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 “Guardian of the Witch” and “Mitama Security: Spirit Busters.” If you have thoughts on these or any other current Shonen Jump titles, please let us know in the comments!
Guardian of the Witch Chapter 5
Written and illustrated by Asahi Sakano
Translated by Adrienne Beck
Lettered by Brandon Bovia
Reviewed by Zach Wilkerson
“Guardian of the Witch” enters into its first major battle in chapter 5 as Fafner takes on the Guardian/Witch pair of Gen and Ruli. Being a Shonen manga, battle sequences are important, both in generating reader interest and in progressing the plot. The good news is that Sakano’s work is bombastic and stylized, making for a fun reading experience. While Sakano’s pencils aren’t exactly unique or ground breaking, their plotting continues to be a highlight.
Artistically “Guardian” is almost indistinguishable from it’s contempary “Black Clover.” This is even more apparent in the fight between Fafner and Gen, in which Gen uses “metal magic” in a manner quite similar to “Black Clover.” The dynamic between Fafner and Manasfa has, so far, been the series’s most defining feature. This chapter puts Manasfa on the sidelines, but the addition of Gen and Ruli allows for an examination of the Guardian/Witch relationship.
Here we see explicitly that witches are viewed as disposable tools, which is pretty reprehensible. Gen calls his witch a “sword,” contrasting with Fafner’s role as a shield for Manasfa. That this removes agency for both female characters is troubling, highlighting a broken and misogynistic system. This is demonstrated further by Ruli’s self-inflicted abuse in the service her guardian. However, by chapter’s end, Manasfa seem to find a sense of agency, acting in partnership with Fafner and overthrowing her bonds.
This series, while derivative, does attempt to say something about issues of human worth, misogyny, and ends versus means. While the approach may not be the most elegant, it is enjoyable. Sakano uses this battle to highlight the differences between the revolutionary protagonists and the agents of the corrupt state, which is quite alright with me.
Final Verdict 6.5 – A bog standard battle chapter sets a surprising dark and poignant tone for the series.
Mitama Security: Spirit Busters – Code 27: Joh’s Crisis
Written & illustrated by Tsurun Hatomune
Review by Vince J Ostrowski
This week’s chapter of “Mitama Security” finally deals with a question that I’ve been having since the early onset of the series: how does Joh reconcile his job as a spirit buster with the fact that a gaggle of apparently harmless spirits are following Rena Haze, the woman he is supposed to protect, around as companions? He spends the first few pages of the chapter resenting that the spirits don’t acknowledge his potential power over them, even as they watch him exorcise other spirits. It’s as big picture a question as a comedy manga like this can muster, that actually ends up being answered simply and sweetly in a chapter that feels more like filler than anything we’ve seen in the series so far. That’s not entirely a bad thing. Maybe comics would be better off if the answer to some of their interpersonal conflicts was as simple as: babysit the ghosts and they will give you their respect in return.
At school, Rena is finding her spirits more than a little disruptive, both because they fool around too much and because they may literally be making the classroom colder? Whatever the case, she asks Joh if he would look over them outside of school, while she focuses on the educational task at hand. What that amounts to is Joh playing a variety of sports and games against the spirits (and we already know how much the spirits love sports), as well as such dignified responsibilities as giving them “horsey rides.” By the end of a particularly spirited game of basketball against Zobiro the foot-faced spirit, Joh is resigned to the fact that the spirits aren’t afraid of him, but also realizes that they simply enjoy his company, and perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. It’s really that simple of a resolution, and the chapter goes by in a flash. Anime and manga are littered with “filler” installments – it’s just the nature of the beast. At least this chapter is breezy and funny, and avoids the boring doldrums that manga filler can sometimes succumb to.
The art is pleasing throughout, even if it’s not doing a lot of showing off in this chapter. The design for Zobiro (a tall spirit with several feet in a pinwheel shape where its head should be) is a mind-bending delight to look at, and employed to nice effect during the basketball sequence. Mitama’s strength is in its comedy chops, and the idea that there is a “Zobiro Short” and a “Zobiro Long” form that the spirit can switch back and forth from is a nice execution of a silly verbal joke paired with funny art on the page. Another great visual gag involves the Babe Ruth spirit, who I am absolutely delighted to see has stuck around past the baseball arc. I think it’s clear by now that “Mitama Security” isn’t aiming incredibly high with its lore, but it tries to get you to laugh every chapter, and in that regard it has been more than reliable.
Final Verdict: 7.0 – It’s impossible not to be charmed by this chapter of “Mitama Security”, but it is also undeniable that this is a pretty slight installment, even by manga filler standards
