto to establish that he was an insane badass who chose to quit the assassin life in favor of having a family who's being pursued to return, Under Doctor comparatively establishes... that Haiji is a doctor and he knows kung fu. A lot of this chapter is spectacle without much storytelling when you stop and look back. But maybe spectacle isn't that bad. What's more important is catching attention.
Some pluses I can think of is the tension drawn to the surgery. The old man doctor noted it'd take 90 minutes at best, then we cut to a scene where the hijackers say they will kill a crewmember on that 90 minute mark, which leads to a moment of tension where ya think Haiji won't be able to save anyone before saving the doctor, only to cut in cause he finished the surgery in 58 minutes. Time is a crucial element to any tense scene, and while they didn't play it out, I do appreciate this slight moment of stress before Haiji makes his entry. It really makes for a heroic moment when he makes it in time when ya really think he can't. It's simple, but it heightens the experience of a work.
Now, as for the future: There is one place that Under Doctor can go which no one has pointed out. Not a medical manga, not a battle shonen.
A detective mystery.
Our buddy Haiji here was able to conduct proper diagnosis on a patient with nothing but a look, but what he cannot do is discern the cause of it, like what had happened in this chapter. I think if this is the way things go, finding out exactly how and why the patient of the week is ailed in a certain way becomes a key mystery. What I'm proposing is that Under Doctor goes by the way of House, where figuring out how exactly a patient had developed a particular illness is essential in their care. And if it was by poisoning, the why someone would do that undoubtedly becomes just as interesting.
Or we can just continue being modern Fist Of The North Star, heh.
Harukaze Mound bites the dust. Where did it all go wrong? Well, the first problem is that the characters don't exist outside of baseball. Like, they have no lives outside of it, no relationships whatsoever. It's like playing baseball is all they exist for. Without baseball, they cease to exists. If they talk about something, it's about baseball. What a terrible date. At some point, you gotta slow down and let the characters breathe and stretch their limbs.
This would be my conclusion... If Strikeout Pitch didn't exist and basically do all of that. That's right: Strikeout Pitch does exactly everything Harukaze Mound does: Have a cast of characters that are just baseball and nothing else, with absolutely zero events happening that isn't baseball. And yet, it's good.
It all comes down to the sheer power of charisma. The main character's a giant lumbering nutjob who's blessed by the gods but can only pitch three times a day. That limitation is a hook in of itself. His teammates include the hypercompetent manager who sets up all the logistics and the catcher who's the brains of the operation: Roles that Harukaze Mound's Ibuki plays split into two characters. The ace pitcher's a femboy who breaks down under pressure and the snarky smart character exists to exposit baseball details (everyone treats him like shit because he's so smug) and the coach know a lick about baseball so she ends up playing one of the most important roles: "What's a test pitch?" That's right! The dumb question asker! In 6 chapters, Strikeout Pitch develops a well-rounded cast of which everyone has an important role to play in delivering baseball action to the reader in a way that anyone can understand and enjoy.
There's three levels of enjoyment when it comes to a media about a real world sport. This image below explains it best:
When depicting a sport or a game, what I feel the game needs is THE AUDACITY. This can be achieved by conducting something a play so crazy that a beginner would understand it's insane, and an expert would feel a brain vessel pop from how crazy it is to do something like that. The pitches in Strikeout Pitch are basically bullets that can break metal, whether you are a beginner or a baseballhead, you'd understand that it's insane. Harukaze Mound though, depicts pitches that may impress a beginner, but won't feel extraordinary to an expert. That doesn't mean every pitch has to be a bullet. It just means a submarine throw turning into a sinker doesn't feel impressive or iconic.
The second layer of baseball that Strikeout Pitch nails that Harukaze Mound does not get anywhere near is in the mindgames. You get a hint of this way early on in a test game against the smug exposition guy, who tries to use his knowledge of the MC's limitations to win a bet. He has a particular plan to do so, which everyone immediately deduces based on knowing what would screw the MC over due to his weakness. So they try playing around it. The psychology of the pitch wore heavily in the test game cause the MC throws at a speed that felt like it would break your skull if it hit you, which they used to psych the guy out. And the guy was constantly adjusting his plans around their plays to get the pitch that he wanted. This dance of mind games before the ball is thrown is what makes the game exciting. Simply focusing on the plays and techniques itself isn't interesting, it's the why's that make it so, and the swing in morale and tactics to accommodate these shifting tides.
And that's why Strikeout Pitch won a tsugimanga while Harukaze Mound got nothing.
As for talking about Harukaze Mound itself, the greatest strength it had was Ibuki. The greatest weakness is also Ibuki. He did a lot for this team, the problem is: He did too much that by the 20th chapter, it felt like the entire team was an extension of Ibuki who couldn't do a damn thing if he didn't guide them. Strikeout Pitch splitting Ibuki's role into two people is important here because at least it felt like a team bouncing ideas rather than a buncha drones doing what one shortie kept telling them to do. It was as if they couldn't think for themselves and are unable to reach a favorable answer without his guidance. Ibuki is in many ways a helicopter parent who did way too much that the team felt inconsequential and ultimately, replaceable.
Nagiharu's the main character? Could've fooled me. I wouldn't have figured he was cause he couldn't throw a pitch unless Ibuki told him how to. See, a big change from the one-shot I didn't like was that Ibuki taught Nagiharu the submarine pitch, where in the one-shot, the milf asked him how he used to pitch when he was younger. There's a huge difference in themes from this change: In the serialization, Nagiharu couldn't throw a pitch that works for him till Ibuki taught him the best pitch for him. In the one-shot, he had left behind his most natural pitch in favor of the more acceptable overhand pitch, not knowing that the talent in him was always there in what he naturally knew rather than what he was expected to do. Which was better for the themes of baseball they tried to incorporate into the serialization: Do what works best for you instead of following what other people tell you to do. Ibuki telling Nagiharu what the best pitch is for him is unfortunately, contradictive to that theme because Nagiharu was still allowing someone else to think for him, rather than go with an answer he had reached on his own and later discarded.
Also, should've went with the milf from the onset, just saying. Cause I want to be right.
Mage Next Door is better than
Gonron Egg this week because it didn't bother trying to be a battle shonen. To be honest, the concept of it works astoundingly as a Doraemon-lite-- Too bad Roboco exists.
Hero & Demon Lord is fun and exists.
Kagurabachi is in hell right now, and RIP to Chihiro's most beloved girlfriend: Enten. This is how you set up a point of no return. Samura's already dead. He has a 0% chance of survival. Akanebanashi is doing a flashback arc onset of an excellent set of chapters and a great setup to an exciting arc, which is so-so to me.
Ichi The Witch shows that Usazaki can be talked into drawing some dreadfully violent shit, this entire arc has been ultraviolence on a pregnant lady, which not many would dare to do.
Nue's Exorcist is doing that thing again where it changes genres on the same chapter and that always gets on my nerves. Can these guys just wait until the next chapter or at least drop by as a cliffhanger?
Shinobi Undercover shows how I play stealth games. Hey, can't get caught by guards if they're all dead, amirite? Finally,
JJK Modulo proves that Gaygay lives up to his name. That page of Dabura and Mahoraga are going to live on eternally.
Votes:
1) Ichi The Witch
2) Sakamoto Days
3) JJK Modulo
4) Kagurabachi
5) Shinobi Undercover
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