Votes #20:
1) Drawn to the Fire
2) WW
3) Hero girl
4) KGB
5) Alien
Drawn to the Fire:
- Yeah, that was VERY similar to the one-shot. Only the one page showing their future teammates was different.
- It's also very similar to Kuroko's Basketball, which is also about a 'shadow player' who can't score by himself but is great at giving passes because he can make the opponent lose track of the ball.
- The promise thing reminds me of Chihayafuru, Show-ha Shoten!, Harukaze Mound, Blue Box... Heck, you can even throw Black Clover in there, if it's about a promise to meet at the top.
- Stories about players quitting and (reluctantly) returning are also a dime a dozen, though it is quite rare to have them as the MC.
So yeah. I like the chapter, it has good art, the characters work, but the story feels like someone drew a couple cliches out of a hat and stuck them together. It can work, but then the series will have to show it can do something unique with the concept. Wait and see.
WW: ... Yeah, I'm almost feeling sorry for the poor murderous bodybuilder. Underestimating the undead never ends well, and this kid is the epitome of Don't Judge a Book by its Cover.
Hero: So Subspace is staying around after all. I was wondering about that. It's kind of a shame we don't see him turn back, but cute ending either way.
KGB
Alien: Okay, I actually like this more when it focusses on the human aspect instead of the fighting. I liked them dropping down tired, I liked him wondering if she lost weight and I quite liked their talk. This new guy seems unusual in a familiar way, let's see if they can do something interesting with him.
Shinobi: Well, that took an unexpected turn. So I'm going to assume they have never seen OP? Because otherwise there would be no need to visualise him as, well,
that. I don't really like how complicated it got though, I thought it was cute when he just kept the 'conversation' going to ground himself, but now I have to wonder if he should be on shizophrenia meds and that's not what I came for. (The "Yodaka has that?!" line was both hilarious and insulting. Those goons really suck at their job.)
Kiyoshi: 'Grab 'm and mouthblast 'm from the other side' was a novel tactic, I'll give him that. But they were both still underestimating each other, and I feel like we haven't seen the last of that either.
Roku: The humour in this fits my taste better than Agravity Boys did. Which isn't a high bar to clear since I didn't like Agravity Boys, but I'm still gonna count it as a win. The story needs some work though, because this felt rather slow and repetitive towards the end.
Akane
Ichi: If you wanted your friend to join you, you could've just asked? This unnecessary hostility feels like a waste of time.
Dr: This Deku stuff is really popular nowadays, isn't it? But at least this guy waited until the chips were down. As for the new development, I'm gonna need to see how it ends before I give my judgement.
Kinato: Our hero, teaching kids everywhere that being a man equals acting obstinate and reckless! And his great esteemed teachers, who are apparently all too happy to shove their responsabilities off on the untrained support kid at the first opportunity.
I'm a few decades too old to think this kind of behaviour is admirable.
I think "Moths to a Summer's Flame" is a better title, TBH...
It's a play on the phrase while also still being somewhat true to the OG Japanese title and sounds a lot more memorable.
They use fireflies (beetles) for the imagery though, so moths doesn't really cover it. I guess that's why they changed it to bugs.
Alright, here are some of the one-shots I managed to find for some, not all, mind you, from some of the authors that will show up in this one-shot festival.
The only one translated is Amakaya Yumihiko's, which is most likely going to be the same one-shot, to be completely honest, if what we saw last year is any indication, especially with Rinjin Douji from Nagisa Ide(Just want to point that out for this one shot):
Read The Tamura Family Haunted Chronicles Chapter 0 manga online. You can also read all the chapters of The Tamura Family Haunted Chronicles here for free! READ NOW!!
mangafire.to
Now, for some of the others, starting with
Yuta Kato, an author with some experience, but just like Yumihiko's one-shot, I have a pretty good guess that it might follow somewhat to his previous one-shot from last year in Jump Giga Autumn 2025, of course, I could be absolutely wrong here:
Kougyouchitai Yabai
As for
Takahata Yuu, yelp, this is an author I was excited to see for some time now, as I am almost certain that he is or was an assistant for Spy x Family and the following oneshot of his, dated back to 2021, will prove it:
Vati Lipepe
For the likes of
Mori Tomohiro, he previously did a one-shot in 2023 for Jump Giga Autumn 2023:
Menchika no Ansatsusha
As for the likes of
Miya Ayumu, I unfortunately found little information about them online. Although I do suspect they might be using a different pen name and might be an author one of us may know of, but who knows, we would need to wait for the issue to see for ourselves.
That first one was pretty good. Felt a lot like House of Oddities though, both in content and style of humour. Running it as a series now would almost certainly kill one or both of them.
Let's just assume they picked to axe Otr instead of Kill Blue to make room for Modulo and Someone Hertz (like they should have done). From there the choices to make room for 2 of Gonron/Mage Next Door/Hero Girl (if we're going with the idea that they would start one less new series to accommodate for Kill Blue still running in this scenario) would be:
- Harukaze Mound (in this world, they don't have to pretend like it had a chance because Kill Blue still exists as a hit to pad the color page numbers. They can cut Harukaze around chapter 20 like the rest of its batch)
- Kaedegami
- Ekiden Bros (I've made clear in the past I would have sacrificed this existing to give Chojo an extended run, but that choice isn't applicable in this scenario)
- Ping Pong Peril
Honestly you can still cut all three of the actual series that got axed at this time and keep Harukaze an extra round, and it'd still lineup fine for the next batch even if you kept all three series coming in. And to go on to the question of if you would rather Kill Blue continue or one of Gonron/Mage Next Door/Hero Girl exist? I mean hindsight bias sure, but I think most people would easily accept one of those 3 series never getting serialized (hell, I'd be fine if Gonron and Mage Next Door both got erased. And I felt that way since at least chapter 2 for both of them, so it's not me saying this because I saw their entire runs and they sucked. If you showed me only the chapters the authors finished for pitching the series, I still think neither of them would be missed).
To continue on, let's say two of Under Doctor/Kinato/Alien Headbutt were launching instead of all 3, like the scenario you stated. The choices would be:
- Harukaze Mound (if it didn't get axed the previous round)
- Whichever one of Kaedegami/Ekiden Bros/Ping Pong that survived because only two series needed to be cut to make room for two of Gonron/Mage/Hero Girl (it'd be two of these series if Harukaze was axed the previous round instead)
- Series #1 out of Gonron/Mage/Hero Girl
- Series #2 out of Gonron/Mage/Hero Girl
- Elusive Samurai still probably ends around this time naturally
Even if you think they can't cut Gonron/Mage/Hero Girl because they're too new for this batch, you have three choices for all 3 series (and we're going with the assumption they'd only launch 2 of the three so there's even more room for Kill Blue).
And then if you want to continue this to the current batch:
- Modulo (natural end)
- Series #2 out of Gonron/Mage/Hero Girl
- One of Harukaze and Kaedegami/Ekiden/Ping Pong
- One of Kinato's Magic/Alien Headbutt (likely Headbutt since Kinato at least had a few good ranks before dropping)
===
Assuming of course every other series performs the same with the existence of Kill Blue in the lineup still, they had plenty of other series they could have axed with no future instead of Kill Blue.
I hate Kill Blue and I'm not going to cry over the fact I can't read it weekly anymore, but looking at it objectively, it's pretty clear that they made the wrong choice ending it before the anime aired. The only scenario that Kill Blue's survival makes things somewhat dicey is if for whatever reason they picked something besides Otr to get axed in the first round of cuts...we'd basically be in the same scenario as the Kill Blue one except instead of complaining about a series getting axed while it has an anime in production, it'd be cutting off a series that got their anniversary covers within the previous 5-10 issues (Shinobi's was literally the cover the issue Kill Blue ended in) which is almost as stupid.
Yeah, in hindsight, keeping KB around a bit longer and delaying one of the insta flops definitely would've been the better choice. But of course Saito couldn't know the next.. six months? (it feels much longer) would be failures galore.
Honestly though, the part that annoys me most is that there wasn't any kind of resolution. If they had written a proper conclusion, I would've assumed the series just ended naturally. But the mystery didn't go anywhere and the story just started over again. That kind of ending makes it feel like an axe (to me), even if it wasn't.
