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 two titles 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, Zach and Vince check in with “Chainsaw Man” and “Dr. Stone.” If you have thoughts on these, or any other current Shonen Jump titles, please let us know in the comments!
Chainsaw Man Chapter 8
Written and illustrated by Tatsuki Fujimoto
Translation by Amanda Haley
Lettered by Sabrina Heep
Reviewed by Zach Wilkerson
The latest chapter of “Chainsaw Man” continues a disappointing streak for this new addition to the Shonen Jump line up. The series has terrific artwork by Fujimoto, and high action thrills to boot, but the shallow and embarrassingly juvenile dialogue are a severe drawback.
A quick clarification, by juvenile I don’t mean childish. This is Weekly Shonen Jump, a publication aimed at youths, so it would be somewhat insincere to make such a critique. No, the fault lies in what seems to be this character only goal; to touch breasts. He can’t go a chapter without talking about it! I don’t mean to be a prude, I was a teenage boy once (please forgive me). Rather, after an extremely promising first chapter, dealing with concepts of loneliness and friendship, it’s just sad to see “Chainsaw Man” double down on…this.
Otherwise, this chapter continues to showcase the gritty, detailed pencils of Fujimoto. This series drips blood and hyper-realized violence, akin to that of “One-Punch Man.” The fight between Denji and the Bat demon (Barbatos, perhaps?) plays out across a busy cityscape and Fujimoto uses the setting. The opening page, the Bat falling to the city below as Denji attacks, is quite striking. Cars become projectiles, buildings topple, body parts are dismembered, etc.
Still, throughout everything, does Denji think his partner? Or her cat, who previously reminded him of his dog, his only friend? No, in his berserker rage, it’s all about mammary glands, baby.
Final Verdict: 4.5 – This series has so much potential. It’s visually striking, imaginative, and unique among other books with a supernatural premise. If it can rise above the shallow and base desires of its mostly unlikable protagonist, it could become one the highlights of the magazine.
Dr. Stone – Chapter 92: Desire is Noble
Written by Riichiro Inagaki
Illustrated by Boichi
Reviewed by Vince J Ostrowski
Much of the fun of a story like “Dr. Stone”, where an entire civilization was taken out in a mass catastrophe and needs to slowly rebuild itself, is seeing how the characters find their resolve and scrape together to restore everything. For the majority of this journey, a small cast of characters have survived on brilliant scientific thinking and a little brawn to accomplish the challenges one would naturally face in an endeavor such as this. As the world of “Dr. Stone” gets bigger and the cast of characters expands, however, the manga feels more conventional and less like a scrappy band of heroes trying to accomplish that impossible feat. Enter Chapter 92: wherein the characters decide to revive an elegant and faithful butler character (Francois) to help them bake some bread that will last for the long journey ahead. Now that the group is essentially able to unfreeze whoever they want from petrifaction, the challenges that lie ahead feel a lot more ordinary and easily navigated. Inagaki-san bakes in a little bit about how they don’t have much of the revival serum left, but at this point it honestly doesn’t feel like a hindrance to be taken seriously. The story is still reasonably fun, and the strong sense of humor still lands, but the central plot conceit no longer feels nearly as dire or high-stakes.
All that said, the Francois character is undoubtedly a fun and welcome addition to the cast. She’s played off as a little uptight and almost robotic in her speech (she even has a catchphrase), but when she’s given the task of baking a special stollen bread for a long journey at sea, she comes alive with energy and competence. I was reminded of Mary Poppins (perhaps this was intentional?) in the way that she seems overly prim most times, but lets loose when it’s time for business. She’s even dressed a bit like Mary Poppins, but I suppose that’s fairly customary for a proper nanny. But there’s another homage that almost has to be even more obviously intentional: “Food Wars.” The breadmaking segment takes up the second half of the chapter and uses the same sorts of techniques that “Food Wars” does to show you the proper way to bake a loaf of stollen bread packed with nuts and fruit pieces, and blends this homage with “Dr. Stone’s” penchant for dosing you with the science behind it all. It’s very detailed in the way we’ve come to expect, and a very fun sequence. I could be misreading the creator’s intentions here, but there’s even a slight nod to “Food Wars'” horny-levels by associating the sweet stollen bread with “desire.” I don’t know, maybe that’s me bringing something to the reading that’s not there.
As is customary for the series, the most impressive thing about it is Boichi’s art. I continue to marvel at Boichi’s ability to draw unique characters where no one looks like anyone else, and no two characters could be mistaken for one another, even in silhouette. Boichi’s rendering of Francois the Butler gives you an immediate impression of this character from the very first page, before a line of dialogue is uttered, and with only a pose and a few impeccably curled locks of hair. The bread-baking segment shows Boichi doing his best Shun Saeki impression as he draws the bread in each step of the process. The process is dynamic and expressive, culminating most memorably with our resident scientist Senku mischieviously injecting a load of steam into the baking process to introduce as much energy as possible. Even if the plot of “Dr. Stone” is spinning its wheels a bit now that the characters have so much of what they need to build a new society, the playfulness of the art and the introduction of charming new characters continues to be a visual delight.
Final Verdict: 7.5 – This week’s chapter of “Dr. Stone” contains several of the same charming scientific elements that serve as hallmarks in the series, but the plot itself has lost just a bit of its intrigue the more the world expands.
