Welcome back to another VIZ pubwatch! There’s a lot to talk about this month, from Anime NYC to a new one-shot collection from the team that brought you The Promised Neverland! Let’s start with the news.
VIZ at Anime NYC 2022
Anime NYC this year is from November 18 to November 19, which means it is soon upon us all. This year, VIZ will be hosting a screening of the new Bleach anime with the voice actors for Ichigo, Rukia and Uryu as well as selling books, DVDs and merch on the show floor and conducting portfolio reviews with creators interested in making work for VIZ Originals! Lots of exciting stuff for many people. I got a press pass and will try to attend at least some of the festivities— and report back for WWAC, of course.
Bleach Popularity Poll Results 2022
Bleach is back in the cultural zeitgeist and, as always, this means we gotta do another character popularity poll and see who people still think of fondly 20 years after these characters came into existence. This popularity poll lists the top 25 favorite characters of Bleach readers and viewers. Where did your fave land on the list? Check the poll out here.
My Hero Academia Special Box Set
Who doesn’t love a good collectible? This box set includes the first 20 volumes of Kohei Horikoshi’s smash superhero hit, as well as a full-color double-sided poster and an exclusive booklet full of new illustrations and author commentary! As the weekly series seems to be heading into its endgame on the Shonen Jump app and website, the anime continues with season 6 in full swing now. Lots of new content for My Hero Academia fans to enjoy!
But enough about blockbuster battle shonens; it’s time to talk about…
What I’m Reading
Blue Box, Volume 1
Kouji Miura
November 1, 2022
Blue Box is a rare sports-themed romance manga from the pages of Shonen Jump, starring an earnest badminton-playing first year boy dealing with his crush on a popular basketball-playing upperclassman girl. For someone who reads as much Haikyu!! fanfiction as I do, this series should’ve been a slam dunk. Instead, I think it’s… fine? It’s fine. It’s no Blue Flag or Cross Manage, both of which are by KAITO and both of which I liked better in how they explored the intersections of school sports and relationships (and had tighter, cleaner art). The pace is slow, almost meditative but sometimes dragging in its quest to keep readers hooked until the next chapter. Volume 1 introduces a small cast of fairly interesting characters and promises to develop them further. I’ve been reading this series on the Jump app every week, and I think it picks up more later when more characters come into play and Haryu’s whole deal is explained more. It’s not bad, but it’s not the comic I’m running to check first when the new weekly chapters drop (that would be Akane-banashi, about a girl trying to make it in the Japanese storytelling art of rakugo.) If you’re tired of shiny-eyed heterosexual romance stories from the girl’s point of view, why not try this athletic romance from the point of view of a boy?
Black Paradox
Junji Ito
October 25, 2022
Our favorite horror mangaka is back, and this time with a rare longer story spanning the entire volume instead of a collection of several tales. Black Paradox follows four internet strangers who meet on the titular website and plan to commit suicide together. Their attempts immediately go awry when dopplegangers, mirror images, and robot clones show up to the meeting place instead. And then one of them opens a door to another world full of magical, spherical stones… I’ve read a few Junji Ito collections now (thanks to this Pubwatch!) and Black Paradox definitely feels like a Junji Ito book, building on themes and imagery he’s used in the past and recontextualizing them in different, newly scary ways. I think Sensor worked better for me personally, but I did find myself rooting for Maruso and hoping she would make it out of the twisting and unpleasant developments unharmed. The body horror is, as always, inventively disgusting. If you like Junji Ito, you’ll probably like this one! If you haven’t read anything by him before, I probably wouldn’t recommend this as a first title but maybe a second or third.
Beyond the Promised Neverland
Kaiu Shirai (writing) Posuka Demizu (art)
November 8, 2022
I’ve only read the first chapter of The Promised Neverland, but I’ve heard mostly good things about it so I was curious to see what other work by this team looked like. I was a bit disappointed to find this collection only included additional commentary from the writer and not the artist, but any extra content is better than no extra content in my book! I could see the ideas that became The Promised Neverland being developed in these earlier one-shots, with “We Were Born” especially feeling like almost the same story as TPN. But all of the stories are well-crafted and put together in interesting ways, although I think the twist in Poppy’s Wish was the weakest out of all of them. “Spirit Photographer Saburo Kono” actually managed to make me cry, which was a surprise considering how rarely I cry from reading fiction. Demizu’s art is as amazing as always. Fans of The Promised Neverland and readers new to Shirai and Demizu’s collaborations would both get something out of this collection.
That’s all I’ve got for you this month! Tune in next month for even more VIZ news and reviews!
