My main fear with Class 2B was that I'm not actually all that high on Gintama's final arc (I'm not sure if this is a hot take or not). Maybe I just need to reread it, but to me it felt like it was a mostly played straight action shonen with jokes thrown in that didn't really hit. And I've seen plenty of super successful Jump authors who had a pretty bad ending stretch continue their decline when they start a new series (Tenmaku Cinema immediately comes to mind), so I was worried that this could end up being like that.
Thankfully it wasn't. It had most of the charm prime Gintama had. I got plenty of laughs here. The characters were all really likeable like prime Gintama. It has basically the same core philosphy for the main character (Kumon wants to live a carefree average life like Gintoki). This is Sorachi with 20 years of polish, so we don't need to do the feeling out process for his humor; he already knows what he wants to do with his jokes.
Viz dropping the ball with the official English release was probably a huge part of it, but I think the other biggest barrier for why Gintama isn't as popular in the West as it probably should be (for the record, it's still really popular and highly rated) was the fact its so wordy (even if said words were funny) and really reliant on Japanese pop culture. So far, Class 2B has the same wordy problem, but it's not as reliant on Japanese pop culture. It leans on its demon lord roots, but the demon lord premise is so basic that even if you don't understand how ingrained into Japanese media it is you at least understand what the parallels are trying to say. There's no specific Jump references yet (besides Gintama itself maybe, but Sorachi referencing himself feels like a freebie), just tropes anyone reading the magazine knows exists in almost all the manga serialized in it.
Overall a really polished release. Don't think it'll drop the ball right away. It'll at worst be Samurai 8 or Ichinose level of success (I don't know why we're acting like those are the bottom of the barrel outcomes for returning authors. Like sure they're incredibly disappointing considering their authors' previous work, but they still ended up lasting almost a year, which most series don't do. The actual worst case scenario for a series like Class 2B would be ending up like Tenmaku or Build King).
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Drawn to the Fire is hitting all the right parts to be good, but I'm not sure if it's doing everything to be successful. Despite this being fujobait, I think it's actually important for the main love interest to be likeable in her own right because how much I care about Mizuhara's promise hinges on if I think meeting Tachibana again would make him happy. If she's just an asshole, then I'm not going to be upset if he loses and I'm not going to be particularly invested if he keeps repeating the only thing that keeps him going in a game when things are tough is that promise. So it's a good thing that Tachibana is also a good character and already has a good dynamic with her teammates that make things entertaining. However, now we're recreating the Mamayuyu problem of creating a great character, but they're written in a way that takes them out of the main plot for a lot of the beginning so we can't take advantage of it. Maybe the author will invent ways to get her to show up more, but being isolated from the main story usually isn't a good thing to do for characters you write to be charming.
Mizuhara has plenty of personality, which we normally don't get in Jump sports series lately. Most of the MCs are either one note or their goal in life is their entire personality. The issue is that Mizuhara's personality is one of the most annoying to people who actually play sports. Most people don't like the teammate who does nothing but look down on himself or others. If all you do is think you aren't good enough, then how are you going to help the team? You already decided you're holding us back, so why are you bothering coming to practice. And if you didn't think we were serious about our goal, what's the point of you being on the team? Even the shittiest teams that don't make the playoffs or qualify for March Madness go out there and practice like they're trying to win every game in front of them. The only people that think "teams go out there and try losing every game so they can get a better draft pick" or that these ultra competitive athletes go out there and are fine with losing every night, are people who have never been passionate about a sport and have never played for a team with actual love of the game. There's a world of difference between your boss (a GM in this case) setting your team up for failure to get better odds in a draft and you, the bad team in question, stepping on the court. Anyone who's ever played on the bad team knows, you hate the asshole who knows they're meant to lose so they weren't taking things seriously.
It makes Mizuhara a character with depth, but it's one of the types that are hard to root for if you like sports.
Not as much basketball to analyze this chapter, but I still got some things.
Bit of a shame it was only a single clip that went viral. Not sure how big of a phenomenon it is in Japanese high school basketball, but there's an entire "mixtape" culture in American high school basketball where someone basically makes an AMV for a high school player's highlights. Depending on how good the mixtape is, that player might become immortal even if they don't end up being a star (Austin Rivers has one of the most legendary mixtapes ever that still gets brought up to this day and he's a mostly mediocre role player.
Idiots Some people
still believe Cam Reddish can be a star, he just needs the right situation, mostly because of his high school mixtapes). At least they got the comment section of the clip right. College pledge announcement posts are one of the funniest places to be.
Natsu's explanations for positions is mostly accurate, and was somewhat what I was alluding to last time when I mentioned "Mizuhara wasn't trying to match his teammates" back in middle school. He's the playmaker of the team, so he has to do things his teammates are actually capable of doing even if he can see that a higher level is possible. Making the "correct" play instead of the "right" play. The main difference is that Natsu thinks you should push a person on what they think they're capable of, which works for some players, but some people need you to dictate what they're capable of on the floor. Basically Natsu has his mindset because he's a star, which the expectation is that he can go up a higher level than normally possible for him if the team needs it. A role player can't have Natsu's mindset because they aren't as talented and thus can't actually push higher than they think is possible, so they need more help to execute correctly.
The only thing that bugged me is that I'm pretty sure the big climax of the chapter is meant to be a pick and roll (I'm sure the series itself will explain what this is later, but for now basically the player with the ball is meant to lead his defender into a wall so he has a few seconds to decide to shoot, drive, or pass), but it was drawn like Sakishima was boxing out the defender (which tl;dr is what you do when you're trying to
rebound the ball, something completely different), and would have most likely resulted in an offensive foul if it was actually that.
I'll also say that the visual aids and metaphors the series are using are pretty good to explain things for a newcomer to the sport. They're pretty clear and give a mostly accurate depiction to what goes on in basketball. A training regime to be elite does make you look like Mizuhara if you aren't prepared for it lol
As for where this is going. We have a Point Guard, a Shooting Guard (probably, I guess Uba can be a PG too but probably not), a Small Forward, and a Power Forward. Natsu already showed and stated he wants to shoot threes and middies, which means he can't be the center long term. Sakishima probably isn't tall enough or a good enough defender/rebounder to be the center (otherwise he'd already be it instead of PF). My guess is that we do a practice game with what we have, but Natsu is the center and one of the filler teammates is the SF. They either lose, or barely win, but realize they got destroyed in the rebound game because Natsu had to do too much. So the next teammate they recruit is a center that can defend the paint and rebound, so that Natsu can go back to being the SF and Mizuhara can now do either a pick and roll with the center, or do plays that get Natsu 3pt shots. Right now this team screams that they aren't a good rebounding team and rebounding is key in basketball, so it's one of the easiest ways to show a newbie how fast a team can improve while keeping it in the realm of plausible (which is why this also sounds straight out of Kuroko and Slam Dunk).
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- I don't know if Kinato got told it yet (it feels like it's more "do anything you can think of before you get the notice" then already knowing they got it), but it definitely feels like Alien Headbutt got the axe notice already. That chapter felt like the author shoved everything long term they wanted to do here just to show what they had in mind for later arcs, so that they could transitition into something that could act as a more immediate final arc now.
- This chapter of Roku was really funny. The series will probably shine whenever only one or two of the curses are the focus of the chapter, so now it becomes if Nakamura can figure out how to do something really funny when it's an ensamble chapter. If he can't, then the series is probably doomed.
