Welcome to This Week in Shonen Jump, our weekly check in on Viz’s various Shonen Jump series. Viz has recently changed their release format, but our format will mostly remain the same. We will still review the newest chapters of one title a week, now with even more options at our disposal. The big change for our readers is that, even without a Shonen Jump subscription, you can read these most recent chapters for free at Viz.com or using their app.
This week, Brian checks in with “Sho-Ha Hoten!” If you have thoughts on this or any other current Shonen Jump titles, please let us know in the comments!
Sho-Ha Shoten! Chapter 15
Written by Akinari Asakura
Illustrated by Takeshi Obata
Lettered by James Gaubatz
Translated by Stephen Paul
Reviewed by Brian Salvatore
In what has become tradition, we are in a ‘between competitions’ lull in “Sho-Ha Shoten!,” this week getting the third piece of Taiyo’s backstory that began in Chapter 13. Taiyo is often the secondary focus in the story, and so on one hand, it was good to get a little more insight into who he is. Beyond that, Akinari Asakura has given him a backstory full of personal tragedy, which is a bit of a trope, I’ll admit – comedy emerging from pain. The journey of Taiyo from clueless novice to the initial driver of One-Way Ticket to the Top isn’t exactly revelatory, but it does give Taiyo a little more depth and focus to his character.
Without the tragedy of losing his friend and partner in such a sad and unfair way, Taiyo’s motivations for forming One-Way seem like your standard undercooked high school story. Add in the presence of a mother who truly doesn’t care, and his character isn’t just motivated by loss and a sense of obligation, but also by a desire to make his mother care about him in some way, any way. It’s why he was an actor, it is why he is a comedian.
Takeshi Obata does a good job creating a visual double-blind situation with Taiyo’s partner Sakutaro. Sakutaro has to look sick enough to worry people, but can’t look so sick that it causes the reader to turn on the others in his life. The reader needs to be invested in his potential health, or the story just seems too cruel. Obata draws Sakutaro in the hospital looking strong, but in the street looking weak, allowing the setting to confuse his actual health.
Obata also allows Nazutani to appear ambiguous in his intentions by the way his face is illustrated. In the hospital, Nazutani appears truly broken up by Sakutaro’s condition, but at the funeral, perhaps because of being blamed for worsening his condition, Nazutani seems nonplussed by the accusation and, perhaps, maybe a little indifferent to his friend’s death. That seems like an extreme reading; it is more likely that Nazutani is in real pain and doesn’t know how to cope with it, but that’s the beauty of Obata’s artwork; it allows you to make that decision for yourself.
It appears that next chapter may be another origin story for another team which, again, is part of the strip’s momentum at this point, but with the added backstory for Taiyo, it seems especially cruel to deny the reader a chance to further investigate his life in favor of a new team. But, alas, that’s the way it goes.
Final Verdict: 7.1 – Despite the flashback, ‘Chapter 15: Comedy and Partners’ is one of the most illuminating chapters of the story so far.
